James 4:8

James 4:8. Draw nigh to God: not to be limited to prayer, but to be understood of our intercourse with God generally.

and he will draw nigh to you. Compare the words of Zechariah: ‘Turn ye unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts' (Zechariah 1:3).

Cleanse your hands, ye sinners. The priests before they ministered at the altar, and the people before they prayed, always washed their hands, thus intimating the purity with which we ought to approach God. The hands are specially mentioned as being the instruments of wickedness.

and purify your hearts. The cleansing of the hands refers to external, and the purification of the hearts to internal purity; the one to the absence from contention, and the other to freedom from those lusts which were the cause of contention; the external and the internal must correspond: we must have ‘clean hands and a pure heart'(Psalms 24:4). There is not much difference in the two words here rendered ‘cleansing' and ‘purifying:' the former is freedom from stain or blemish, the latter is consecrated or set apart.

ye double-minded: having, as it were, two souls the one professing to be attached to God, and the other really attached to the world. The epithets ‘sinners' and ‘double-minded' refer not to different, but to the same class of persons.