James 1
Salutation |
| 1 |
James, Mt. 13.55 · Mk. 6.3 · Acts 15.13 · Gal. 1.19 a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the
twelve tribes which are scattered abroad,
Greeting.
|
Faith and
Humility |
| 2 |
My brethren, count it all joy when ye
fall into divers temptations;
|
| 3 |
knowing this, that the trying of
your faith worketh patience.
|
| 4 |
But let patience have her perfect
work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
|
| 5 |
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask
of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not;
and it shall be given him.
|
| 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.
|
| 7 |
For let not that man think that he shall
receive any thing of the Lord.
|
| 8 |
A double-minded man is unstable in
all his ways.
|
| 9 |
Let the brother of low degree rejoice
in that he is exalted:
|
| 10 |
but the rich, in that he is made low:
because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
|
| 11 |
For the sun is no sooner risen with a
burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof
falleth, Is. 40.6, 7 and the
grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man
fade away in his ways.
|
Trial and
Temptation |
| 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.
|
| 13 |
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am
tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither
tempteth he any man:
|
| 14 |
but every man is tempted, when he is
drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
|
| 15 |
Then when lust hath conceived, it
bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death.
|
| 16 |
Do not err, my beloved
brethren.
|
| 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.
|
| 18 |
Of his own will begat he us with the word
of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his
creatures.
|
Hearing and Doing the
Word |
| 19 |
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let
every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
|
| 20 |
for the wrath of man worketh not the
righteousness of God.
|
| 21 |
Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and
superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted
word, which is able to save your souls.
|
| 22 |
But be ye doers of the word, and not
hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
|
| 23 |
For if any be a hearer of the word, and
not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a
glass:
|
| 24 |
for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his
way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
|
| 25 |
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of
liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his
deed.
|
| 26 |
If any man among you seem to be
religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart,
this man's religion is vain.
|
| 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.
|
