James - Chapter 4

¹ Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Is it not precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?

² You want something and you lack it; so you kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. It is because you do not pray that you do not receive;

³ when you do pray and do not receive, it is because you prayed wrongly, wanting to indulge your passions.

⁴ Adulterers! Do you not realise that love for the world is hatred for God? Anyone who chooses the world for a friend is constituted an enemy of God.

⁵ Can you not see the point of the saying in scripture, 'The longing of the spirit he sent to dwell in us is a jealous longing.'?

⁶ But he has given us an even greater grace, as scripture says: God opposes the proud but he accords his favour to the humble.

⁷ Give in to God, then; resist the devil, and he will run away from you.

⁸ The nearer you go to God, the nearer God will come to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers.

⁹ Appreciate your wretchedness, and weep for it in misery. Your laughter must be turned to grief, your happiness to gloom.

¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

¹¹ Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who slanders a brother, or condemns one, is speaking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you condemn the Law, you have ceased to be subject to it and become a judge over it.

¹² There is only one lawgiver and he is the only judge and has the power to save or to destroy. Who are you to give a verdict on your neighbour?

¹³ Well now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we are off to this or that town; we are going to spend a year there, trading, and make some money.'

¹⁴ You never know what will happen tomorrow: you are no more than a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears.

¹⁵ Instead of this, you should say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we shall still be alive to do this or that.'

¹⁶ But as it is, how boastful and loud -- mouthed you are! Boasting of this kind is always wrong.

¹⁷ Everyone who knows what is the right thing to do and does not do it commits a sin.

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