Jam 4 | 20C | STEP | What is the cause of the fighting and quarrelling that goes on among you? Is not it to be found in the desires which are always at war within you?

‏ James 4

1 What is the cause of the fighting and quarrelling that goes on among you? Is not it to be found in the desires which are always at war within you? 2 You crave, yet do not obtain. You murder and rage, yet cannot gain your end. You quarrel and fight. You do not obtain, because you do not ask. 3 You ask, yet do not receive, because you ask for a wrong purpose — to spend what you get upon your pleasures. 4 Unfaithful people! Do not 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. 5 Do you suppose there is no meaning in the passage of Scripture which asks — ‘Is envy to result from the longings of the Spirit which God has implanted within you?’ 6 No; the gift that God gives is for a nobler end; and that is why it is said — ‘God is opposed to the haughty, but gives help to the humble.’ 7 Therefore submit to God; but resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Make your hands clean, you sinners; and your hearts pure, you vacillating men! 9 Grieve, mourn, and lament! Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your happiness to gloom! 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 Do not disparage one another, Brothers. He who disparages his Brother, or passes judgment on his Brother, disparages the Law and passes judgment on the Law. But, if you pass judgment on the Law, you are not obeying it, but judging it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge — he who has the power both to save and to destroy. But who are you that pass judgment on your neighbour?

13 Listen to me, you who say ‘To-day or to-morrow we will go to such and such a town, spend a year there, and trade, and make money,’ 14 And yet you do not know what your life will be like to-morrow! For you are but a mist appearing for a little while and then disappearing. 15 You ought, rather, to say ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’ 16 But, as it is, you are constantly boasting presumptuously! All such boasting is wicked. 17 He, then, who knows what is right but fails to do it — that is sin in him.