4:1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don't they come from the cravings that are at war within you?
4:2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask.
4:3 You ask and don't receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your evil desires.
4:4 Adulteresses! Don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world's friend becomes God's enemy.
4:5 Or do you think it's without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously?
4:6 But He gives greater grace. Therefore He says: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
4:7 Therefore, submit to God. But 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, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people!
4:9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow.
4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
4:11 Don't criticize one another, brothers. He who criticizes a brother or judges his brother criticizes the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
4:12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
4:13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit."
4:14 You don't even know what tomorrow will bring--what your life will be! For you are like smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes.
4:15 Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
4:16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
4:17 So it is a sin for the person who knows to do what is good and doesn't do it.
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