James 4:10-12
J.B. Phillips New Testament
8-10 Come close to God and he will come close to you. Realise that you have sinned and get your hands clean again. Realise that you have been disloyal and get your hearts made true once more. As you come close to God you should be deeply sorry, you should be grieved, you should even be in tears. Your laughter will have to become mourning, your high spirits will have to become heartfelt dejection. You will have to feel very small in the sight of God before he will set you on your feet once more.
It is for God to judge, not for us
11-12 Never pull each other to pieces, my brothers. If you do you are judging your brother and setting yourself up in the place of God’s Law; you have become in fact a critic of the Law. Yet if you start to criticise the Law instead of obeying it you are setting yourself up as judge, and there is only one judge, the one who gave the Law, to whom belongs absolute power of life and death. How can you then be so silly as to imagine that you are your neighbour’s judge?
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James 4:10-12
New International Version
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.(A)
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another.(B) Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister[a] or judges them(C) speaks against the law(D) and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it,(E) but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge,(F) the one who is able to save and destroy.(G) But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?(H)
Footnotes
- James 4:11 The Greek word for brother or sister (adelphos) refers here to a believer, whether man or woman, as part of God’s family.
The New Testament in Modern English by J.B Phillips copyright © 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by Permission.
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