Submit Yourselves to God

4 What causes fights and quarrels^(A) among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle^(B) within you?

Living Godly Lives in a Pagan Society

¹¹ Dear friends,^(A) I urge you, as foreigners and exiles,^(B) to abstain from sinful desires,^(C) which wage war against your soul.^(D)

²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war^(A) against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin^(B) at work within me.

¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.^(A) They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever^[a] you want.^(B)

³ When you ask, you do not receive,^(A) because you ask with wrong motives,^(B) that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

¹⁴ but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own^(A) evil desire and enticed.

¹⁸ For they mouth empty, boastful words^(A) and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping^(B) from those who live in error.

² As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires,^(A) but rather for the will of God. ³ For you have spent enough time in the past^(B) doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.^(C)

⁹ But avoid^(A) foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels^(B) about the law,^(C) because these are unprofitable and useless.^(D)