James 4:1-5

English Standard Version

Warning Against Worldliness

4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions^[a] are ^(A)at war within you?^{[b] 2} You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask ^(B)wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ^4 (C)You adulterous people!^[c] Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? ^(D)Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit ^(E)that he has made to dwell in us”?