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[1]JAMES, a servant of God and of our LORD Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered among the Gentiles, greeting.
[2]MY brethren, take it as a joy to you when you enter into many and divers temptations;
[3]For you know that the trial of faith will increase your patience.
[4]And let patience be a perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.
[5]If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally and with grace; and it shall be given him.
[6]But let him ask in faith, not doubting. For he who doubts is like the waves of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.
[7]Thus let not that man expect that he will receive anything of the LORD.
[8]A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
[9]Let the brother of low estate rejoice because he is exalted.
[10]Let the rich man rejoice in his humbleness: because as the flower of the grass, so shall he pass away.
[11]For as the sun rises with its burning heat and causes the grass to wither, and the flower to fall and its beauty to perish: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
[12]Blessed is the man who endures temptations: for when he is tested, he shall receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
[13]Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does he tempt any man:
[14]But every man is tempted by his own lust; and he covets and is enticed.
[15]Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin when it has matured, brings forth death.
[16]Do not err, my beloved brethren.
[17]Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of change.
[18]It is he, who begot us of his own will with the word of truth, that we should be the firstfruits of his creatures.
[19]Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, and slow to speak, and slow to anger:
[20]For the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God.
[21]Wherefore cast away all filthiness, and all the multitude of evil things, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
[22]But you be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
[23]For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man who sees his face in a mirror;
[24]For he sees himself and goes his way, and forgets how he looked.
[25]But whoever looks into the perfect law of liberty, and abides in it, is not merely a hearer of the word which can be forgotten but a doer of the work, and this man shall be blessed in his work.
[26]If any man thinks that he ministers to God, and does not control his tongue, he deceives his own heart, and this man's ministry is in vain.
[27]For a pure and holy ministry before God, the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
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