James 4

PROUD OR HUMBLE

4What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions^c that wage war within you?^{D 2}You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war.^A You do not have because you do not ask. ³You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.^d

⁴You adulterous people!^B Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.^{e 5}Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely?^Cf

⁶But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:

God resists the proud

but gives grace to the humble.^Dg

⁷Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.^{h 8}Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.^{i 9}Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.^{j 10}Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

¹¹Don’t criticize one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer^E defames and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.^{k 12}There is one lawgiver and judge^F who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?^l

OUR WILL AND GOD’S WILL

¹³Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”^{m 14}Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.ⁿ

¹⁵Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.^{o 17}So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.^p