James, 4

1. Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Is it not precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?

1. From whence [come] wars and fightings among you? [come they] not hence, [even] of your lusts that war in your members?

2. You want something and you lack it; so you kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. It is because you do not pray that you do not receive;

2. Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

3. when you do pray and do not receive, it is because you prayed wrongly, wanting to indulge your passions.

3. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume [it] upon your lusts.

4. Adulterers! Do you not realise that love for the world is hatred for God? Anyone who chooses the world for a friend is constituted an enemy of God.

4. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

5. Can you not see the point of the saying in scripture, 'The longing of the spirit he sent to dwell in us is a jealous longing.'?

5. Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

6. But he has given us an even greater grace, as scripture says: God opposes the proud but he accords his favour to the humble.

6. But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

7. Give in to God, then; resist the devil, and he will run away from you.

7. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8. The nearer you go to God, the nearer God will come to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers.

8. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse [your] hands, [ye] sinners; and purify [your] hearts, [ye] double minded.

9. Appreciate your wretchedness, and weep for it in misery. Your laughter must be turned to grief, your happiness to gloom.

9. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and [your] joy to heaviness.

10. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

10. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

11. Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who slanders a brother, or condemns one, is speaking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you condemn the Law, you have ceased to be subject to it and become a judge over it.

11. Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of [his] brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.

12. There is only one lawgiver and he is the only judge and has the power to save or to destroy. Who are you to give a verdict on your neighbour?

12. There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

13. Well now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we are off to this or that town; we are going to spend a year there, trading, and make some money.'

13. Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:

14. You never know what will happen tomorrow: you are no more than a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears.

14. Whereas ye know not what [shall be] on the morrow. For what [is] your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

15. Instead of this, you should say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we shall still be alive to do this or that.'

15. For that ye [ought] to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

16. But as it is, how boastful and loud -- mouthed you are! Boasting of this kind is always wrong.

16. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.

17. Everyone who knows what is the right thing to do and does not do it commits a sin.

17. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth [it] not, to him it is sin.