^1:19Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters!²¹ Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. ^1:20For human²² anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.²³^1:21So put away all filth and evil excess and humbly²⁴ welcome the message implanted within you, which is able to save your souls. ^1:22But be sure you live out the message and do not merely listen to it and so deceive yourselves. ^1:23For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone²⁵ who gazes at his own face²⁶ in a mirror. ^1:24For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets²⁷ what sort of person he was. ^1:25But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there,²⁸ and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out—he²⁹ will be blessed in what he does.³⁰^1:26If someone thinks he is religious yet does not bridle his tongue, and so deceives his heart, his religion is futile. ^1:27Pure and undefiled religion before³¹ God the Father³² is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

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James 1:22: But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Footnotes

21 Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in .
22 The word translated “human” here is ἀνήρ (anēr), which often means “male” or “man (as opposed to woman).” But it sometimes is used generically to mean “anyone,” “a person” (cf. 2), and in this context, contrasted with “God’s righteousness,” the point is “human” anger (not exclusively “male” anger).
23 God’s righteousness could refer to (1) God’s righteous standard, (2) the righteousness God gives, (3) righteousness before God, or (4) God’s eschatological righteousness (see P. H. Davids, James [], , for discussion).
24 Or “with meekness.”
25 The word for “man” or “individual” is ἀνήρ (anēr), which often means “male” or “man (as opposed to woman).” However, as 2 says, here it is “equivalent to τὶς someone, a person.”
26 Grk “the face of his beginning [or origin].”
27 Grk “and he has gone out and immediately has forgotten.”
28 Grk “continues.”
29 Grk “this one.”
30 Grk “in his doing.”
31 Or “in the sight of”; Grk “with.”
32 Grk “the God and Father.”