James 4

A Warning against Pride

1What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the passions at war within you?1 2You crave what you do not have; you kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.

4You adulterers and adulteresses!2 Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself3 an enemy of God. 5Or do you think the Scripture says without reason that the Spirit4 who dwells5 in us yearns with envy? 6But He gives us more grace. This is why it says:

“God opposes the proud,

but gives grace to the humble.”6

Drawing Near to God

7Submit yourselves, then, 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. 9Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother and7 judges him speaks against the law and judges it. And if you judge the law, you are not a practitioner of the law, but a judge of it. 12There is only one Lawgiver,8 the One who is able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge the other?9

Do Not Boast about Tomorrow

(Proverbs 27:1)

13Come now, you who say, “Today and10 tomorrow let us go11 to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.” 14You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

15Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, let us live12 and do this or that.” 16As it is, you boast in your proud intentions. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin.