Greeting

¹ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion: Greetings.

Testing of Your Faith

² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, ³ knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. ⁴ Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

⁵ But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. ⁷ For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

⁹ Let the brother in humble circumstances glory in his high position; ¹⁰ and the rich, in that he is made humble, because like the flower in the grass, he will pass away. ¹¹ For the sun arises with the scorching wind and withers the grass; and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So the rich man will also fade away in his pursuits.

¹² Blessed is a person who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those who love him.

Listening and Doing

¹³ Let no man say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. ¹⁴ But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. ¹⁵ Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when it is full grown, produces death. ¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers. ¹⁷ Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow. ¹⁸ Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

¹⁹ So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; ²⁰ for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God. ²¹ Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

²² But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. ²³ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; ²⁴ for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. ²⁵ But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.

²⁶ If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn’t bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is worthless. ²⁷ Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.