James 3:14

Plain English Version

But if you only think about things that are good for yourself, and if you are jealous of other people, and if you hate other people, you are not thinking God’s way. That’s the devil’s way. He is the boss over the bad spirits. You can’t hide the way you think by telling lies about it, and by saying that you are really good.

Cross References

Genesis 37:11

Joseph’s brothers were really angry with him about those dreams, and they hated him even more. But Joseph’s father kept on thinking about those things that Joseph said.

Genesis 38:9

So Onan married Er’s wife. But Onan didn’t want to have kids with her, because he knew that those kids will not belong to him. So Onan did a bad thing. Every time they slept together, like married people do, he didn’t sleep with her properly. He always stopped early, so she didn’t get any babies growing inside her.

John 16:2

After I go away, the Jewish leaders will not let you into their meeting houses to pray to God with them. And a time is coming when people will kill you, and they will think that God wants them to do that.

Acts 13:45

But the Jewish leaders saw those big mobs of people, and they got really jealous. They started saying bad things to the people about Paul, and they told them, “Paul is telling lies. His message about Jesus is not true.”

Acts 26:9

Paul kept on talking. He said, “You know, at one time I thought I had to stop people from following Jesus, the man from Nazareth. I did a lot of things to try to stop them.

Acts 5:17

There were some people that didn’t believe that anyone will ever come alive again. They were called Sadducees. The big boss of the Jewish ceremonies was a Sadducee. He and all the other Sadducees were really jealous of Jesus’s special workers.

Acts 7:9

Joseph was one of those 12 men. His brothers were jealous of him, and they sold him to some people that took him to Egypt. He had to work there for no pay. But God was with Joseph and looked after him there in Egypt.

Romans 1:29

They are very bad, and they are greedy, they want lots of money and things. And they are really horrible. They want to take things that belong to other people. They murder people, they argue, they cheat other people, and they do mean things to people. They gossip,

Romans 13:13

We have to do things that are right and good and honest, like the things people do in the day-light. We can’t go to wild grog parties, and we can’t get drunk. We can’t sleep with anyone that is not our own wife or husband, as if we are married to them. We can’t do wrong things with our bodies. We can’t get into fights and arguments. We can’t be jealous of other people.

Romans 2:8

But he will get really angry with selfish people that don’t want to know the true story but just want to do bad things.

1 Corinthians 13:4

If we love people, we will be good to them, and we will not get angry with people that give us trouble. If we love people, we will not be jealous of them. If we love people, we will not reckon we are better than they are, and we will not think we are really good when we are not good.

1 Corinthians 3:3

Even though you are Christians you still don’t live like Christians. You still let your old human spirits control you. You want things that other people have. And you argue with each other. That shows that you are letting your human spirits control you, not the Holy Spirit. You are still like people that don’t know God.

1 Corinthians 5:2

But you mob don’t seem to care, and instead, you think you are great. But listen, you really have to feel shame and be sad, not happy. That man is doing a very bad thing, so you can’t let him stay in your church family.

1 Corinthians 5:6

So stop telling everyone that you are properly good. It’s not true. Let me tell you a picture story about baking powder. We put a little bit of baking powder into the flour when we make damper. And that little bit of baking powder goes into all the flour in the bowl and makes all the dough swell up.

Galatians 5:15

Don’t be like wild animals. They fight each other and eat each other all the time. If you don’t love each other, you are just like them. So be careful. If you fight each other, you might properly finish each other.

Galatians 5:20

They respect the spirits that are not God. They try to get bad spirits to hurt other people. They hate other people, and they fight other people. They want to be like some other person, and if they can’t be, they hate that other person. They get very angry. They want to be more important than everybody else. They will not agree with other people, so they split off into separate groups.

Galatians 5:21

They want things that belong to other people. They get drunk. They have wild parties and do all sorts of bad things. Listen, I’m telling you again what I told you before. People that keep on doing those bad things will never be in God’s family. They will never get the good things that God will give to the people in his family.

Galatians 5:26

We can’t reckon we are better than anyone else. We can’t do things that make other people angry, so that we start fighting each other. And we can’t wish we are like somebody else, and then hate that other person.

Galatians 6:13

But, you know, even the Jews don’t follow the Jewish law properly themselves. Those Jewish Christians only want you to get that operation, and be like Jews, so they can tell everybody that they got you to be Jewish. They want to use your bodies like that, to get the other Jews to say they are good.

Philippians 1:15

There are Christians here that think in a good way and they want to help me, so they tell people about Jesus. They love me, and they know that God let people put me in jail so that I can tell a lot more people the message about Jesus and show them that this message is true. But there are other Christians that are a bit jealous of me, and they think they can give me trouble while I’m in jail. They want other Christians to think that they are more important than me. So they tell people about Jesus Christ, and they hope they will get a lot of people to say they are great. They are thinking the wrong way. They only think about themselves.

Philippians 2:3

Each of you has to think about what is good for the others. Don’t only think about what is good for yourself. Don’t think that you are better than other people, but think that they are better than you. And don’t do things only to get people to say you are good. And don’t try to be a boss over other people.

1 Timothy 2:4

and he wants to save everybody. He wants everybody to know the true message about Jesus.

1 Timothy 6:4

But the people that teach something different are wrong. Those people don’t really understand anything. They just want everyone to think they are important. They want to make trouble and get people to have arguments about words. If people start to argue, then they start to get jealous of each other. They think bad things, and they say bad things about each other.

Titus 3:3

You know, we were like that before we believed in Jesus. We did silly things too. We didn’t do what God told us to do. People tricked us, and we believed things that were not true. And we wanted to do all sorts of bad things. We couldn’t stop ourselves. If anybody had a lot of things, we wanted those things for ourselves, and we were angry with those people. We hated people, and people hated us.

James 1:18

He wanted us to be in his own family, so he sent his true word to us. And when we believed that word it was like we were born all over again. That’s how he made us his really special people.

James 3:16

You see, sometimes people get jealous of each other, and sometimes they only do things to make themselves happy, and they don’t think about anyone else. Whenever that happens, those people start fighting each other, and they get into all sorts of trouble.

James 5:19

Listen, my Christian friends, suppose a Christian starts to forget about God’s true words, and that person goes the wrong way. And suppose somebody else talks to them and gets them to come back to the right way. Then God will go easy on the person that went the wrong way. He will not punish them for all the bad things they did, and he will not finish them up for ever. You see, the person that gets them to come back does a lot of good. So that is the sort of thing you have to do. From James