James, Chapter 4

1. From where do wars and fightings among you come ? Is it not from this, from your lusts which war in your members?    2. You desire, and do not have. You murder, and are jealous, and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you have not because you ask not.    3. You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it upon your lusts.    4. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever desires to be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.    5. Do you think that the Scripture says in vain, The spirit that dwells in us yearns to envy?    6. But He gives more grace. Therefore He says, God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.    7. Therefore submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.    8. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners; and purify your hearts, double-minded ones.    9. Be afflicted, and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness.    10. Be humbled before the Lord, and He will lift you up.    11. Do not speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against his brother, and who 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.    12. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you who judges another?    13. Come now, those saying, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and spend a year there, and we will trade and will make a profit,    14. who do not know of the morrow. For what is your life? For it is a vapor, which appears for a little time, and then disappears.    15. Instead of you saying, If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.    16. But now you boast in your presumptions. All such boasting is evil.    17. Therefore to him who knows to do good, and does not do it , to him it is sin.