- 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.
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