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Friendship with the World
1 Where do wars and fights among you come from? Do they not come from your passions that wage war among your members?
2 You desire but do not have. You murder and are jealous but cannot obtain what you want. You fight and war. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks in vain? The spirit that dwells in us desires to the point of envy,
6 but God gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God, but 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 Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter into mourning, and your joy into gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Speaking Evil Against One Another
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. He who speaks evil against a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. Now if yoʋ judge the law, yoʋ are not a doer of the law but a judge.
12 There is only one lawgiver, he who is able to save and destroy. But who are yoʋ to judge another?
Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Come now, you who say, “Today and tomorrow let us go to such and such a city, spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”
14 You do not know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, let us live and do this or that.”
16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.