Charles Ellicott Commentary James 4:1

"Whence [come] wars and whence [come] fightings among you? [come they] not hence, [even] of your pleasures that war in your members?" — James 4:1 (ASV)

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.