James 4:4

Read it in 5 translations

KJV King James Version

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

BSB Berean Standard Bible

You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.

WEB World English Bible

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

ASV American Standard Version

Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God.

YLT Young’s Literal Translation

Adulterers and adulteresses! have ye not known that friendship of the world is enmity with God? whoever, then, may counsel to be a friend of the world, an enemy of God he is set.

Surrounding context — James 4

1 From whence [come] wars and fightings among you? [come they] not hence, [even] of your lusts that war in your members?

2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume [it] upon your lusts.

4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

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Cross-references

1 John 2:15-16Love not the world, neither the things [that are] in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.Romans 8:7Because the carnal mind [is] enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.John 15:19If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.Matthew 6:24No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.Galatians 1:10For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.John 17:14I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.James 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.John 15:23-24He that hateth me hateth my Father also.Romans 5:10For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.Hosea 3:1Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of [her] friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine.Matthew 16:4A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.John 7:7The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.Psalm 73:27For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee.Matthew 12:39But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:Psalm 21:8Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee.Luke 19:27But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay [them] before me.Jeremiah 9:2Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they [be] all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.Psalm 50:18When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION

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