James 1

Chapter 1

James, the servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

²My brethren, count it all joy, when you shall fall into divers temptations:

³Knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience

⁴And patience hath a perfect work: that you may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing.

⁵But if any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men abundantly and upbraideth not. And it shall be given him.

⁶But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, which is moved and carried about by the wind.

⁷Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

⁸A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways.

⁹But let the brother of low condition glory in his exaltation:

¹⁰And the rich, in his being low: because as the flower of the grass shall he pass away.

¹¹For the sun rose with a burning heat and parched the grass: and the flower thereof fell off, and the beauty of the shape thereof perished. So also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

¹²Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for, when he hath been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which God hath promised to them that love him.

¹³Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils: and he tempteth no man.

¹⁴But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured.

¹⁵Then, when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death.

¹⁶Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren.

¹⁷Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration.

¹⁸For of his own will hath he begotten us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of his creature.

¹⁹You know, my dearest brethren. And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak and slow to anger.

²⁰For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.

²¹Wherefore, casting away all uncleanness and abundance of naughtiness, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

²²But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

²³For if a man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he shall be compared to a man beholding his own countenance in a glass.

²⁴For he beheld himself and went his way and presently forgot what manner of man he was.

²⁵But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty and hath continued therein, not becoming a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work: this man shall be blessed in his deed.

²⁶And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue but deceiving his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

²⁷Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation and to keep one’s self unspotted from this world.