Friendship With the World is Enmity with God - by Mike Ratliff

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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The author attempts to explain James 4:4, but doesn't get around to it until the second to the last paragraph. After hundreds of words devoted to tangents, he supplies us but a single line of explanation:

It is doing whatever it takes to imitate worldly ways of thinking and worldly activities. 

He goes on to provide a very appropriate remedy, thankfully, but does not explain how the remedy works out practically. This is really what he should have written about.

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4 μοιχαλίδες, οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου ἔχθρα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν; ὃς ἐὰν οὖν βουληθῇ φίλος εἶναι τοῦ κόσμου, ἐχθρὸς τοῦ θεοῦ καθίσταται. James 4:4 (NA28)

4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God. (James 4:4 Legacy Standard Bible)

The Seeker-Sensitive paradigm is rooted in a form of Pelagianism. (A term the author will not define. Pelagianism is a theological perspective that humans are capable of moral goodness. This view is considered heretical.)

Of course, the theology I grew up with as a Southern Baptist in the 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, et cetera was somewhere between semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism. In each of these forms of theology, man is at the center. God has done all he can do to create the possibility of salvation, but it is up to man to exercise his autonomous free will in order to be saved. (Man-centered? Salvation is all about what God did for man.

The author is a Calvinist, so he's attempting to refute non-Calvinist beliefs by framing them as ridiculous.)

Even in this, after salvation there is a time of working to please God, to become perfected, to become moral, et cetera. (We should not please God? We should not grow in faith and maturity? We should not endeavor to be more virtuous? When Peter writes,

2Pe. 1:5-7 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love

What did he mean? And when Paul wrote this:

Ph. 2:12-13 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed — not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

what exactly is this work that he's referring to?)

Again, the focus is on man, not God. The reason I brought this up is to reflect on how far I have come in my understanding of these things since God revealed to me the veracity of His Sovereignty over all things. (The author will never define "sovereignty." We know from his other writings that it means God literally controls everything.)

From that, I rapidly rebuilt my theological understanding of justification and sanctification. (More terms the author will never define. Justification is the status of being righteous before God [Ro. 4:24]. Sanctification is the process of spiritual maturity and growing in faith [1Th. 4:3-7].)

It was probably not as dramatic as Luther’s awakening when he discovered the doctrine of Justification by grace through faith, but, for me, it was. I was utterly amazed and spent days and hours in prayer of gratitude and praise before the throne of grace expressing it the best way I could of how utterly unworthy I was (Does the author think it pleases God to trumpet his unworthiness? Where exactly does it say in the Bible that God considers us unworthy? Well, it doesn't. This does not mean the inverse, that we are worthy, it's simply that God never describes us as unworthy, and therefore we should not do it either.)

that I was totally justified before God with the Righteousness of Christ and His perfect obedience imputed to my account. (Where does the Bible say this? We think the doctrine of imputation [that is, the assigning of this quality to us when we don't actually possess it] is false. 

We obtained righteousness by faith, not imputation [Ro. 9:30].)

My righteousness, in God’s eyes, actually did exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees!

All those years of struggling to please him and seeing how utterly helpless I was at being perfect and sinless no longer mattered at all. Yes, we are to seek to walk upright in the power of the Holy Spirit, but, in this, I am not climbing my way to heaven. (No true Christian believes that he must climb his way to heaven.)

My place is already set at the marriage supper of the lamb. Oh how I want to live holy and blameless before Him, but that is to bring Him glory, not to somehow earn my salvation. It is as if a huge load has been taken away. (That's one of the major features of getting saved. Perhaps the author wasn't saved until that point?)

What has any of this to do with James 4:4? What I shared above is still heavy on my heart as something that is being mostly ignored by most of what I call the visible Church. Evangelicalism is becoming taken over by those who claim God has given them a vision to build large churches and those who become part of those churches must work hard to make it all pleasing to God so those churches continue to grow, et cetera. (Really? This is actually what they say? Does the author have any quotes? Documentation? References?)

I have no problem when God moves to bring multitudes of people to Christ for salvation as the Gospel is preached and those who believe are discipled Biblically. No, that is what we should all be about, but in so many cases, the leaders of these churches are all about themselves and how much money they can make and how famous they can be. (Sigh. Examples? Quotes from these leaders?)

However, all in all, I have stayed quiet and let the others have their say. Of course there are many very well known “Christian leaders” that prove by what they say and preach, such as Andy Stanley, that they are apostates. (Oh, so they're not just builders of big churches, they are false teachers? What is the connection between big churches and false teachers? Is there some sort of correlation? What exactly is the author trying to tell us?)

However, so many attempt to include what these men teach with genuine Christian doctrine. (?? Oh, so this is really not about false teachers who build big churches, it's what people say about them?)

In the marriage of these various, seemingly different, theologies we see that in some cases they get along just fine. Why? Relativism is of this world, (Another undefined term. Relativism is the idea that there is no objective truth, that morality is a matter of what one decides is moral.)

those who adopt it in how they relate to others of obviously different doctrinal beliefs are doing so via compromise, and that is simply the application of relativism. (Sigh. Apparently, relating to those who have different doctrines is compromise. But there is no reason to believe that merely acknowledging doctrinal differences is compromise.

What we're dealing with here is the author's standard of doctrinal perfection. He requires complete agreement with his doctrine, and anything less is compromise. This of course means that the spectrum of false churches is extremely large, while the "true" Christian churches, the ones that teach perfect doctrine, are limited.)

Who is left out of their happy little group hug? That’s right, those who refuse to compromise. Those welcome in are those willing to compromise with the world and its ways. (Hmm. It was compromise with each other, but now it's compromise with the world.)

Those not welcome in are those who refuse to do so. (Which one, compromise with each other or compromise with the world? Or is it actually those who do not require others to have perfect doctrine?)

What is friendship with the world? It is doing whatever it takes to imitate worldly ways of thinking and worldly activities. This very thing, according to James 4:4 makes these people enemies of God. What is their motive for imitating the world and its ways? Rick Warren comes right out and says it. They do it to satisfy the expectations of unbelievers. They want unbelievers to feel comfortable in their church. They want their church to be church for the unchurched. Both Perry Noble and Steven Furtick use that model as well. However, when this is the goal, they can never change gears. Why? It will always be impossible to satisfy the expectations of unbelievers whose hearts are set on this world and at the same time please God. You cannot do both. (We're not exactly sure that the author is presenting the situation accurately. It seems to us that every church wants to find ways to attract unbelievers. 

We don't have any direct experience with the churches of Warren, Noble, or Furtick, and we suspect the author doesn't either. However, we are pretty sure that these churches have discipleship groups, Bible studies, and evangelism efforts of various kinds. If the author knows otherwise, we would be happy to review his evidence.)

What are we to do? We must continue to stand firm in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must continue to stay in the Word of God, presenting our bodies as living, holy sacrifices, well pleasing to God, which is our spiritual service. And we must not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we may discern the will of God, that which is good and well pleasing and perfect. If we will do these things, praying for discernment and wisdom and obey God in all things then the enemy will have absolutely no ability to deceive us into compromise on any of these things. (Previously the author complained about doctrines that were man-centered, but he seems to be doing the same...)

Those who are in that darkness are so because they did none of this.

Soli Deo Gloria!