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Who is wise and understanding among you?
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Those conflicts and disputes among you, where
do they come from?
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| Show by your good life that your works are done
with gentleness born of wisdom. |
Do they not come from your cravings that are
at war within you? |
| But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition
in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. |
You want something and do not have it; so you
commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it;
so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because
you do not ask. |
| Such wisdom does not come down from above, but
is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. |
You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly,
in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. |
| For where there is envy and selfish ambition,
there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. |
Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with
the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be
a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. |
| But the wisdom from above is first pure, then
peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good
fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. |
“Does the scripture speak in vain? Is the
spirit God made to dwell in us for envy”? |
| And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace
for those who make peace. |
But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God
opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” |