James 4

¹Whence are wars and fightings among you? not thence—out of your passions, that are as soldiers in your members? ²ye desire, and ye have not; ye murder, and are zealous, and are not able to attain; ye fight and war, and ye have not, because of your not asking; ³ye ask, and ye receive not, because evilly ye ask, that in your pleasures ye may spend it. ⁴Adulterers and adulteresses! have ye not known that friendship of the world is enmity with God? whoever, then, may counsel to be a friend of the world, an enemy of God he is set. ⁵Do ye think that emptily the Writing saith, ‘To envy earnestly desireth the spirit that did dwell in us,’ ⁶and greater grace he doth give, wherefore he saith, ‘God against proud ones doth set Himself up, and to lowly ones He doth give grace?’ ⁷be subject, then, to God; stand up against the devil, and he will flee from you; ⁸draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you; cleanse hands, ye sinners! and purify hearts, ye two-souled! ⁹be exceeding afflicted, and mourn, and weep, let your laughter to mourning be turned, and the joy to heaviness; ¹⁰be made low before the Lord, and He shall exalt you.

¹¹Speak not one against another, brethren; he who is speaking against a brother, and is judging his brother, doth speak against law, and doth judge law, and if law thou dost judge, thou art not a doer of law but a judge; ¹²one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy; thou—who art thou that dost judge the other? ¹³Go, now, ye who are saying, ‘To-day and to-morrow we will go on to such a city, and will pass there one year, and traffic, and make gain;’ ¹⁴who do not know the thing of the morrow; for what is your life? for it is a vapour that is appearing for a little, and then is vanishing; ¹⁵instead of your saying, ‘If the Lord may will, we shall live, and do this or that;’ ¹⁶and now ye glory in your pride; all such glorying is evil; ¹⁷to him, then, knowing to do good, and not doing, sin it is to him.

Chapter 5