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Proud or Humble

¹ What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions^(C1) that wage war within you?^{(F1) 2} You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war.^(F1) You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.^(C1)

⁴ You adulterous people!^(F1) Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.^{(C1) 5} Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely?^(F1)(C1)

⁶ But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:

⁷ Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.^{(C1) 8} Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.^{(C1) 9} Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.^{(C1) 10} Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

¹¹ Don’t criticize one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer^(F1) defames and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.^{(C1) 12} There is one lawgiver and judge^(F1) who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?^(C1)

Our Will and God’s Will

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”^{(C1) 14} Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.^(C1)

¹⁵ Instead, you should 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.^{(C1) 17} So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.^(C1)