James 4

4:1 You know where all the fights and quarrels among you come from. They come from your desires for pleasure, which are always fighting in you. 4:2 You want something, but you cannot have it. So you are ready to kill. You desire it so much that you quarrel and fight for it. But you cannot obtain it. You do not have what you want because you do not ask God for it. 4:3 When you do ask, you do not receive anything. This is because you ask for the wrong reason. 4:4 You are like a wife who has sex with other men. You ought to know that to be the world’s friend is to be God’s enemy. All who want to be friends of the world make themselves enemies of God. 4:5 The Scripture with good reason says, ‘God has caused his Spirit to live in us. He wants very much to keep us for himself.’ 4:6 God gives us more loving help. That is why the Scripture says, ‘God opposes the proud, but he gives his loving help to the humble.’ 4:7 So then, give yourself to God alone. Fight against the devil and he will run away from you. 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash away your sins. Make your hearts and minds clean, you who want to go both ways. You cannot love sin and God at the same time. 4:9 Be sorry and weep because of your sins. Do not laugh but be sad. Do not be happy but be serious and sad. 4:10 Be humble in front of the Lord God. Then he will make you great.

4:11 My Christian brothers and sisters, do not say bad things about one another. If you speak against another person you are judging him or her. When you do this, you speak against the law. And you judge it as well. If you judge the law you do not obey it. You have made yourself its judge. 4:12 It is God who gave the law. And it is God who says what we should do. Therefore, only God can be the judge. He alone is able to save us or to destroy us. Who do you think you are, to judge someone else?

4:13 Now then, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this city or to that one. We will stay a year there. We will buy and sell and get rich.’ Listen to me. 4:14 You do not know what will happen tomorrow. Your life is like a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears. 4:15 What you ought to say is, ‘If it is what God wants, we will live here or there. If he wants it, we will do this or that’. 4:16 As it is, you are proud. And you talk about what you will do. You speak as if you are able to make it happen. It is wrong to speak like this. Only God knows and can make things happen. 4:17 So, we all know the good things that we ought to do. If we do not do them, we are sinning.