Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

In the present context they were obviously not contained, but spilled
over into power-hungry, warring, factions, and turned into the towering inferno
of ecclesiastical disruptions. Those passions are designated as “rebels”
(Mitton, 147), and produced “internal divisions.” Further, such divisions, left
unchecked and uncontrolled, eventually gave rise to external strife (Laws,
169)! In fact, it might not even have taken too long. After all, “all illicit and
lustful desires or propensities” can never “be satisfied without doing injuries
to others” (Calvin, 329). To put it in different words, those bent on success in
the “pursuit of happiness” of whatever sort always manage to present the bill
to others and make them foot the bill, resulting in resentment, bitterness, war
and destruction. They are quite the opposite of those who seek holiness. This
goes hand in hand with the denial of both the self and its lustful desires,
which twofold denial results in peace, godliness and prosperity.
The message is clear. Lose the war on the inside, let lust run rampant,
and the war on the outside is inevitable, in whatever form or to whatever degree!
This includes explosive lashing out in word and act, impulsively as well
as deliberately. It also includes implosive withdrawal in thought and emotions,
in passive resistance as well as resentful bitterness. On the other hand,
win the war on the inside, control lustful desire, and peace prevails on the
outside! This makes life blossom out in fruitful dominion- taking by means of
sanctified words and deeds. When lusts run rampant, Christians resemble
grasshoppers. They devour anything in sight, and even destroy each other.
Confinement to shared quarters unavoidably does this to them! By the same
token, when they control their lust, Christians resemble bees in a beehive. On
the inside, they display self-denying servant hood, while on the outside, in the
very process of harvesting nectar, they spread life. Orchards need beehives to
blossom and produce. So civilizations and cultures, in order to bloom and advance,
need the (functioning) Christian Church that enjoys Revival status,
pursues a guiding Maintenance ministry and is permanently in a guarding Recovery
mode.
One dictionary supports, and argues for, this identification of hedonai
and epithumeo in sum, substance, and entailments, at least in the present
context. By way of a short word study, in early Greek literature hedone usu-
and if God did not help him, man could not prevail against it.” I have already discussed the
rabbinic view regarding the impulses in man in a previous context and argued that the notion
of an (ongoing) battle between two “urges” in man that are on an equal footing, a “good urge”
and an “evil urge,” apparently endorsed by Nystrom, is poles apart from the NT teaching. In
reflecting Genesis 8:21, however, the statement of Rabbi Simeon b. Levi is right on, and runs
parallel to the teaching of James. That should not be surprising, once it is recognized that the
Rabbi quotes Scripture. Of course, how the Rabbi’s perceptive understanding functioned in
the totality of his life, and whether he identified just as perceptively the solution to the problem
he saw so sharply, are altogether different matters!
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