James 4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James has been building up steam. He has addressed hypocrisy, partiality, our speech, and a lot more. But when he gets to this chapter, he really hits hard. He begins with our ingratitude and prayerlessness, then moves on to our mistreatment of fellow believers. In this last paragraph of the chapter he gets deep to the core in identifying our underlying pride: we live as if we determine our own destiny, with little thought of God's will. It shows in our speech, and also in our failure to do as we know is right, as much as it is doing what is wrong. We need to change our speech, as well as the motives that determine it.
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