1James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion, greeting.
2Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations;
3knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.
4And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.
5But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
6But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.
7For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord;
8a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
9But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate:
10and the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
11For the sun ariseth with the scorching wind, and 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 goings.
12Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to them that love him.
13Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man:
14but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
15Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death.
16Be not deceived, my beloved brethren.
17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.
18Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
19Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
20for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
21Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.
23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:
24for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightaway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
25But he that looketh into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and so continueth, he being not a hearer that forgetteth but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing.
26If any man among you thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man’s religion is vain.
27Pure religion and undefiled before God, even the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.