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James 4
Jas
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Chapter 4
Disunity among Christians
1
Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Isn’t it precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?
2
You want something and you haven’t got it; so you are prepared to kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. Why you don’t have what you want is because you don’t pray for it;
3
when you do pray and don’t get it, it is because you have not prayed properly, you have prayed for something to indulge your own desires.
4
You are as unfaithful as adulterous wives; don’t you realise that making the world your friend is making God your enemy? Anyone who chooses the world for his friend turns himself into God’s enemy.
5
Surely you don’t think scripture is wrong when it says: the spirit which he sent to live in us wants us for himself alone?
6
But he has been even more generous to us, as scripture says: God opposes the proud but he gives generously to the humble.[*a]
7
Give in to God, then; resist the devil, and he will run away from you.
8
The nearer you go to God, the nearer he will come to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers.
9
Look at your wretched condition, and weep for it in misery; be miserable instead of laughing, gloomy instead of happy.
10
Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.
11
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who slanders a brother, or condemns him, is speaking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you condemn the Law, you have stopped keeping it and become a judge over it.
12
There is only one lawgiver and he is the only judge and has the power to acquit or to sentence. Who are you to give a verdict on your neighbour?
A warning for the rich and the self-confident
13
Here is the answer for those of you who talk like this: ‘Today or tomorrow, we are off to this or that town; we are going to spend a year there, trading, and make some money’.
14
You never know what will happen tomorrow: you are no more than a mist that is here for a little while and then disappears.
15
The most you should ever say is: ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we shall still be alive to do this or that’.
16
But how proud and sure of yourselves you are now! Pride of this kind is always wicked.
17
Everyone who knows what is the right thing to do and doesn’t do it commits a sin.
Chapters of James
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2
3
4
5
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