Christians At War With Each Other!

Let’s put it another way. If self-satisfaction comes first, then God can only come second, and if God has only second place in a person’s life, they have serious problems! The late Malcolm Muggeridge once said, “The pursuit of happiness, however conceived, is the most foolish of all pursuits.” It is not only futile, but it is fatal too, because the parable about the seed closes up the verse from which we have quoted with the words “and bring no fruit to perfection.” In short, wherever you have seeking without finding you have the ingredients of unrest and turmoil, or what James calls “wars and fightings”.

This is the first thing James tells us about the cause of the trouble. THAT IT IS PLEASURE SEEKING. The second cause he brings to our attention is that it is - PERSISTENT - “Your lusts that war.” You will remember the difference we noticed earlier in the verse between ’wars’ and ’fightings’. The first was a continuous state of war, and the second an occasional specific skirmish or battle. Here, James goes back to the first word again - and it is exactly the right one to use. “Your lusts that WAR.”- That is, that carry on a continuous state of war. The fact of the matter is that each one of us has these lusts, these desires, this pleasure-seeking spirit of demanding instant satisfaction - and they never wholly leave us. The New International Version translates this phrase, “your desires that battle within you.” There is a continuous state of war going on in the heart and personality of every child of God. The Christian is a walking civil war. Professor R. V. G. Tasker says in the Tyndale New Testament Commentary, ’these pleasures are permanently on active service’. Our trouble is persistent! However, the sober truth is that they will never be permanently banished from our hearts this side of heaven. The enemy is entrenched within us and he will fight on to the last gasp. It is persistent! May I add one further comment on this. In our age, that makes such tremendous demands on our time, our skills and our nervous and physical energies, it is perhaps a natural to think that pleasure for pleasure’s sake is acceptable.

In terms of application, responsibility and pressure of many kinds, the demands made upon us today are perhaps greater than those made upon any previous generation. It is little wonder then that at the same time, we should have an explosion of the doctrine of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. So, let us be aware of the danger! Now James turns to a third point about the cause of our troubles, namely that they are –

PERSONAL IN NATURE - “…Your lusts that war in YOUR members?” James is not talking mere theory here. Nor is he contrasting the world with the church. Nor is he naming individual backsliders or pinpointing their particular trouble. No, he is identifying for us a factor common to all Christians. This is a personal issue - “…YOUR lusts that war in YOUR members?” As I look at it, this verse seems to me to be an inverted triangle. First, we have ’wars’, which is a continuous state of unrest. Then we have ’fightings’ which is a narrower thing, because it refers to individual skirmishes and battles. Then we have ’your lusts’ that brings the matter even closer to heart. Finally we get the one word ’your’, which brings me to the apex of the triangle, and that apex is like an arrow pointing straight at my heart, something from which I cannot escape. Let me put it another way. The world consists of nations, nations consist of communities, communities consist of families, and families consist of individuals. Now it is so easy to moralise, to discuss doctrine, to pass judgement generally on things, to read the word of God and draw the line of difference between good and evil, as general principles at large in the world. It is another thing to say those three little words; ’I have sinned’! When Nathan came to King David with the story of a rich man who stole a poor man’s lamb, David had no problem in assessing the moral issue and in dispensing verbal judgement. “As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die…” (2 Samuel 12:5). It was so simple! It was an open and shut case. However, when Nathan replied, “Thou art the man”, David was shaken to the depth of his being. You are the man. You are guilty of the very sin you have condemned.