8. Come near to God and he will come near to you. You are sinners, so clean sin out of your lives. You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time. Make your thinking pure.
9. Be sad, be sorry, and cry! Change your laughter into crying. Change your joy into sadness.
10. Be humble before the Lord, and he will make you great.
11. Brothers and sisters, don’t say anything against each other. If you criticize your brother or sister in Christ or judge them, you are criticizing and judging the law they follow. And when you are judging the law, you are not a follower of the law. You have become a judge.
12. God is the one who gave us the law, and he is the Judge. He is the only one who can save and destroy. So it is not right for you to judge anyone.
13. Some of you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to some city. We will stay there a year, do business, and make money.” Listen, think about this:
14. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Your life is like a fog. You can see it for a short time, but then it goes away.
15. So you should say, “If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.”
16. But now you are proud and boast about yourself. All such boasting is wrong.
17. If you fail to do what you know is right, you are sinning.