章 |
4:1 |
What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?
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4:2 |
You lust and do not have; [so] you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; [so] you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.
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4:3 |
You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend [it] on your pleasures.
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4:4 |
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
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4:5 |
Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us"?
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4:6 |
But He gives a greater grace. Therefore [it] says, "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
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4:7 |
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
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4:8 |
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
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4:9 |
Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom.
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4:10 |
Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
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4:11 |
Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother, or judges his brother, speaks against the law, and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge [of it].
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4:12 |
There is [only] one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?
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4:13 |
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit."
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4:14 |
Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are [just] a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
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4:15 |
Instead, [you ought] to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that."
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4:16 |
But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
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4:17 |
Therefore, to one who knows [the] right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin.
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