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 4:3

Eastern Fathers

Theophylact of Ohrid

So it was with the Pharisee mentioned in the Gospel (Luke 18:10–14). The more he enumerated his virtues, the more he blocked the Divine hearing, and his lofty speech was idle on his lips and turned to foam like a raging wave. But someone will say: if the promise of the Lord Jesus, that truthful Teacher, is true — "everyone who asks receives" (Matt. 7:8) — then how does the present apostle say this? …

Commentary on James ↗

Oecumenius

And you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. "You ask and do not receive." Just as the Pharisee, of whom it is written in the Gospel according to Luke (18:11); for the more he recounted his good works, the more he blocked the divine ears, and the empty splendor of words flowed around his lips and dissolved into foam like a surging wave. …

Commentary on James ↗

Western Saints

Bede

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, etc. He had foretold that they do not ask, and now he says that they ask wrongly, because he who asks wrongly seems to ask nothing at all in the sight of the inner witness. He asks wrongly who, despising the Lord's commands, desires supreme benefits from the Lord. He also asks wrongly who, having lost the love of higher things, seeks merely to gain lower goods, and this not for the sustenance of human frailty, but for the excess of unrestrained pleasure. …

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles ↗