James 4
A Warning against Pride
1From where are battles and from where are fights among you? Is it not from there, out of your pleasures warring in your members?2You desire, and you do not have. You murder and are jealous, and you are not able to obtain. You fight and battle. You do not have, because you do not ask.3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, that you may spend it in your pleasures.
4Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever should wish to be a friend of the world is appointed an enemy of God.5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit that He made to dwell in us yearns with envy”?6But He gives greater grace. Therefore it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Drawing Near to God
7Therefore subject yourselves to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you.8Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify hearts, you double-souled.9Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and the joy to gloom.10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
11Do not speak against one another, brothers. The one speaking against a brother or judging his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.12One is the Lawgiver and Judge, the One being able to save and to destroy. But who are you, the one judging the neighbor?
Do Not Boast about Tomorrow
13Come now, those saying, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this city, and will spend a year there and will trade and make gain,”14who do not know what is of tomorrow. What is your life? For it is a vapor appearing for a little while and then vanishing.
15Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, both we will live and we will do this or that.”16But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.17Therefore to the one knowing to do good, and not doing it, to him it is sin.