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. What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at 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. You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask.

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

3. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

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. Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an 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. Or do you suppose it is in vain that the scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us"?

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 gives more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to 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 near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind.

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

9. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection.

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

10. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

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. Do not speak evil against one another, brethren. He that speaks evil against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil 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. 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 and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor?

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. Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade 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 you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

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. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that."

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

16. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

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

17. Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.