🌿WEB · James 4:3

What does James 4:3 mean?

"You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures."

— James 4:3 (World English Bible)

Surrounding context

1

Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?

2

You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.

3

You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

4

You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

5

Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?

6

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

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