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James 4
James asks where the wars and quarrels among them come from and answers with a chain: craving leads to fighting, you don't have because you don't ask, and when you ask you ask wrongly, to spend on pleasures. Friendship with the world is named outright as hostility toward God. The remedy is a string of sharp commands: submit, resist the devil, draw near, cleanse, humble yourselves before the Lord.
- 1
Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
- 2
You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
- 3
You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
- 4
You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
- 5
Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
- 6
But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
- 7
Be subject therefore 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. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
- 9
Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
- 10
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
- 11
Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and 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.
- 12
Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?
- 13
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”
- 14
Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
- 15
For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”
- 16
But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
- 17
To him therefore who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.
The merchants who forget tomorrow
The chapter ends with travelers planning a year of trade and profit in some city, only to be reminded they don't know what tomorrow holds. Life is a vapor that appears briefly and vanishes.
The proper speech is conditional: if the Lord wills, we will live and do this. The closing line widens the indictment beyond evil done to good left undone: knowing the right thing and not doing it is itself sin.
Context layers
Keep these closed by default and open them only when you want more context.
- GraceWhat grace means in the Bible, how it differs from vague kindness, and which passages help define it clearly.
- LamentWhat lament means in the Bible, how it differs from unbelieving complaint, and where to read it without sanitizing grief.
- Fear of the LordWhat the fear of the Lord means in the Bible, how it relates to wisdom, reverence, obedience, and trust.
- Ephesians 2:8-10Key passage connected to Grace.
- Romans 3:23-24Key passage connected to Grace.
- Titus 2:11-14Key passage connected to Grace.
- Psalms 13:1-6Key passage connected to Lament.
- Lamentations 3:19-26Key passage connected to Lament.
- Matthew 27:45-46Key passage connected to Lament.
- Proverbs 1:7Key passage connected to Fear of the Lord.
- Psalms 111:10Key passage connected to Fear of the Lord.
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