¹What causes fights and quarrels among you? Aren’t they caused by the selfish desires that fight to control you? ²You want what you don’t have, so you commit murder. You’re determined to have things, but you can’t get what you want. You quarrel and fight. You don’t have the things you want, because you don’t pray for them. ³When you pray for things, you don’t get them because you want them for the wrong reason—for your own pleasure.

⁴You unfaithful people! Don’t you know that love for this ⸤evil⸥ world is hatred toward God? Whoever wants to be a friend of this world is an enemy of God. ⁵Do you think this passage means nothing? It says, “The Spirit that lives in us wants us to be his own.”

⁶But God shows us even more kindness.^aScripture says,

“God opposes arrogant people,

but he is kind to humble people.”

⁷So place yourselves under God’s authority. Resist the devil, and he will run away from you. ⁸Come close to God, and he will come close to you. Clean up your lives, you sinners, and clear your minds, you doubters. ⁹Be miserable, mourn, and cry. Turn your laughter into mourning and your joy into gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves in the Lord’s presence. Then he will give you a high position.

Read in Logos

James 4:10: Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Footnotes

a 4:6 Or “grace.”