James 4
BSB

James

A Warning against Pride

1What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the passions at war within you?+ 2You crave what you do not have; you kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask.+ 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.+ 4You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.+ 5Or do you think the Scripture says without reason that the Spirit He caused to dwell in us yearns with envy?+ 6But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”+

Drawing Near to God

7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.+ 8Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.+ 9Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom.+ 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.+ 11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. And if you judge the law, you are not a practitioner of the law, but a judge of it.+ 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?+

Do Not Boast about Tomorrow

Proverbs 27:1

13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.”+ 14You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.+ 15Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.”+ 16As it is, you boast in your proud intentions. All such boasting is evil.+ 17Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin.+
Footnotes (5)
  1. a 4:1 Literally passions warring among your members?
  2. b 4:4 See Hosea 3:1
  3. c 4:4 Or is appointed
  4. d 4:5 Or the spirit
  5. e 4:6 Proverbs 3:34 (see also LXX)

Berean Standard Bible

Study James 4

People

Dictionary, topics, timeline and more in the Library →