James 4

1What causes fights and arguments among you? Do they not come from the desires that battle inside you?

2You want something but do not get it, so you are ready to kill. You are jealous, but you cannot get what you want, so you argue and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.

3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you can spend it on your own pleasures.

4You unfaithful people! Do you not know that loving the world means hating God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world makes themselves an enemy of God.

5Or do you think the Scripture means nothing when it says that the spirit God put in us wants us all for himself?

6But God gives us more grace. That is why the Scripture says: God is against the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

7So give yourselves to God. Stand against the devil, and he will run away from you.

8Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you who cannot decide.

9Be sorry, be sad, and cry. Turn your laughter into sadness and your joy into gloom.

10Make yourselves low before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

11Brothers and sisters, do not say evil things about each other. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister, or judges them, speaks against the law and judges the law. And if you judge the law, you are not keeping the law but acting as its judge.

12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. So who are you to judge your neighbor?

13Now listen, you who say: Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, do business, and make money.

14You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are like a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears.

15Instead, you should say: If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.

16But as it is, you brag and boast. All such bragging is evil.

17So anyone who knows the good they ought to do, but does not do it, is sinning.