James 4

¹Where do wars and where do quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this — from your passions that battle within your members?

²You desire and do not have. You kill and covet and cannot obtain. You quarrel and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask.

³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend it on your pleasures.

⁴Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

⁵Or do you think that the Scripture speaks in vain? The spirit that he made to dwell in us yearns with envy,

⁶But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'

⁷Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,

⁸Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

⁹Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you.

¹¹Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.

¹²There is one Lawgiver and Judge, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

¹³Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and trade and make a profit;'

¹⁴you who do not know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a vapor appearing for a little while and then vanishing.

¹⁵Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and we will do this or that.'

¹⁶But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

¹⁷Therefore, to the one knowing to do what is good and not doing it, it is sin to him.