James - Chapter 1 | American Standard Version

  • 1. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion, greeting.
  • 2. Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations;
  • 3. Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.
  • 4. And let patience have {cf15i its} perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.
  • 5. But 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.
  • 6. But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.
  • 7. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord;
  • 8. a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways.
  • 9. But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate:
  • 10. and the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
  • 11. For 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.
  • 12. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which {cf15i the Lord} promised to them that love him.
  • 13. Let 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:
  • 14. but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
  • 15. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death.
  • 16. Be not deceived, my beloved brethren.
  • 17. Every 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.
  • 18. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
  • 19. Ye know {cf15i this}, my beloved brethren. But 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. Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
  • 22. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.
  • 23. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:
  • 24. for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
  • 25. But he that looketh into the perfect law, the {cf15i law} of liberty, and {cf15i so} continueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing.
  • 26. If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man's religion is vain.
  • 27. Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, {cf15i and} to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
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