Godbey - James - 1

1:1  James, the servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are in the Dispersion, greeting.

1:2  Count it all joy, my brethren, when you may fall into manifold temptations.

1:3  Knowing that the trial of your faith works out endurance.

1:4  But let endurance have its perfect work, in order that you may be perfect and whole in every part, lacking in nothing.

1:5  But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all cheerfully and upbraids none; and it will be given unto him.

1:6  But let him ask in faith, doubting as to nothing; for he that doubts is like unto a wave of the sea driven by the winds and tossed by the tempest.

1:7  For let not that man think that he will receive anything from the Lord,

1:8  the double-minded man, the most unstable in all his ways.

1:9  But let the humble brother boast in his exaltation:

1:10  and the rich man, in his humility: because as the flower of the grass he will pass away.

1:11  For the sun with a scorching wind has risen, and dried up the grass, and its flower fell off, and the beauty of its countenance perished: so indeed the rich man will pass away in his ways.

1:12  Happy is the man who endures temptation: because, being proved, he will receive a crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him with divine love.

1:13  Let no one being tempted say, I am tempted from God. For God can not be tempted with evils, and he tempts no one:

1:14  but each one is tempted by his own lusts, being drawn out, and enticed.

1:15  Then the lust, conceiving, brings forth sin; and sin, having been perfected, produces death.

1:16  Be not deceived, my beloved brethren.

1:17  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of change.

1:18  Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we should be some first fruit of his creations.

1:19  Know, my beloved brethren; but let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow toward wrath:

1:20  for the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God.

1:21  Therefore having laid aside all filthiness and excess of evil, receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

1:22  But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

1:23  For if any one is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:

1:24  for he recognized himself, and has gone away, and immediately forgot what kind he was.

1:25  But the one having looked into the perfect law which is the law of liberty, and having remained in it, not being a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, he shall be happy in his work.

1:26  But if any one seems to be religious, bridling not his own tongue, but deceiving his own heart, the religion of that man is vain.

1:27  Pure religion and undefiled with God even the Father is this, to relieve the orphans and widows in their affliction, and keep himself unspotted from the world.