James 4-5

James 4

¹Whence come wars and whence fightings among you? Is it not thence, -- from your pleasures, which war in your members?

²Ye 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.

³Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask evilly, that ye may consume it in your pleasures.

⁴Adulteresses, 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.

⁵Think ye that the scripture speaks in vain? Does the Spirit which has taken his abode in us desire enviously?

⁶But he gives more grace. Wherefore he says, God sets himself against the proud, but gives grace to the lowly.

⁷Subject yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.

⁹Be wretched, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he shall exalt you.

¹¹Speak 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.

¹²One is the lawgiver and judge, who is able to save and to destroy: but who art *thou* who judgest thy neighbour?

¹³Go 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,

¹⁴ye 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,)

¹⁵instead of your saying, If the Lord should so will and we should live, we will also do this or that.

¹⁶But now ye glory in your vauntings: all such glorying is evil.

¹⁷To him therefore who knows how to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.

James 5

¹Go to now, ye rich, weep, howling over your miseries that are coming upon you.

²Your wealth is become rotten, and your garments moth-eaten.

³Your gold and silver is eaten away, and their canker shall be for a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have heaped up treasure in the last days.

⁴Behold, the wages of your labourers, who have harvested your fields, wrongfully kept back by you, cry, and the cries of those that have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

⁵Ye have lived luxuriously on the earth and indulged yourselves; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter;

⁶ye have condemned, ye have killed the just; he does not resist you.

⁷Have patience, therefore, brethren, till the coming of the Lord. Behold, the labourer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, having patience for it until it receive the early and the latter rain.

⁸*Ye* also have patience: stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is drawn nigh.

⁹Complain not one against another, brethren, that ye be not judged. Behold, the judge stands before the door.

¹⁰Take as an example, brethren, of suffering and having patience, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord.

¹¹Behold, we call them blessed who have endured. Ye have heard of the endurance of Job, and seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is full of tender compassion and pitiful.

¹²But before all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath; but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay, that ye do not fall under judgment.

¹³Does any one among you suffer evil? let him pray. Is any happy? let him sing psalms.

¹⁴Is any sick among you? let him call to him the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;

¹⁵and the prayer of faith shall heal the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he be one who has committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.

¹⁶Confess therefore your offences to one another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed. The fervent supplication of the righteous man has much power.

¹⁷Elias was a man of like passions to us, and he prayed with prayer that it should not rain; and it did not rain upon the earth three years and six months;

¹⁸and again he prayed, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth caused its fruit to spring forth.

¹⁹My brethren, if any one among you err from the truth, and one bring him back,

²⁰let him know that he that brings back a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall cover a multitude of sins.