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- ¶ JAMES, a servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered among the Gentiles: Greeting.
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- ¶ MY brethren, take it as a joy to you when you enter into many and varied temptations;
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- For you know that the trial of faith will increase your patience.
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- And let patience be a perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.
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- If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally and with grace, and it will be given him.
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- 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.
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- Thus let not that man suppose that he will receive anything of the Lord.
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- A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
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- Let the brother who is humble rejoice because he is exalted.
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- Let the rich man rejoice in his humbleness, because as the flower of the grass, so shall he pass away.
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- 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 the course of his life.
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- 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.
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- ¶ 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;
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- But every man is tempted by his own lust;
he covets and is enticed.
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- Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin;
and sin when it has matured, brings forth death.
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- Do not err, my beloved brethren.
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- 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.
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- It is he who begot us of his own will with the word of truth, that we should be the first fruits of his creatures.
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- ¶ Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger;
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- For the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God.
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- Therefore 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.
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- But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
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- 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;
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- For he sees himself and goes his way and forgets how he looked.
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- 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 labor.
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- 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.
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- For a pure and holy ministry before God 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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