James 4:13–5:6

Bragging About Tomorrow

¹³Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city. We will spend a year there. We will buy and sell and make money.” ¹⁴You don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while. Then it disappears. ¹⁵Instead, you should say, “If it pleases the Lord, we will live and do this or that.”

¹⁶As it is, you are proud. You brag about it. That kind of bragging is evil. ¹⁷So when you know the good things you should do and don’t do them, you sin.

A Warning to Rich People

5You rich people, listen to me. Cry and sob, because you will soon be suffering.

²Your riches have rotted. Moths have eaten your clothes. ³Your gold and silver have lost their brightness. Their dullness will give witness against you. Your wanting more and more will eat your body like fire. You have stored up riches in these last days.

⁴You have even failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields. Their pay is crying out against you. The cries of those who gathered the harvest have reached the ears of the Lord who rules over all.

⁵You have lived an easy life on earth. You have given yourselves everything you wanted. You have made yourselves fat like cattle that will soon be butchered. ⁶You have judged and murdered people who aren’t guilty. And they weren’t even opposing you.