¹ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are scattered abroad, greeting.

² My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into various temptations;¹

1. temptation: or, trials

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 complete, lacking nothing.

⁵ If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given to 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 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:¹

1. rejoice: or, glory

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 hath no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and its flower falleth, and the grace of its fashion perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

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 by God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:¹

1. evil: or, evils

¹⁴ But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by 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 he hath begotten us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

¹⁹ Therefore, 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 put away all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, 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 is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:

²⁴ For he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and immediately forgetteth what manner of man he was.

²⁵ But he who looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth in it, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.¹

1. deed: or, doing

²⁶ If any man among you seemeth 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.