Fathers

James 4

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Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you. Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another? Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city, and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.” Whereas you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.” But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil. To him therefore who knows to do good, and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.

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What the Fathers say

James 4:2

Eastern Fathers

Theophylact of Ohrid

Here he persuades through affirmation and negation. However, the affirmation is passed over in silence as being indecent. The indecency lies in the fact that what is implied in the affirmation constitutes the kindling of desire, for desire ends in the fulfillment of sensual pleasure. Murder and envy, strife and enmity are not good deeds, which is why those who pursue them do not attain what they strive for. …

Commentary on James ↗

Oecumenius

You desire and do not have; you kill and covet, and cannot obtain; you fight and wage war, "You desire and do not have," etc. According to position and elevation, it proceeds from the position, being removed due to the absurdity. The absurdity, due to the pleasures, is expected to be the underlying cause of what is contemplated in the position. For both desire ends in the perfection of pleasures, and murder, rivalry, and similarly strife and war are not good: therefore, neither do those things follow whose cause they affect. …

Commentary on James ↗

Western Saints

Bede

You quarrel and fight, and you do not have because you do not ask. You quarrel, he says, and fight for temporal glory, and you are not able to obtain this, precisely because you do not care to ask the Lord, so that he himself might bestow upon you whatever is beneficial. For if you were to ask him with pious intention, he would grant you both the earthly necessities for temporal use and the heavenly goods for eternal enjoyment.

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles ↗