02.04. Chapter 4 - Verse 02

James 4:2. Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. In the context the apostle applieth himself to the cure of carnal desires; he hath mentioned one effect in the 1st verse, inward and outward trouble, both in the world and in our own members; he now cometh to another argument, the dissatisfaction and successlessness of those endeavours which come from lust, they distract the head with cares, and engage the heart in sins, and all to no purpose.

Ye lust, ἐπιθυμεῖτε, ye desire; but usually it is taken, in an ill sense, for inordinate and passionate desires; therefore it is well rendered ye lust. And have not.—It may be taken two ways; either you never obtained, or have now lost: male parta male dilabuntur—ill means seldom arrive to possession, or, if they do, possession is soon lost. Grotius supposeth the apostle intimateth the great want and dearth they sustained in the days of Claudius, Acts 11:28; all their violent practices could not secure them against the inconveniences of those times. There is somewhat a like expression with this, Proverbs 13:4, ‘The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing.’ But there the word speaketh of empty wishes and lasy velleities, here of passionate desires; there of the soul of the sluggard, here of the soul of the covetous.

Ye kill—Calvin, Beza, Cajetan, Erasmus, and others, read φθονεῖτε, ye envy, though most Greek copies read as we do, φονεύετε, ye kill. The other reading was the rather embraced, because the charge seemed harsh, to say, ‘ye kill,’ when, in the received exposition, the wars here mentioned were only private contentions and lawsuits. But we cleared it before, that wars is here taken properly; and therefore are not urged with this inconvenience, and need not under stand it, as (Ecumenius doth, of spiritual killing, as if the sense were, ye kill your own souls; or of interpretative murder, mentioned 1 John 3:15; but may expound it in the usual and received import of the word, covetousness going as high as murder; as 1 Kings 21:1-2, and Proverbs 1:19, ‘Every one that is greedy of gain taketh away the life of the owners thereof.’ In those public tumults, occasioned by their rapine and avarice, many were slain. And desire to have, καὶ ζηλοῦτε, ye emulate, or are given to envy. The word is sometimes taken in a good sense: 1 Corinthians 14:12, ‘Forasmuch as ye are emulous of spiritual gifts;’ the word is ζηλοῦτε. There is a good emulation when we strive to imitate them that excel in virtue, or to go beyond them; but there is also a carnal emulation, which chiefly respecteth outward enjoyments, and noteth a grief that any should enjoy any outward excellency equal with us or beyond us, and a strong covetous or ambitious desire of appropriating that excellency to ourselves. In the first there is malice, in the second covetousness: we take it chiefly for the latter act of emulation, and therefore render it, ‘ye desire to have.’ And cannot obtain, οὐ δύνασθε ἐπιτυχεῖν.—The word is emphatical, ye cannot arrive to happiness; that is, either to their happiness whom ye thus envy or emulate, or else to the happiness you fancy, carnal desires being either disappointed, or else increasing with enjoyment; it is a distemper that will not be satisfied. The language of lust is give, give; it is an appetite without bound or measure. If we had one world, yet we are not happy, we would covet another: carnal desire is a gulf that is never filled up.¹ Enjoyments seem little, because there is still so much in hope; like children, that greedily desire a thing, and when they have it despise it; or like drunkards, who are always pouring in, yet do not quench, but inflame the appetite. See Ecclesiastes 4:8, and Ecclesiastes 5:10. Well may it be said, then, ‘ye cannot obtain,’ Carnal men possess much, but have nothing.

¹ ‘Novis semper cupiditatibus occupati, non quid habeamus, sed quid petamus, inspicimus; non in id quod est, sed quod appetitur intenti.’—Seneca, de Benif., lib. 3. cap. 3.

Ye fight and war, and yet ye have not; that is, though their violence and carnal desires had broken out so far as public insurrections and tumults, yet still they were at a loss.

Because ye ask not; that is, you do not use the lawful means of prayer. But how can it be said, ‘ye ask not,’ since in the next verse he saith, ‘Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss’? I answer—(1.) Possibly here he may task one abuse, there another; here that they hoped to help themselves by their own endeavours without prayer, there that their prayers were conceived to a carnal purpose. (2.) Because prayers not conceived in a humble and holy manner are no prayers; lust’s prayers are no prayers, eructations of lusts, not spiritual supplications; a howling, Hosea 7:14, which God regardeth not.

