• 1. ¶ FROM whence come conflicts and quarrels among you? Is it not from the lusts that war in your members?
  • 2. You covet and do not obtain; you kill and envy, but you cannot possess; you strive and fight, yet you have nothing, because you do not ask.
  • 3. You ask and you do not receive because you do not ask sincerely, you ask that you may satisfy your lusts.
  • 4. O you adulterers! Do you not know that the love for worldly things is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, esteems worldly things is the enemy of God.
  • 5. Or do you think that the scripture said in vain, The pride that dwells in us is provoked by jealousy?
  • 6. But our Lord has given us abundant grace. Therefore he said, God humbles the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
  • 7. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist Satan, and he will flee from you.
  • 8. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, O you sinners! And purify your hearts, O you of doubtful mind!
  • 9. Humble yourselves and mourn; let your laughter be turned to weeping and your joy to sorrow.
  • 10. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.
  • 11. ¶ Do not speak against one another, my brethren, for he who speaks against his brother and 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. For there is one lawgiver and judge, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge your neighbor?
  • 13. What then shall we say of those who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to a certain city and will work there a year and will trade and prosper?
  • 14. They do not know what will happen tomorrow! For what is our life? It is but a vapour, which appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
  • 15. Instead of that they should say, If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that.
  • 16. But now they are proud in their boasting; all such pride is evil.
  • 17. Therefore he who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.