Letter of James 4

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?

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.