BOOK 59 OF 66 · GENERAL EPISTLES · KING JAMES BIBLE

James 1

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James 1 Overview

James writes to scattered believers facing trials and tells them to count trials as joy because tested faith produces patience. They are to ask God for wisdom, resist double-mindedness, understand temptation as arising from lust rather than God, receive the engrafted word, and become doers rather than hearers only.

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Before you read James 1

Coming from

Hebrews 13 closes with practical faithfulness, Christ’s unchanging nature, spiritual leadership, and the city to come.

In this chapter

Leads into

James condemns partiality toward the rich and neglect of the poor, then argues that faith which remains alone and inactive is dead and useless in practical demonstration. Abraham’s offering of Isaac and Rahab’s reception of the messengers show faith working with actions. James says Abraham was justified by works in this demonstrative sense while Scripture had already declared him righteous by faith.

Key understandingExplore deeper

James addresses ‘my brethren,’ so the chapter’s exhortations concern Christian maturity under trial, not how unbelievers earn eternal life.

The ‘crown of life’ is promised in connection with enduring temptation and loving God; it is reward language, not a price paid for justification.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Trials can mature faith

Patience grows through tested faith.

God gives wisdom generously

Believers are invited to ask in faith.

Temptation does not come from God’s evil desire

Sin develops when human lust conceives and brings forth sin.

Hearing should lead to doing

The word is meant to shape conduct, speech, and mercy.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Matthew 7:24–27

Jesus contrasts hearing and doing His sayings.

1 Peter 1:6–7

Peter also connects trials with the testing of faith.

Revelation 2:10

The crown of life is also promised to faithful endurance.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Do not use trials to claim God tempts people to sin

James explicitly denies that.

Do not turn doing the word into the basis of justification

James is exhorting brethren whose faith is being tested.

Do not reduce pure religion to social action alone

James joins mercy with personal purity from the world.

Read James 1 watching for…

The purpose of trials.

The request for wisdom.

The progression from lust to sin to death.

The mirror illustration.

Bridling the tongue, mercy, and purity.

Chapter outline5 sections

1-8Trials test faith, and believers are told to ask God for wisdom without wavering 9-12The lowly and rich are reminded of life’s brevity, and the one enduring temptation is blessed 13-18God does not tempt with evil; lust brings sin and death, while every good gift comes from God 19-25Believers must be swift to hear, receive the word, and be doers rather than hearers only 26-27Pure religion includes bridling the tongue, caring for the afflicted, and remaining unspotted from the world

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

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.

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.

For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:

But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.

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.

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.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

Do not err, my beloved brethren.

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.

Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

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:

For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

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.

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.

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.