Obs. 1. Lustings are usually disappointed: ‘Ye lust, and have not.’ God loveth to cross desires when they are inordinate; his hand is straitened when our desires are enlarged. Sometimes out of mercy. It is a blessing to meet with disappointment in the ways of sin; you cannot have a worse judgment then to have your carnal desires filled up. O unhappy men, whom God leaveth to themselves without restraint! Proverbs 14:14, ‘The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good man shall be satisfied from himself.’ The cursed apostate shall have enough of honours, and pleasures, and preferments. It was a mercy to the church to be disappointed: ‘She shall follow after her lovers, but shall not overtake them; she shall seek them, but not find them;’ then ‘she shall think of her former husband,’ &c. Hosea 2:7. Prosperous and successful wickedness encourageth a man to go on in that way; some rubs are an advantage. What we desire with greediness we enjoy with surfeit. To disappoint and check our lust, God in mercy fenceth up our way with thorns. Sometimes in judgment, that he may torment men by their own lusts; their desires prove their just torture. The blood heated by intemperance, and the heart enlarged by desire, are both of them sins that bring with them their own punishment, especially when they meet with disappointment. Amnon and Ahab were both sick, the one with lust, the other with covetousness.

Use 1. Learn, then, that when the heart is too much set upon anything, it is the ready way to miss it. Rachel’s desires of children made her the more barren. The fool talked of bigger barns, and that night his soul was taken away. When you forget to subject your desires to God’s will, you shall understand the sovereignty of it. When the heart is strongly set upon a thing, there is no reservation of God’s good pleasure. We say, I will; and God saith, I will not. We will have such a thing: ‘I will go after my lovers,’ as if we were petty gods. God will have his will against your wills: ‘I will fence thy way with thorns:’ there is an implicit and interpretative contest between us and God. Again, when desires mistake in their object, they miss of their end. God cannot endure that the same affection should be lavished on outward things which is only proper to himself and his grace: ‘violence’ would become ‘the kingdom,’ Matthew 11:12. When Amnon is as sick for Tamar as the spouse is for Christ, it begetteth a jealousy. Affections should rise according to the worth of the object: ‘Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but the meat which endureth for ever,’ John 6:1-71. Your industrious desires would become a better object; your strength should be laid out for everlasting bread; that is a labour without sin, and without disappointment.

Use 2. Be not always troubled when you cannot have your will; you have cause to bless God. It is a mercy when carnal desires are disappointed: say, as David, 1 Samuel 25:32, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, that sent thee to meet me this day.’ Your hearts have been set on great estates, and you thought, with the fool in the Gospel, of enlarging your barns and exalting your nest, and of a sudden God came in and blasted all these carnal projects. Bless God for such providences: how secure, or sensual, or carnal would your spirit have been else! It was a mercy that ‘the world was crucified’ to Paul, as well as Paul ‘crucified to the world,’ Galatians 6:14. So when you have been crossed in the pursuit of some lust or uncleanness, you may afterward kneel down and adore the wisdom and seasonableness of such providences. Possidonius in the life of Austin hath a memorable history. He being to visit a place, with his guide mistook the way, fell into a bypath, and so escaped the hands of some bloody Donatists that lay in ambush to take away his life. God may lead you beside your intentions to avoid some dangerous sins that would else have destroyed your souls: Hosea 2:6, ‘I will hedge up her way with thorns.’ Some cross providences may be a hedge to keep thee from further misery.

Use 3. It teacheth you what reflections to make upon yourselves in case of disappointment. When we miss any worldly thing that we have desired, say, Have not I lusted after this? Did not I covet it too earnestly? Absalom was the greater curse to David because he loved him too much. Inordinate longings make the affections miscarry. Observe it, those objects seldom prove happy that have too much of our hearts. We find it often that men of great care are successless; they turn and wind hither and thither, and are still like a door upon the hinges, in the same state and case: Psalms 127:2, ‘It is in vain to rise early, and go to bed late, and eat the bread of sorrows.’ A carking industry may be in vain and to no purpose; the success of human endeavours lieth in God’s blessing and concurrence; it is the prerogative he hath reserved to himself; he keepeth it as a bridle over mankind, to keep them in obedience, duty, and dependence. Providence doth sometimes wean us from lust to grace, and showeth us that a blessing is sooner had by faith than worldly care: Psalms 39:6, ‘Surely every man walketh in a vain show; heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.’ Man goeth and cometh, and tosseth to and fro, and is gathering of riches, and increaseth the heap, and God of a sudden scattereth all. How often have you seen a covetous, carking man, like a mill-horse, still going round, and yet always in the same place?

