James 4:2

Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war; ye have not, because ye ask not.

James' reference, "ye kill," is not to be taken as an indictment of the Christian communities addressed by him as murderers. "The word kill is to be taken in the sense of hatred proceeding from envy, as in 1 John 3:15: whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.'"[6] Of course, all of the New Testament writers were aware of the Master's teaching in Matthew 5:21,22, where the antecedent motives and attitudes leading to murder were exposed and judged as murder. The blunt, powerful charges made in this verse are difficult to punctuate; but Tasker's arrangement of them in a parallel seems to be commendable:

You desire and do not have; so you kill.

And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war.[7]

The frustration and misery of the selfish, pleasure-craving soul are eloquently portrayed in this verse.

Obtain ... Roberts said that "obtain" means "to attain one's goal or purpose (cf. Romans 11:7).[8]

Ye have not, because ye ask not ... There is no hint here that if they had prayed for the ability to gratify their lustful pleasures God would have given it; rather, that their willful selfishness had dried up the springs of prayer within them.

[6] John William Russell, Compact Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1964), p. 575.

[7] R. V. G. Tasker, The General Epistles of James (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977), p. 86.

[8] J. W. Roberts, op. cit., p. 126.