Dual Panel1BUT what about the feuds and struggles that exist among youwhere do you suppose they come from? Can't you see that they arise from conflicting desires for pleasure within yourselves?
2You crave for something and don't get it; you are murderously jealous of what you can't possess yourselves; you struggle and fight with one another. You don't get what you want because you don't ask God for it.
3And when you do ask he doesn't give it to you, for you ask in quite the wrong spirityou only want to satisfy your own desires.
4You are like unfaithful wives, never realizing that to be the world's lover means becoming the enemy of God! Anyone who chooses to be the world's friend is thereby making himself God's enemy. Or do you think what the scriptures have to say about this is a mere formality?
5Do you imagine that this spirit of passionate jealousy is the Spirit he has caused to live in us?
6Yet he gives us grace which is stronger. That is why he says: God resisteth the proud, But giveth grace to the humble.
7Be humble then before God. But resist the devil and you'll find he'll run away from you.
8Come close to God and he will come close to you. You are sinners: get your hands clean again. Your loyalty is divided: get your hearts made true once more.
9You should be deeply sorry, you should be grieved, you should even be in tears. Your laughter will have to become mourning, your high spirits will have to become dejection.
10You must humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord before he will lift you up.
11Never pull each other to pieces, my brother, If you criticise your brother and judge your brother you have become in fact a critic and judge of the Law. Yet if you start to criticise the Law instead of obeying it you are setting yourself up as judge.
12There is only one judge, the One who gave the Law, to whom belongs absolute power of life and death. How can you then be your neighbor's judge?
13Just a moment, now, you who say, "We are going to suchandsuch a city today or tomorrow. We shall stay there a year doing business and make a profit"!
14How do you know what will happen tomorrow? What, after all, is your life? It is like a puff of smoke visible for a little while and then dissolving into thin air.
15Your remarks should be prefaced with, "If it is the Lord's will, we shall still be alive and will do soandso."
16As it is, you take a certain pride in planning with such confidence. That sort of pride is all wrong.
17Well then, if a man knows what is right and fails to do it, his failure is a real sin.