1Where do the wars and the fights among you come from? Do they not come from your desires, which fight inside you?
2You want, and do not have. You kill, and long to have, and cannot get. You fight and make war, yet you do not have, because you do not ask.
3You ask, and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your own pleasures.
4You adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hatred against God? So whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself the enemy of God.
5Do you think the scripture speaks with no reason when it says, "The spirit that lives in us longs with envy"?
6But he gives more grace. So it says, "God stands against the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
7So give yourselves over to God. Stand against the devil, and he will run away from you.
8Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Make your hearts pure, you who are divided in mind.
9Be sorrowful, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom.
10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11Do not speak evil of one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil of his brother, and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not someone who obeys the law, but a judge of it.
12There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?
13Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that city, and stay there a year, and buy and sell, and make money."
14Yet you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is only a mist, that appears for a little while, and then disappears.
15Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live, and do this or that."
16But as it is, you take pride in your boasting. All such pride is evil.
17So then, anyone who knows the good he ought to do, and does not do it, for him it is sin.