James 4
Warning Against Worldliness
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are aat war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask awrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 aYou adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? bTherefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit athat he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But ahe gives more grace. Therefore it says, b“God opposes the proud but agives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. aResist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 aDraw near to God, and he will draw near to you. bCleanse your hands, you sinners, and cpurify your hearts, dyou double-minded. 9 aBe wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 aHumble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11 aDo not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or bjudges 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 only aone lawgiver and bjudge, he who is able to save and cto destroy. But dwho are you to judge your neighbor?
Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Come now, you who say, a“Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For ayou are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, a“If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. aAll such boasting is evil. 17 aSo whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway,
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025.