James 4
1 Where do wars and quarrels among you come from? Don’t they come from your desires at war within you?
2 You desire and do not have; you kill and envy, but cannot obtain. You quarrel and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, to spend it on your desires.
4 Adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think the Scripture speaks in vain: “The spirit he made to dwell in us longs with envy”?
6 But he gives greater grace. That is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 So submit 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, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Feel your misery, mourn, and weep.
9 Let your laughter turn to mourning, and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11 Brothers and sisters, do not speak against one another. Whoever speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the Law and judges the Law. And if you judge the Law, you are not a doer of the Law but a judge.
12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit.”
14 You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow! For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15 Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 So whoever knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, sins.
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