Warning Against Worldliness

1From where come wars and disputes among you? Is it not from here, from your lusts, which war in your members?

2You lust and you do not have. You murder and are jealous and you cannot obtain. You fight and make war. You do not have because you do not ask.

3You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend it in gratifying your lusts.

4Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world is constituted an enemy of God.

5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?

6But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:
“God resists the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.”

Humility Cures Worldliness

7Therefore submit to God. 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 your hearts, you double-minded.

9Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection.

10Be humbled before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Do Not Judge a Brother

11Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. He who speaks evil against a brother and judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. And 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 to destroy. But who are you who judges the other?

Boasting About Tomorrow

13Come now, you who say, “Today and tomorrow let us travel to this city, and let us spend a year there, and let us trade and make a profit”—

14you who do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? For it will be a vapor that appears for a little time, but then also disappears.

15Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”

16But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

17Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.