truth is that some things are to fought for but these should be done inside of the parameters of the Christian life (Laws 166-167). At any rate, it seems that James is disturbed by the selfish spirit and bitterness of the quarrels than by the rights and wrongs of various viewpoints (Moo 139). James identifies the source of the quarrels as the passions that in your members. 'Passion' is translated the word hedone which means pleasure and is often known as sinful or self-indulgent pleasure (Nystrom 223). James’ use of military imagery in the opening words of the verse is continued on when he describes the passions as ‘waging war in your members’. He may intend to suggest the conflict of the passions with one another within the individual, but it is best to think that James is writing of the ‘warring’ is the person’s higher nature or soul as in 1 Peter 2:11. The conflicts that James is speaking of are of the selfish, indulgent nature not righteous passion or zeal (Moo 139). Verse 2You want something but you do not get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God (NIV).The desires of the people are made even more explicit in this scripture. James uses a different word for passion or desire (epithmeo), but this is because the verb hedomai is rare. He means the same thing. The problem is what James means by desire and its result is a matter of dispute. The basic problem is to determine the relationship between the series of verbs in the first half of the verse: ‘You want something but you don’t get it’; ‘You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want”; and ‘You quarrel and fight’. This translation in the NIV takes the sequence of positive-negative verbs as key to the structure, so that each of the first two sentences describes a frustrated desire. There are other...
