[1] What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? [2] You lust and do not have, so you murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. [3] You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. [4] You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God. [5] Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? [6] But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.” [7] Be subject therefore 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, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. [11] Do not slander one another, brothers. He who slanders a brother or judges his brother, slanders the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. [12] There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you who judge your neighbor? [13] Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” [14] Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. [15] Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” [16] But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. [17] Therefore, to one who knows to do the right thing and does not do it, to him it is sin.
