Charles Ellicott Commentary James 4

From where do wars come . . .?—More correctly: From where are wars, and from where are fightings among you? The perfect peace above, capable, moreover, in some ways, of beginning here below, discussed at the close of James 3, has by inevitable reaction led the Apostle to speak suddenly, almost fiercely, of the existing state of things. He traces the conflict raging around him to the source and origin of evil within.

Do they not come . . .—Translate, Do they not come from this source, even from your lusts warring in your members? The term is really pleasures, but in an evil sense, and therefore “lusts.” “The desires of various sorts of pleasures are,” says Bishop Moberly, “like soldiers in the devil’s army, posted and picketed all over us, in the hope of winning our members, and so ourselves, back to his allegiance, which we have renounced in our baptism.”

St. Peter (1 Peter 2:11) thus writes in the same way of fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; and St. Paul also knew of this bitter strife in man, if not actually in himself, and could see another law in his members—the natural tendency of the flesh—warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members (Romans 7:23). See also the note on 2 Corinthians 12:7.

Happily, the Christian philosopher understands this; and with the very cry of wretchedness, Who shall deliver me? can answer, I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24–25). But the burden of this hateful depravity in the past drove men like Lucretius to suicide rather than endurance; and its mantle of despair is on all the religions of India at the present time—matter itself being held to be evil, and eternal.

You lust, and have not . . .—It is better this way: You desire, and have not; you kill, and envy, and cannot obtain; you fight and make war; you have not, because you ask not; you ask and receive not, because you ask that you may spend it on your lusts. It is interesting to notice the sharp, crisp sentences, remembering at the same time that St. James himself fell a victim to the passions he thus assails, probably at the hands of a zealot mob.

The marginal note to the second of the above paragraphs gives envy as an alternative reading for “kill,” but this is an error. “You kill and play the zealot” would be still nearer the original. For, as with Jedburgh justice in the old Border wars, where hanging preceded the trial, so with these factions in Jerusalem, death went first, almost before the desire to inflict it. Lust, envy, strife, and murder—like the tale of human passion in all ages, the dreadful end draws on. It is written in every national epic; its elements abound in the life of each individual: the slaughter in Etzel’s halls overshadows the first lines of the Nibelungenlied; the curse of Medea hangs like a gathering cloud around Jason and his Argonauts. Is it objected (James 4:3) that prayer is made but not answered? The reply is obvious: You ask not in the true sense; when you do ask, you receive not, because God is too loving, even in His anger.

Nevertheless, remember, He gave the Israelites their desire, and sent leanness withal into their soul (Psalms 106:15). I, said He by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 14:4), will answer him that cometh to Me, according to his idols. What greater curse could fall than an eternity of avarice to the miser, of pollution to the sensual, of murder to the violent? Many a man of quiet Christian life will thank God later on, when he knows even as he is known (1 Corinthians 13:12), that not a few of his prayers were unanswered, or at least that they were not granted in the way which he had desired.

Safety is only to be found in our Lord’s own manner of petition, Not my will, but Thine be done (Luke 22:42). Alas! In shameful contrast to this, we read of many an evil-hearted prayer offered up to the Lord our Righteousness; invocations of saints for help in unholy deeds; of angels, for acts rather befitting devils of the pit; and can hardly have the conscience to reproach the heathen for supplicating their gods in no worse a manner for no better cause.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses.—The phrase may seem to flow naturally after the former ones, but the Received Text, from which our version was made, is wrong. It should be, ye adulteresses! as accusing those who have broken their marriage vow to God. The sense is familiar to us from many passages in the Old Testament, in which God speaks of Israel in a similar manner; for example, Psalms 73:27; Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 2:2; Ezekiel 16 (throughout); Ezekiel 23:37–43; Hosea 2:2. Again in the New Testament: Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4; Mark 8:38; Revelation 2:20–22; Revelation 17:1, 5, 15, and others. St. Paul’s description of the church (2 Corinthians 11:2), espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ; and compare 2 Peter 2:14, especially the margin. “God is the Lord and husband of every soul that is His;” and in her revolt from Him, and love for sin, her acts are those of an adulterous woman.

Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?—That is, the state of being an enemy to God, not one of simpler enmity with Him. There cannot be a passive condition to the faith of Christ: He that is not with Me is against Me (Matthew 12:30). Renunciation of the world, in the Christian promise, is not forsaking it when tired and clogged with its delights, but the earliest severance from it. To break this vow, or not to have made it, is to belong to the foes of God, and not merely to be out of covenant with Him. The forces of good and evil divide the land so sharply that there is no debatable ground, nor even a halting-place between. And if God is just, so also is He jealous (Exodus 20:5).

“Let us not weakly slide into the treason:
Yielding another what we owe to Him.”

Whosoever therefore will be (or, wills to be) a friend of the world is the enemy of God.—The choice is open; here is no iron fate, no dread necessity: but the wrong determination of the soul constitutes it henceforth as an ally of Satan. Woe unto you, when all men speak well of you (Luke 6:26), for the world, as our Lord has taught us, must love its own (John 15:19). And the sooner the soldier of Christ learns to expect its animosity, the better will he give himself up to the battle. (Luke 16:13.)

Do you think . . .?—The Apostle's tone changes to one of appeal, which, perhaps (but see below), may be rendered this way: Suppose you that the Scripture says in vain, The (Holy) Spirit that dwells in us jealously regards us as His own?

Our Authorised version does not allow for this apparent reference to the Spirit of God indwelling His human temples (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19 and following), for “lusteth to envy,” or enviously, would imply evil and not good.

It would be well that the unfaithful, addressed in James 4:4, should keep the general sentiment of this verse in mind, and not imagine such warnings of holy writ were uttered emptily, in vain.

Many commentators have been puzzled to say from where the words came which are quoted as authoritative by St. James. Surely the substance was sufficient for him, as for other inspired writers, without a slavish adherence to the form: compare Genesis 2:7 for the inbreathing of the Spirit, with any such chapter as Deuteronomy 32:0 for His jealous inquisition.

It must, however, be noted that a slightly varied punctuation of the verse will give quite another sense to its questioning. (See Wordsworth.) Suppose you that the Scripture speaks in vain? Does the Spirit, which took up His abode in you, lust to envy?

And defensible or not as this translation may be, at least it escapes some of the difficulties of the foregoing. (Exhaustive notes, with references to most authorities, are in Alford; or an easy summary of the matter may be read in Plumptre’s St. James.)

But he giveth more grace—that is, because of this very presence of the Holy Ghost within us. He, as the author and conveyor of all good gifts, in their mystic seven-fold order (Isaiah 11:2), adds to the wasted treasure, and so aids the weakest in his strife with sin, resisting the proud, lest he be led to destruction (Proverbs 16:18), and helping the humble, lest he be wearied and faint in his mind (Hebrews 12:3).

God resisteth the proud . . .—Excepting “God,” instead of “Lord,” this is an exact quotation from the LXX version of Proverbs 3:34, which reads in our Bibles, Surely He scorneth the scorners, but He giveth grace unto the lowly. It is again brought forward by St. Peter (1 Peter 5:5) and seems to have been a common saying—“a maxim of the wise that had become, as it were, a law of life.”