James 4:1

James 4:1-7. God's giving and the World's getting

1. whence come wars and fightings among you? One source of discord had been touched in the "Be not many masters" of Chap. James 3:1. Sectarianism and all its kindred evils were destructive of peace, and therefore of all true wisdom. Another besetting sin of the race which St James addressed, from which indeed no race or nation is exempt, now comes in view. "Wars," protracted or wide-spread disputes: "fighting," the conflicts and skirmishes of daily life, which make up the campaign, "What do they come from?" the writer asks, and then makes answer to himself. A question so like in form to this as to suggest the thought that it must be a conscious reproduction, is found in the Epistle of Clement of Rome (c. 45).

even of your lusts that war in your members?Literally, from your pleasures. The noun is used as nearly equivalent to "desires." Common as the word "pleasure" was in all Greek ethical writers, it is comparatively rare in the New Testament. In the Gospels it meets us in Luke 8:14, and with much the same sense as in this passage. These "lusts" or "pleasures" are, the next word tells us, the hosts that carry on the conflict and perpetuate the warfare. They make our "members," each organ of sense or action, their camping ground and field of battle. Hence, to extend the metaphor one step further, as St Peter extends it, they "war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11).