James diagnoses with a doctor's directness. Conflict is not first about them; it is first about you. Other people are the occasion of fights; our own lusts are the cause.

Lusts — Greek hēdonē, our word hedonism. Pleasures sought as ultimate become the engines of strife.

A staircase of escalation: desire, frustration, hostility — and at the bottom, an unasked question. We exhaust ourselves striving for what we never simply prayed for.

Ye ask not — the smallest yet weightiest indictment. Self-effort runs ahead of prayer.

And when we do pray, often the motive is the same lust dressed in piety. God is not a vending machine for self-indulgence; His silence is sometimes His mercy.

Prayer becomes effective in the soul that wants what God wants. He gladly gives what advances His kingdom in us.

Adulterers — James borrows the Old Testament image of Israel as God's unfaithful wife. To prefer the world's favor is spiritual adultery against the One who is our Husband.

The verse leaves no room for divided loyalty. Affection for the world is, by the same act, enmity toward God.

After the diagnosis, the gospel breaks through: but he giveth more grace. However adulterous the heart, His grace exceeds.

The condition of receiving more grace is humility. Pride is a sealed cup; humility holds it open.

Order matters: submit first, then resist. Resistance to the devil without submission to God is white-knuckle moralism. Submission to God is the ground on which resistance succeeds.

Flee — Greek pheugō. The promise is concrete. The devil flees, not because the believer is strong, but because the believer is under cover of the Stronger.

The promise: He draws nigh as we draw nigh. He is not chased; He is met. The first step toward Him meets His already-coming.

Cleanse your hands — the visible action; purify your hearts — the inward state. Both must move together.

The chapter's pivot. Self-exaltation always ends in being put down. Self-humbling always ends in being lifted up. The path is counterintuitive but unfailing.

In the sight of the Lord — humble before His eyes, not just the eyes of others. False humility manages how it looks; real humility cares only how He sees.

To slander a brother is, in effect, to set ourselves over the law that forbids it. We have promoted ourselves from law-keepers to law-critics.

Speaketh evil — Greek katalaleō, to speak down. Gossip and slander are downward speech about an absent person.

Go to now — an archaic English equivalent of "Come now." A prophet's direct address.

The mistake is not planning; it is planning without God in the planning. Christians may plan ambitiously; what they may not do is assume tomorrow as if it were owed to them.

Vapour — Greek atmis, the visible breath on a cold morning that dissolves while you watch. So is a life held in human hands without God.

The verse aims not at despair but at humility. Knowing the brevity of life makes its hours weightier, not lighter.

Three small words — if the Lord will — that reframe every plan as petition. To say them sincerely is to confess one is not the lord of one's own calendar.

Latin Christians abbreviated this to D.V. (Deo volente) in their letters. The habit is wholesome.

The chapter closes with a definition of sins of omission. We tend to define sin as the wrong things we do. James defines it equally as the right things we know to do and leave undone.

The verse is the inevitable bookend to chapter 1's call to be doers, not hearers. Knowing without doing is itself a sin.