James 4

4 ¹Where do wars and fights among you come from? Isn't it your cravings warring inside you? ²You want and don't have—you kill. You crave and can't get it—you quarrel and fight. You don't have because you don't ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your own pleasures. ⁴You adulterous people! Don't you know friendship with the world is hostility toward our Father? Whoever chooses to be its friend becomes an enemy of our Father. ⁵Or does Scripture speak for nothing, saying the spirit he placed in us longs jealously? ⁶But he gives more grace. That is why Scripture says, "Our Father opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

⁷Submit yourselves, then, to our Father. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Come close to our Father, and he will come close to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners; purify your hearts, double-minded. ⁹Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before our Father, and he will lift you up.

¹¹Don't speak against each other, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks against a brother, or judges him, speaks against the law and judges it. But if you judge the law, you're not keeping it—you're judging it. ¹²Only one gives the law and judges—able to save or destroy. Who are you to judge your neighbor?

Do Not Boast About Tomorrow

¹³Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year, trade, and profit." ¹⁴You don't know what tomorrow brings. What is your life? For you're a mist, visible briefly, then gone. ¹⁵Instead you ought to say, "If our Father wills, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷So whoever knows the good to do and fails to do it, sin is theirs.