James 4

¹What is the cause of wars and fighting among you? is it not in your desires which are at war in your bodies?

²You are burning with desire, and have not your desire, so you put men to death; you are full of envy, and you are not able to get your desire, so you are fighting and making war; you have not your desire, because you do not make request for it.

³You make your request but you do not get it, because your request has been wrongly made, desiring the thing only so that you may make use of it for your pleasure.

⁴O you who are false to God, do you not see that the friends of this world are not God's friends? Every man desiring to be a friend of this world makes himself a hater of God.

⁵Or does it seem to you that it is for nothing that the holy Writings say, The spirit which God put into our hearts has a strong desire for us?

⁶But he gives more grace. So that the Writings say, God is against the men of pride, but he gives grace to those who make themselves low before him.

⁷For this cause be ruled by God; but make war on the Evil One and he will be put to flight before you.

⁸Come near to God and he will come near to you. Make your hands clean, you evil-doers; put away deceit from your hearts, you false in mind.

⁹Be troubled, with sorrow and weeping; let your laughing be turned to sorrow and your joy to grief.

¹⁰Make yourselves low in the eyes of the Lord and you will be lifted up by him.

¹¹Do not say evil against one another, my brothers. He who says evil against his brother or makes himself his brother's judge, says evil against the law and is judging the law: and in judging the law you become, not a doer of the law but a judge.