1:1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are scattered abroad, greeting.
1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into various temptations;
1:3 Knowing [this], that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
1:4 But let patience have [her] perfect work, that ye may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
1:5 If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all [men] liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given to him.
1:6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
1:7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing from the Lord.
1:8 A double minded man [is] unstable in all his ways.
1:9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:
1:10 But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
1:11 For the sun hath no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and its flower falleth, and the grace of its fashion perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
1:12 Blessed [is] the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
1:13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
1:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
1:16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.
1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
1:18 Of his own will he hath begotten us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
1:19 Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
1:20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
1:21 Therefore put away all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
1:23 For if any is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:
1:24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and immediately forgetteth what manner of man he was.
1:25 But he who looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth [in it], he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
1:26 If any man among you seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this mans religion [is] vain.
1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.