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Warning Against Worldliness
1 From where come wars and disputes among you? Is it not from here, from your lusts, which war in your members? 2 You lust and you do not have. You murder and are jealous and you cannot obtain. You fight and make war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend it in gratifying your lusts. 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 is constituted an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:
“God resists the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.”
Humility Cures Worldliness
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, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. 10 Be humbled before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
Do Not Judge a Brother
11 Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. He who speaks evil against a brother and judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. And if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you who judges the other?
Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Come now, you who say, “Today and tomorrow let us travel to this city, and let us spend a year there, and let us trade and make a profit”— 14 you who do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? For it will be a vapor that appears for a little time, but then also disappears. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.