The General Epistle of James Chapter 1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord
Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations, knowing this,
that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire,
wanting nothing.
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.
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.
For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.
A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Let the brother of low degree rejoice, in that he is exalted, but the rich,
in that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
For the sun is no sooner risen with the burning heat, but it withereth the grass,
and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it
perisheth.
So also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
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.
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.
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away, of his own lust, and enticed.
Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin,
when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Do not err, my beloved brethren.
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.
Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of
firstfruits of his creatures.
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear,
slow to speak, slow to wrath.
For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive
with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
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.
For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what
manner of man he was.
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.
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.
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.