Obs. 2. That where there is covetousness there is usually strife, envy, and emulation. Ἐπιθυμεῖτε, ye lust; φονεύετε, ye kill; ζηλοῦτε, ye emulate; these hang in a string. As there is a connection and a cognation between virtues and graces—they go hand in hand—so there is a link between sins, they seldom go alone. If a man be a drunkard he will be a wanton; if he be covetous he will be envious. Christ cast out seven devils out of one Mary Magdalene, and another man was possessed with a legion. When the heart is brought under the power of any sin, it lieth equally obnoxious to all sin. Covetousness may be known by its companions, strife, envy, and emulation: Romans 1:29, ‘With covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy.’ Self-love is the root of all the three; it maketh us covet and desire what is good and excellent, and it maketh us envy that others should enjoy it; and then to break all bonds of duty and charity that we may wrest it from them. A covetous man is a full wicked man; he enlargeth his desires for himself, but is much straitened towards others; his eye is evil when God’s hand is good. We often meet with strange compounds and prodigies of vice and sin: 2 Timothy 3:2, ‘Covetous, proud, boasters, lovers of themselves,’ &c. It is said of Catiline that he was monstrum ex variis diversisque et inter se pugnantibus naturis conflatum, a compound and bundle of warring lusts and vices; so are many wicked men a composition of many sins, which seem to differ in their essence, but spring from the same root of corruption.

Obs. 3. From that ye lust, ye kill, ye fight and war.—It is lust and covetousness that is most apt to trouble neighbourhoods and vicinities. Solomon saith, Proverbs 15:27, ‘He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house;’ we may add, yea, and all the houses near him; he is truly ‘the troubler of Israel.’ Man is by nature a sociable creature, fit for commerce.² A covetous man is a wen of the body politic, not a member. A wen, by sucking the nourishment that is due to other parts, groweth monstrous and ugly in itself, and robbeth the body; so he being altogether for private gain, perverteth that which is the cement of all confederacies and societies—a care of the commonweal. Bodies are preserved when ‘the members care for one another:’ 1 Corinthians 12:25. But this is not all. Covetousness is a base affection, that will put a man upon the basest and most unworthy practices; men given to it trouble their families by exacting all their labours, and trouble human societies by unjust contentions; they quarrel with those that possess that which they covet. Ahab spilt Naboth’s blood for his vineyard’s sake. They promote public changes and innovations, that they may feather their nests with the common spoils. Besides all this, they bring down God’s judgments upon their people: Achan’s covetousness troubled whole Israel, Joshua 7:1-26. Especially if high in place and honour; as when magistrates build their own houses upon others’ ruins, and purchase large revenues and estates with the public purse, or detaining the hire of the poor. See Jeremiah 22:13. Well, then, no wonder that covetous men meet with public hatred and detestation; they are not only injurious to God, but human societies; they are a sort of men that are neither moved with arguments of nature or grace. It is a character of a bad spirit, Luke 18:2, that ‘he neither feared God nor regarded man.’ These two restraints God hath laid upon us—his own fear to preserve religion, and the shame of the world to preserve human societies. Now some men are moved with neither. It was a character of the Jews in their depravation, 1 Thessalonians 2:15, ‘They please not God, and are contrary to all men;’ they agree with none but themselves. So elsewhere it is said, 2 Thessalonians 3:2, ‘Unreasonable men, that have not faith;’ neither grace, nor good nature, nor faith, nor reason. So Lactantius saith of Lucian, Nec diis nec huminibus pepercit, he spared neither God nor man. Covetousness maketh men of such a harsh and sour disposition. Towards God it is idolatry; it robbeth him of one of the flowers of his crown, the trust of the creature; and it is the bane of human societies. Why are men’s hearts besotted with that which is even the reproach and defamation of their natures?

² ‘Ἄνθρωπος ἐν φύσει ζῶον πολίτικον.’—Arist. Pol., cap. 1.

