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Warning Against Worldliness

 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions^[a] are at war within you?^[b] 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ⁴ You adulterous people!^[c] 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 suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? ⁶ But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit yourselves therefore 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 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

¹¹ Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.^[d] The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹² There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Boasting About Tomorrow

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— ¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Footnotes:

1. James 4:1 Greek pleasures; also verse 3
2. James 4:1 Greek in your members
3. James 4:4 Greek You adulteresses!
4. James 4:11 Or brothers and sisters

Cross references:

1. James 4:1 : Rom. 7:23; 1 Pet. 2:11
2. James 4:3 : [1 John 5:14]
3. James 4:4 : Isa. 54:5; Jer. 2:2
4. James 4:4 : John 15:19; 1 John 2:15; [Matt. 6:24]
5. James 4:5 : 1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16
6. James 4:6 : Isa. 54:7, 8; See Matt. 13:12
7. James 4:6 : 1 Pet. 5:5; Cited from Prov. 3:34 (Gk.)
8. James 4:6 : Isa. 54:7, 8; See Matt. 13:12
9. James 4:7 : 1 Pet. 5:8, 9; [Eph. 4:27; 6:11]
10. James 4:8 : 2 Chr. 15:2; Lam. 3:57; Zech. 1:3; Mal. 3:7; [Luke 15:20]
11. James 4:8 : Isa. 1:16
12. James 4:8 : Jer. 4:14
13. James 4:8 : ch. 1:8
14. James 4:9 : [Matt. 5:4]
15. James 4:10 : ver. 6; Isa. 57:15; [Luke 1:52]; See Matt. 23:12
16. James 4:11 : 2 Cor. 12:20; 1 Pet. 2:1; [ch. 5:9]
17. James 4:11 : See Matt. 7:1
18. James 4:12 : Isa. 33:22
19. James 4:12 : ch. 5:9
20. James 4:12 : Matt. 10:28
21. James 4:12 : Rom. 14:4
22. James 4:13 : Prov. 27:1; Luke 12:18-20
23. James 4:14 : Ps. 102:3; [Job 7:7]
24. James 4:15 : See Acts 18:21
25. James 4:16 : [1 Cor. 5:6]
26. James 4:17 : [Luke 12:47, 48; 2 Pet. 2:21]; See John 9:41