Warning against Pride

¹ Where do wars and quarrels among you come from? Do they not come from your passions warring within you? ² You lust and do not have, so you murder and covet and cannot obtain it. You fight and wage war. 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 adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain that the Spirit who lives within us yearns jealously? ⁶ But he gives more grace. Therefore it says,

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ^a

Drawing Near to God

⁷ Be subject 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. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.

¹¹ Do not speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a 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. ¹² Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?

Do Not Boast about Tomorrow

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.” ¹⁴ You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. ¹⁵ For you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will both live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ To him therefore who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

^{a Proverbs 3:34}

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