1What is the cause of the fighting and quarrelling that goes on amongst you? Isn't it to be found in the desires which are always at war within you?
2You crave, yet do not have, so you commit murder, so You covet, yet cannot gain your end. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3You ask, yet do not receive, because you ask for a wrong purpose — to spend what you get on your pleasures.
4Unfaithful people! Don't you know that to be friends with the world means to be at enmity with God? Therefore whoever chooses to be friends with the world makes himself an enemy to God.
5Do you suppose scripture means nothing when it says, ‘Envy results from the longings of the spirit which God has implanted within you?’
6But he gives us greater grace; and that is why it says, — ‘God opposes the haughty, but gives grace to the humble.’
7Therefore submit to God. Stand up to the devil, and he will flee from you.
8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Make your hands clean, you sinners; and your hearts pure, you vacillators!
9Grieve, mourn, and lament! Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your happiness to gloom!
10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11Do not disparage one another, friends. The person who disparages others, or passes judgement on them, disparages the Law and passes judgement on the Law. But, if you pass judgement on the Law, you are not obeying it, but judging it.
12There is only one lawgiver and judge — he who has the power both to save and to destroy. So then who who are you to pass judgement on your neighbour?
13Listen to me, you who say ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money,’
14yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow! For you are but a a puff of smoke 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 as it is, you are boasting presumptuously! All such boasting is wicked.
17The person, then, who knows what is right but fails to do it — that is sin in them.