James 4

¹What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members?

²You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask.[#4.2 Or]

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

⁴Unfaithful creatures! 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 suppose it is in vain that the scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us”?

⁶But he gives more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”[#Prov 3.34.]

⁷Submit yourselves 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, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind.

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

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

¹¹Do not speak evil against one another, brethren. He that speaks evil against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil 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, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor?

¹³Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain”;

¹⁴whereas you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

¹⁵Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that.”

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

¹⁷Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.