Obs. 4. That lust will put men not only upon dishonest endeavours, but unlawful means, to accomplish their ends, killing, and warring, and fighting, &c. Bad means will suit well enough with base ends; they resolve to have it, rem, quocunque modo rem; any means will serve the turn, so they may satisfy their thirst of gain: 1 Timothy 6:9, ‘They that will be rich fall into temptations and a snare;’ Proverbs 28:20, ‘He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent.’ If God will not enrich them, Satan shall³ and what they cannot get by honest labour they make up by the deceitful bag. Learn, then, what a tyrant lust is; if God doth not bless us, it maketh us go to the devil. And again, know that that is rank lust which putteth you upon dishonest means.

³ ‘Flectere, si nequeo superos,’ &c,

Obs. 5. From that ye lust, and have not; and again, ye kill and emulate, and have not; and again, ye fight and war, and have not.—That do wicked men what they can, when God setteth against them, their endeavours are frustrate. Let them try all ways, yet still they are disappointed: Psalms 33:10, ‘He maketh the devices of the wicked to be of none effect.’ God will not let his creatures to be too hard for him in all strifes; he will overcome, and have the best of it, Romans 3:4. But when doth God set himself to frustrate the endeavours of the creature? I answer—When the creature setteth itself to frustrate his counsels and intents. That may be done several ways:—(1.) When we will do things in despite of providence. They are disappointed once or twice in an evil way, yet they will try again, as if they would have the mastery of God; as the king of Israel would adventure the other fifty after two fifties were destroyed, 2 Kings 1:1-18; Pharaoh would harden his heart after many plagues; Balaam would smite his ass three times, Numbers 22:25, and after that he would build altar upon altar to curse Israel. (2.) When men seek by carnal policies to make void God’s promises or threatenings. God had said, ‘I will cut off Ahab’s posterity.’ To avoid this he falleth a-begetting of children; he had seventy children, that were all brought up in seventy strong cities, yet all beheaded by Jehu. Herod, that he might make sure work of Christ, killed all the children of Bethlehem, and some say his own son, nursed there; whereupon Augustus said, Melius est Herodis porcus esse quam filius—it is better to be Herod’s swine than his son: and yet Christ was kept safe: Proverbs 21:30, ‘There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord.’ He useth many words to show that all the exquisiteness and choiceness of parts will not be able to manage the contest against providence. (3.) When men crossed by providence seek happiness elsewhere by unlawful acts and means, as violence, cozenage, extortion, deceit, as if Satan could make them more prosperous than God; see if these men do not go back in their estates; if their families, which they seek to raise by such means, be not ruined. The old world would build a tower, as if there were more security in a tower than a promise, Genesis 11:4. Many devices there are in man’s heart to compass their ends, but they are all blasted and marked with the curse of providence. (4.) When you say I will, without God’s leave: see Exodus 15:9; James 4:3. Such confident purposes and presumptions as are not subjected to God’s pleasure are seldom prosperous. (5.) By reiterated endeavours against the church: see Isaiah 8:9-10. They are still ‘broken in pieces,’ though they join force to policy, combine themselves in leagues most holy, and renew their assaults with a united strength; therefore the prophet repeateth it so often, ‘Ye shall be broken in pieces, ye shall,’ &c.

Obs. 6. From that because ye ask not; that is, ask not God’s leave in humble and holy prayer. The note is, that it is not good to engage in any undertaking without prayer. In prayer you ask God’s leave, and show your action is not a contest with him. The families that call not upon God’s name must needs be cursed: in their actions they do, as it were, say they will be happy without God. We learn hence—(1.) That that argument against prayer is vain: God knows our requests already; and God’s decrees are immutable, and cannot be altered by our prayers. So argued of old Maximus Tyrius, a heathen philosopher, and so many Libertines in our days. I answer—Prayer is not for God’s information, but the creature’s submission; we pray that we may have his leave. And again, God’s decrees do not exclude the duty of creatures and the work of second causes: Ezekiel 36:37, ‘I will yet for this be inquired after by the house of Israel;’ so Jeremiah 29:11-12, ‘I know the thoughts of peace that I have towards you, yet ye shall call upon me, and I will hear you.’ (2.) That no actions must be taken in hand but such as we can commend to God in prayer; such recreations as we are ashamed to ask a blessing upon must not be used; such enterprises we must not engage in as we dare not communicate to God in our supplications: Isaiah 29:15, ‘Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord;’ that is, design their enterprises, and never inquire after the will of God, or communicate their purpose to him in prayer.