4:1 | Where do wars and fights [come] from among you? Do [they] not [come] from your [desires for] pleasure that war in your members? |
4:2 | You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. |
4:3 | You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend [it] on your pleasures. |
4:4 | Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. |
4:5 | Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"? |
4:6 | But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble." |
4:7 | Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. |
4:8 | Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse [your] hands, [you] sinners; and purify [your] hearts, [you] doubleminded. |
4:9 | Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and [your] joy to gloom. |
4:10 | Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. |
4:11 | Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. |
4:12 | There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? |
4:13 | Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; |
4:14 | whereas you do not know what [will happen] tomorrow. For what [is] your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. |
4:15 | Instead you [ought] to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." |
4:16 | But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. |
4:17 | Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do [it], to him it is sin. |