- 1
- Whence [come] wars and whence fightings among you?
[Is it] not thence, — from your pleasures, which war in your members?
- 2
- Ye lust and have not: ye kill and are full of envy, and cannot obtain;
ye fight and war; ye have not because ye ask not.
- 3
- Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask evilly, that ye may consume [it] in your pleasures.
- 4
- Adulteresses, know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Whoever therefore is minded to be [the] friend of the world is constituted enemy of God.
- 5
- Think ye that the scripture speaks in vain?
Does the Spirit which has taken his abode in us desire enviously?
- 6
- But he gives more grace.
Wherefore he says, God sets himself against [the] proud, but gives grace to [the] lowly.
- 7
- Subject 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, sinners, and purify [your] hearts, ye double-minded.
- 9
- Be wretched, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and [your] joy to heaviness.
- 10
- Humble yourselves before [the] Lord, and he shall exalt you.
- 11
- Speak not against one another, brethren.
He that speaks against [his] brother, or judges his brother, speaks against [the] law and judges [the] law. But if thou judgest [the] law, thou art not doer of [the] law, but judge.
- 12
- One is the lawgiver and judge, who is able to save and to destroy: but who art *thou* who judgest thy neighbour?
- 13
- Go to now, ye who say, To-day or to-morrow will we go into such a city and spend a year there, and traffic and make gain,
- 14
- ye who do not know what will be on the morrow, ([for] what [is] your life?
It is even a vapour, appearing for a little while, and then disappearing,)
- 15
- instead of your saying, If the Lord should [so] will and we should live, we will also do this or that.
- 16
- But now ye glory in your vauntings: all such glorying is evil.
- 17
- To him therefore who knows how to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.
|