New Living Translation

Darby Bible Translation

Drawing Close to God

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?

1

Warning against Pride

Whence [come] wars and whence fightings among you? [Is it] not thence, -- from your pleasures, which war in your members?

2

You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.

2

Ye lust and have not: ye kill and are full of envy, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war; ye have not because ye ask not.

3

And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong — you want only what will give you pleasure.

3

Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask evilly, that ye may consume [it] in your pleasures.

4

You adulterers!a Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

4

Adulteresses, know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore is minded to be [the] friend of the world is constituted enemy of God.

5

Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.b

5

Think ye that the scripture speaks in vain? Does the Spirit which has taken his abode in us desire enviously?

6

And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say,
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”c

6

But he gives more grace. Wherefore he says, God sets himself against [the] proud, but gives grace to [the] lowly.

7

So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

7

Drawing Near to God

Subject yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8

Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.

8

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse [your] hands, sinners, and purify [your] hearts, ye double-minded.

9

Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy.

9

Be wretched, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and [your] joy to heaviness.

10

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

10

Humble yourselves before [the] Lord, and he shall exalt you.

11

Warning against Judging Others

Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters.d If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you.

11

Speak not against one another, brethren. He that speaks against [his] brother, or judges his brother, speaks against [the] law and judges [the] law. But if thou judgest [the] law, thou art not doer of [the] law, but judge.

12

God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

12

One is the lawgiver and judge, who is able to save and to destroy: but who art *thou* who judgest thy neighbour?

13

Warning about Self-Confidence

Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.”

13

Do Not Boast about Tomorrow

Go to now, ye who say, To-day or to-morrow will we go into such a city and spend a year there, and traffic and make gain,

14

How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog — it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.

14

ye who do not know what will be on the morrow, ([for] what [is] your life? It is even a vapour, appearing for a little while, and then disappearing,)

15

What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”

15

instead of your saying, If the Lord should [so] will and we should live, we will also do this or that.

16

Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil.

16

But now ye glory in your vauntings: all such glorying is evil.

17

Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.

17

To him therefore who knows how to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.

Parallel

New Living Translation

Darby Bible Translation

James 4

James 4