1 What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members?

2 You desire and do not have; so you kill. And 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 with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

5 Or do you think that the Scripture says without reason: »He jealously desires the Spirit which he has made to dwell in us«?

6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, »God opposes the proud,but gives grace to the humble.«

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

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

9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

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

11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who 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 a doer of the law but a judge of it.

12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

13 Come now, you who say, »Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.«

14 Yet you do not know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

15 Instead, you ought to say, »If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.«

16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.