[1] What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your
passions that are at war in your members? [2] You desire and do not have;
so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war.
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] Unfaithful
creatures! 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 in vain that the scripture says,
"He yearns jealously over the spirit which 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
men of double mind. [9] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter
be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. [10] Humble yourselves
before the Lord and he will exalt you. [11] Do not speak evil against one
another, brethren. He that speaks evil 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 one
lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you
that you judge your neighbor? [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 get gain"; [14] whereas you do not know about tomorrow. 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 shall live
and we shall do this or that." [16] As it is, you boast in your arrogance.
All such boasting is evil. [17] Whoever knows what is right to do and fails
to do it, for him it is sin.
