James 4

4 ¹ What causes the quarrels and the fights among you? Is it not this — that your passions are at war inside you? ² You desire and do not have, so you kill. You covet and cannot obtain, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your own pleasures. ⁴ You adulterous people! Don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward our Father? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of our Father. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture means nothing when it says that the spirit he placed within us yearns jealously? ⁶ But he gives more grace. That is why Scripture says, "Our Father opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

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

¹¹ Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not obeying the law — you are judging it. ¹² There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Do Not Boast About Tomorrow

¹³ Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that town, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit" ¹⁴ —you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, "If our Father wills, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ So whoever knows the right thing to do and does not do it—for that person it is sin.