James 4

1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that are at war within you?

2You want something but do not get it. You murder and covet, but you cannot obtain what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask.

3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

5Or do you think Scripture says for no reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has made to dwell in us?

6But he gives more grace. That is why it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

7So submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

9Grieve, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

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

11Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever 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 a doer of the law but a judge of it.

12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. But 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 a profit.”

14You do not even know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

15Instead, you ought to 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.

17So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for that person it is sin.