[1] What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don't they come from your passions that wage war within you? [2] You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. [3] You ask and don't receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. [4] You adulterous people! Don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. [5] Or do you think it's without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely? [6] But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. [7] Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [8] Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. [11] Don't criticize one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer defames and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. [12] There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? [13] Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit." [14] Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring-what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. [15] Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." [16] But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. [17] So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.
