| 1 ¶ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
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| 2 ¶ My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;1
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| 3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
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| 4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
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| 5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
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| 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.
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| 7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
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| 8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
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| 9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice32 in that he is exalted:
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| 10 But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
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| 11 For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it 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 ways.
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| 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.
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| 13 ¶ Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil,4 neither tempteth he any man:
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| 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
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| 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
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| 16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.
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| 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.
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| 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
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| 19 ¶ Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
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| 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
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| 21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
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| 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
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| 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
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| 24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
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| 25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.5
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| 26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
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| 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.
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