1Where do all the conflicts and fights among you come from? Don't they come from your desires that are constantly battling within you?
2You want things, but you don't have them. You are so eager for things that you are willing to murder and covet, but you still can't get what you want. You fight and wage war. You don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it.
3And when you do ask, you don't receive it, because your motives are wrong; you only want to spend what you get on your own pleasures.
4You unfaithful people! Don't you know that being a friend of the world means being an enemy of God? So, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world makes themselves an enemy of God.
5Or do you think the Scripture means nothing when it says, "The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously"?
6But God gives us even more grace. That is why it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
7So submit yourselves to God. Resist 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, and purify your hearts, you who are indecisive.
9Be miserable, mourn, and cry. Let your laughter turn into mourning and your joy into sadness.
10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11Brothers and sisters, don't speak against one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister and judges them, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not obeying the law, but acting as its judge.
12There is only one Lawgiver, who can save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
13Listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this city, stay there for a year, do business, and make a profit."
14Yet you don't know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are like a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
16But now you brag in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
17So, for anyone who knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin.