James 4

1Where do the wars and the fights among you come from? Do they not come from here, from your pleasures that are at war inside you? 2You crave, and you do not have. You murder and you envy, and you cannot get what you want. You fight and you wage war. You lack, because you do not ask. 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because your asking is wrong: you want to spend what you get on your pleasures. 4Adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be a friend of the world is taking a stand as an enemy of God. 5Or do you suppose that Scripture speaks for nothing when it says, “He longs with jealous love for the spirit he caused to live in us”? 6But the grace he gives is greater. That is why it says, “God sets himself against the proud, but to the humble he gives grace.” 7So place yourselves under God. Stand against the devil, and he will run from you. 8Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you. Wash your hands clean, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you who are divided in mind. 9Feel your misery, and mourn and weep. Let your laughter turn to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Make yourselves low before the Lord, and he will raise you high.

11Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks against a brother or sister or passes judgment on a brother or sister speaks against the law and judges the law. And if you judge the law, you are not doing the law; you are judging it. 12There is one Lawgiver and Judge alone, the one who has power to save and to destroy. But you, who are you to sit in judgment on your neighbor? 13Listen now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to a certain city, stay there a year, run a business, and make a profit.” 14Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of vapor, seen for a short time and then gone. 15What you ought to say instead is this: “If the Lord wills, we will live, and we will do this or that.” 16But as things are, you boast in your arrogant claims. Every boast of this kind is evil. 17So when someone knows what is good to do and does not do it, that person sins.