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James 4 :: New Living Translation (NLT)

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Drawing Close to God
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:1 - What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:2 - 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.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:3 - And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:4 - You adulterers![fn] 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.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:5 - What do you think the Scriptures mean when they say that the spirit God has placed within us is filled with envy?[fn]
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:6 - But he gives us even more grace to stand against such evil desires. As the Scriptures say,
“God opposes the proud
but favors the humble.”[fn]
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:7 - So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:8 - 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.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:9 - 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.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:10 - Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.
Warning against Judging Others
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:11 - Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters.[fn] 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.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:12 - 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?
Warning about Self-Confidence
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:13 - 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.”
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:14 - 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.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:15 - What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:16 - Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.
Unchecked Copy BoxJas 4:17 - Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.
NLT Footnotes
Greek You adulteresses!
Or that God longs jealously for the human spirit he has placed within us? or that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, opposes our envy?
Prov 3:34 (Greek version).
Greek brothers.
NLT

Holy Bible, New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Full copyright information is provided here. Visit the New Living Translation website.

For more information on this translation, see the NLT Preface.

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