OET-RV YAC Chapter 4

4 Where do you imagine that the fights and quarrels among you all originate? Isn’t it because of the ambitions that surface inside you? 2 You all have wants that are not fulfilled so it leads to murder. You’re jealous and not able to get everything you want, so you quarrel and fight. You don’t have, because you haven’t asked God, 3 and when you all do ask, it doesn’t get answered because you ask with wrong motives—trying get what you want to spend on your own wants. 4 You’re just like prostitutes. Don’t you realise that if you befriend the world then you’re opposing God, so anyone who befriends the world makes themself an enemy of God. 5 Do you think that the scripture means nothing when it says, ‘God’s spirit jealously longs to live in us’? 6 However, he’s good at giving grace so that’s why it says, ‘God opposes proud people but gives grace to humble ones.’[ref] 7 So strive then to do what God wants of you. Resist the devil and he will flee away from you. 8 When you all approach God, he will move closer to you. So keep your hands clean you sinners, and keep your hearts pure you who can’t make up your minds about God. 9 Be miserable, and mourn and weep. Change your laughing into crying and your happiness into sadness 10 because when you humble yourselves towards the master, he will be the one to lift you up.

11 My fellow believers, don’t make false accusations against each other because anyone who falsely accuses or judges a fellow believer, is slandering against the law and judging it. But if you’re the ones judging the law, then you’re not a follower of the law but a judge of it. 12 There’s only one lawgiver and judge and that’s the one who is able to save and to destroy. So who do you think you are to judge your neighbour!

13 Now you all might say, ‘Today or tomorrow we’ll go into the city to work there for a year and do some trading to make some money.’[ref] 14 But you don’t know what tomorrow will bring, because what are your lives? You’re like a vapour that appears for a brief period and then it’s gone. 15 So instead of saying that, you should say, ‘If the master wants it, we will live and we’ll do this or that.’ 16 But as it is, you’ve all been boasting in your arrogance and that’s an evil attitude. 17 Any person who knows that there’s some good thing that they should be doing, but doesn’t do it, is sinning.