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do these conflicts and disputes among you come from? Are they not caused by the cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something but you cannot get it. You kill and covet and cannot obtain, and you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your desire for pleasure.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world brings hostility toward God? Whoever chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says without reason that the Spirit He has caused to live within us yearns jealously? 6 But He gives us greater grace; that is why He says:
“God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.”
7 So submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded people! 9 Grieve and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to sorrow. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.
11 Brothers, do not speak evil of one another. Whoever speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge of the law, you are not a doer of a judge. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbour?
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, carry on business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are only a mist that appears for a short time and then vanishes.
15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows what the right thing to do is and doesn’t do it, comments sin.