James 4:2Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

So also later, in Jas 4:4, he calls them adulterers and adulteresses. Of course, he does not mean those who are such in actual deed.

He means those who sin against the divine commandments by mixing their own inventions with them. No one would endure a teacher who was a fornicator, even if he himself were filthier than a swine.

Thus, when he speaks of murders and wars, he speaks not of bodily ones, but of those of the soul.

But even if you ask these things from God, again you do not receive. If you received them, you would begin to use them for your evil wishes and desires. In this way you would become subject to still greater torments because of them.

The Lord, being all-good and compassionate, does not grant you these improper requests that you ask. He provides for your salvation and grieves lest you fall under torments.

For He gave you this commandment, to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Then all these earthly goods will be given to you freely, even without your asking: "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you" (Mt 6:33).

God does not give you bodily goods if such giving would damage your soul. According to Saint Theophylact, He also does not give wisdom and knowledge if someone asks God for them for love of pleasure and pride.

Such a man does not receive, because he asks for evil and for his own destruction. God is not the giver of evil and not the cause of man's destruction. He is the giver of good things and the cause of human salvation.

Dionysius the Areopagite cites the saying, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly," in the eighth and final chapter of The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. This confirms the authenticity of this epistle of the divine James.

The great luminary Cyril of Alexandria also cites it: "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, that you may squander it on your pleasures."

For those who ask for grace from above not for the practice of virtue, but for the enjoyment of bodily pleasures and worldly lusts, God, as it were, closes His ear and grants nothing at all.

How could He give anyone what He must turn away from and reject because of its inherent abomination? As the fountain of every sweetness, how could He pour forth bitter water?

Others did turn to God in prayer, yet they asked God for goods to satisfy their fleshly desires. That is, they asked wrongly, and did not receive the fulfillment of their requests.

The same desires, and the same ideas about the right to use earthly goods and about prayer as the means of obtaining them, have recurred and still recur in every age.

Since external acts are not being depicted here, but the inward irritation of passion, the words "you murder" should not be understood in the narrow, literal sense of bodily murder. In connection with the next word, "you envy," they mean hatred of one's neighbor (cf. 1 Jn 3:15). Such hatred does every evil to him and thereby commits moral murder (cf. Mt 5:21-22).

Envy, or zeal (cf. Jas 3:14), is placed here beside murder. It is a passion that draws a man to do every possible evil to the neighbor who is the object of his envy. Therefore it too is a fratricidal passion.

"One must know that he is not speaking here of bodily murder and enmity. That would be grievous to hear even of robbers, and still more of believers, even if only some, who come to the Lord. It seems to me that he calls murderers those who murder their own souls by undertakings through which they are hostile to piety.

"So further on (Jas 4:4), he calls adulteries and adulterers not those who truly are such in act, but those who sin against the divine commandments by mixing their own inventions with them. No one would endure a teacher who was a fornicator, even if he himself were filthier than swine. Thus he speaks of murders and wars not bodily, but spiritual" (Theophylact).

"And cannot obtain": that is, the very thing for which you murder and envy. Passion again punishes itself and grows still stronger and hotter. It now shows itself in clearer and more direct outward acts: "you quarrel and fight."

These words answer the question, "Where do wars and conflicts among you come from?" (v. 1). The Apostle has clearly traced how these enmities and conflicts arise from desires warring in the members (v. 1).

"And you do not have": the very thing on account of which all this occurs. The passions, or desires, struggle, war, and behave lawlessly. Yet they receive no inward satisfaction and are not pacified. This is an inward moral law, by which passions punish themselves.

"Because you do not ask," that is, in prayer. This does not mean that prayer for the satisfaction of murderous passions could be heard by God and fulfilled by Him. That would contradict the very idea of true prayer.

By this expression the Apostle shows that prayer could be the strongest and most decisive means for pacifying the passions, and therefore for ending enmity and conflict. It would be common prayer of all for all. Yet such prayer is absent among those to whom he speaks.

"You desire," says the Apostle, "and do not have. You murder and envy, and cannot obtain. You quarrel and fight, and do not have, because you do not ask God. And if you sometimes turn to prayer, you do not receive, because you ask not for good, but to spend it on your desires" (vv. 2-3).