1 WHENCE come wars and whence come strifes among you? Is it not from your pleasures which carry on war in your members?

2 You long for something and do not have it. You murder and envy and cannot obtain it. You battle and war. You do not have, because of your not asking.

3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wickedly to waste it on your pleasures.

4 You adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity to God? Whoever chooses to be a friend to the world stands as an enemy of God.

5 Do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose? Does the Spirit which he made dwell in us long enviously?

6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.

8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Make your hands clean, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

9 Be sorrowful and mourn and lament. Let your laughter be turned into grief and your gladness into gloom.

10 Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against his brother speaks 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 One is the Lawgiver and Judge \'97 he who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you, to judge your neighbor?

13 Come, now, you who say, "To-day or to-morrow we will go to such a city and spend a year and do business and make money,"

14 though you do not know what your life will be like on the morrow. For you are a vapor that appears for a little while and then disappears.

15 You should rather say, "If the Lord wills it, we shall live and do this or that."

16 But now you glory in bragging. All such glorying is evil.

17 If any one, then, knows how to do good and is not doing it, he is committing sin.