Chapter text
World English Bible
Verse-by-verse text with stable anchors, canonical chapter URLs, and copyable verse links.
- 1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion: Greetings.
- 2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations,
- 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
- 4 Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
- 5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
- 6 But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.
- 7 For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord.
- 8 He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
- 9 Let the brother in humble circumstances glory in his high position;
- 10 and the rich, in that he is made humble, because like the flower in the grass, he will pass away.
- 11 For the sun arises with the scorching wind and withers the grass; and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So the rich man will also fade away in his pursuits.
- 12 Blessed is a person who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those who love him.
- 13 Let no man say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one.
- 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed.
- 15 Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when it is full grown, produces death.
- 16 Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers.
- 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow.
- 18 Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
- 19 So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger;
- 20 for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.
- 21 Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
- 22 But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.
- 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror;
- 24 for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
- 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
- 26 If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn’t bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
- 27 Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.