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James 4 :: New International Version (NIV)

Submit Yourselves to God

Jas 4:1

Jas 4:1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?

Jas 4:2

Jas 4:2You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

Jas 4:3

Jas 4:3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Jas 4:4

Jas 4:4You adulterous people,[fn] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Jas 4:5

Jas 4:5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[fn]?

Jas 4:6

Jas 4:6But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”[fn]

Jas 4:7

Jas 4:7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Jas 4:8

Jas 4:8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Jas 4:9

Jas 4:9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Jas 4:10

Jas 4:10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Jas 4:11

Jas 4:11Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister[fn] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.

Jas 4:12

Jas 4:12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

Boasting About Tomorrow

Jas 4:13

Jas 4:13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”

Jas 4:14

Jas 4:14Why, you 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.

Jas 4:15

Jas 4:15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Jas 4:16

Jas 4:16As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.

Jas 4:17

Jas 4:17If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
See the NIV Preface (Especially for Parenthesis, Brackets, & Asterisks).
NIV Footnotes
An allusion to covenant unfaithfulness; see Hosea 3:1.
Or that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely; or that the Spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously
The Greek word for brother or sister (adelphos) refers here to a believer, whether man or woman, as part of God’s family.
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James Chapter 4 — Additional Translations:

King James Version New King James Version New Living Translation English Standard Version Christian Standard Bible New American Standard Bible 2020 New American Standard Bible 1995 Legacy Standard Bible Amplified Bible New English Translation Revised Standard Version American Standard Version Young's Literal Translation Darby Translation Webster's Bible Hebrew Names Version Latin Vulgate Morphological Greek New Testament Textus Receptus Smith Van Dyck Arabic Bible Open New Arabic Version Reina Valera 1909 Reina-Valera 1960 Bible in Basic English Chinese Traditional Union Espanol Moderno Korean Holy Bible Louis Segond German Luther Russian Synodal Translation Sagradas Escrituras