4:1 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? |
4:2 You lust and do not have; {so} you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; {so} you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. |
4:3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend {it} on your pleasures. |
4:4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. |
4:5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us?" |
4:6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore {it} says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE." |
4:7 Submit therefore 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 double-minded. |
4:9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. |
4:10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. |
4:11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against 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.} |
4:12 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? |
4:13 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." |
4:14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are {just} a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. |
4:15 Instead, {you ought} to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that." |
4:16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. |
4:17 Therefore, to one who knows {the} right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin. |