James 4

¹Where do the wars and where do the fights among you come from? Do they not come from here—from your cravings for pleasure that are at war within your own bodies? ²You crave and you do not have; you murder and you burn with envy, yet you are unable to obtain. You fight and you wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. ³You ask and you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may squander it on your cravings for pleasure.

⁴You unfaithful wives! Do you not know that friendship with the world-system is enmity toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world-system makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose the Scripture speaks to no purpose when it says, “He jealously yearns for the spirit he made to dwell in us”? ⁶But he gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God sets himself against the arrogant, but to the humble he gives grace.”

⁷Submit yourselves, then, to God. Stand against the Accuser, 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, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

¹¹Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. Now if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹²There is only one Lawgiver and Judge—the one who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

¹³Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this city and spend a year there, and we will trade and make a profit.” ¹⁴You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live and do this or that.” ¹⁶But as it is, you boast in your arrogant pretensions. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷So, for the one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, it is sin.