1Where
do battles and fights among you
come from?
Is it not from this: from your pleasures that war in your members?
2You have desires, but you don't obtain
them. You kill and covet, but you cannot attain
them. You fight and wage war,
but you do not obtain
them, because you do not ask.
3You ask, but you do not receive, because you ask wrongly – that you may spend
it on your pleasures.
4You adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility to God? So whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself up
as an enemy of God.
5Or do you think that the scripture speaks vacuously? The spirit which dwells in us yearns
with proneness to envy.
6But he gives a greater grace. That
is why he says,
“God opposes the arrogant
But gives grace to the lowly.”
7So be subject to God and oppose the devil, and he will flee from you.
8Approach God, and he will approach you. Cleanse
your hands,
you sinners, and purify
your hearts,
you who are in two minds.
9Suffer hardship and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be changed into mourning, and
your joy to gloom.
10Be humbled before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11Do not speak ill of each other, brothers. He
who speaks ill of a brother and judges his brother speaks ill of
the law and judges
the law. If you judge
the law, you are not a doer of
the law, but a judge.
12There is one lawgiver, who
is able to save and destroy. But who are you who judge another?
13Come now, you
who say, “Today and tomorrow let us go to this city, and spend one year there and trade and make a profit”,
14you who do not understand what “tomorrow”
means. What kind of a life
do you have, then? For it will be a vapour which makes an appearance for a short
time, but then in turn it vanishes.
15You
say that instead of saying, “If the Lord wills, let us live and also do this or that.”
16But at present you boast in your pretensions. Every such boast is wrong.
17So to
him who knows
how to do good but
does not do
it, to him it is a sin.
Reference(s) in Chapter 4: v.5 ↔ Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, Jeremiah 17:9, John 2:25 ● v.6 ↔ Proverbs 3:34.