What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You
want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are
jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage
war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because
you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
You adulterers!a
Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of
God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make
yourself an enemy of God. What do you think the Scriptures mean when they say that the spirit God has placed within us is filled with envy?b But he gives us even more grace to stand against such evil desires. As the Scriptures say,
“God opposes the proud