1 James a servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
2 My brethren, count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations, Knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
3 But let patience have it's perfect work,
4 that ye may be perfect and intire, wanting nothing.
5 If any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth 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 from 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 arose with a burning heat, and withered the grass, and the flower fell off, and the beauty of it's appearance perished: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
12 Happy is the man that endureth temptation: for when he hath been proved, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
13 Let no man when he is tempted say, 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 by his own desire and inticed.
15 Then desire having conceived, bringeth forth sin; and sin being perfected, bringeth forth death.
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
17 descending from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
18 Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
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 Therefore laying aside all the filthiness and superfluity of wickedness, receive with meekness the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves:
23 For if any one be an hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass.
24 For he beheld himself, and went away, and immediately forgot what manner of man he was.
25 But whoso looketh diligently into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and continueth therein, this man being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word, this man shall be happy in his doing.
26 If any one be ever so 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 unspoted from the world.