1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
James 4:1-3 (ESV)
University-based “peace studies” programs debate the causes of war, variously blaming it on racism, extremes in wealth and poverty, patriarchy, arms races, biology, nationalism, and religion, including Christianity. The Bible steps in to say that the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.
Education is not the key to peace, for wars are not based upon misunderstanding and ignorance. They arise from sin—jealousy, greed, and lust leading to covetousness. Men war because they covet, and those who stand up to the covetous aggressors fight willfulness, not confusion. There is no seminar to erase man’s tendency to attack the vulnerable and seize the desirable.
The expression, “passions are at war (v. 1),” presents a curious juxtaposition in the Greek. The word for passion, hedone, is the root of “hedonism,” usually associated with such non-aggressive activities as lavish dining, tropical cruises, and sexual dalliance. The word for waging war, strateuomai, is the root of “strategy,” associated with such aggressive activities as ambushes, artillery barrages, and preemptive strikes. Yet here hedone and strateuomai stand together, so it is obvious that hedonism is not so easy going after all. Pleasure and gratification seekers are incipient warriors.
Verse 2 gives two other names to the driving force toward war. The first, epithumia, “desire,” is morally neutral, for it also appears in honorable contexts, such as desiring to be an overseer (1 Tim. 3:1) and desiring to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23). Inordinate desire, and not desire itself, is the problem.
The second word, zelos, “envy” or “covetousness,” is the root of the English words, “jealous” and “zealous.” The latter is benign, but New Testament uses of zelos are more disturbing. They repeatedly designate an unholy, grasping spirit.
Throughout history, Romanticists have taught that cultural exchanges, treaties, and such could prevent war. This folly reached its zenith in 1928, when 15 of an eventual 62 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, outlawing war. (Regretting the United States’ refusal to join the League of Nations and fearing fresh German aggression, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand enlisted American Secretary of State Frank Kellogg to press for this agreement.) It is obvious that the treaty failed. They might as well have outlawed hunger, worry, and gossip. So long as Christ tarries, men will lust and covet, and their sin will lead to war.
War should come as no surprise to the Church, for war springs from the character constants of fallen man. Inasmuch as the Church cares for justice, she will recognize the need for armies, navies, and air forces to meet the attacks of “strategizing hedonists,” of “inordinate desirers,” and of “zealous coveters.” But she will never lose sight of the fact that the ultimate cure for unholy aggression is the reign of Christ in the regenerate heart.