James 4

¹Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

²You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

³You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

⁴Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

⁵Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?

⁶But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

⁷Therefore submit 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 double-minded.

⁹Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

¹⁰Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

¹¹Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of 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, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?

¹³Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”;

¹⁴whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

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

¹⁶But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

¹⁷Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.