Expositor's Bible Commentary 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)

Instead of the climate of peace necessary for the production of righteousness (3:18), James’s readers were living in an atmosphere of constant “fights and quarrels.” These two nouns were normally used of national warfare, but they had also become common, forceful expressions for any kind of open antagonism. James answers his question about the cause of fights and quarrels with an answer with which he expects his reader to agree: “Don’t they come from your desires [GK 2454]” The Greek word for “desires” is the source of the English word “hedonism,” the designation of the philosophy that views pleasure as the chief goal of life. James pictures these pleasures as residing within his readers as the overriding desires of their lives. Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of their realization.