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“To: The Twelve Tribes in the Diaspora”
1 From: James, a slave indeed of God and of the Lord Jesus the Messiah.
To: The twelve tribes in the Diaspora.
Shalom.
“Consider It the Truly Greatest of Joy”
2 Consider it the truly greatest of joy whenever ᵖyou+ find yourselves being beset, my brothers and sisters, by trials and temptations of various kinds,
3 since you know that the testing of your faith results in patient endurance.
4 Patient endurance must go on to accomplish, moreover, its full work, so that you may be blameless and without defect, lacking in no respect.
5 If any of you lacks godly insight and discernment, he is to keep presenting his request to God, who gives to all so generously and gladly, and such wisdom will be granted to him.
6 Yet he must present his request in faith, without any doubting. A person who wavers with doubt, you see, is like a wave in the sea, being driven along by the wind and being tossed about here and there.
7 Indeed, that kind of a person shouldn’t expect to receive anything from the Lord—
8 a man of divided loyalty, unsteady in all his ways.
9 Now, a brother who is lowly and afflicted ought to sing in praise of his high and honorable standing.
10 The rich person, however, should sing in lament of his low and humiliating station, because it is like “a wildflower in a grassy field”+ that he will pass away.
11 Yes, just as surely as the sun at high noon sends forth its scorching heat and dries up the field, so that its flower falls and the flower’s beauty is destroyed, so the rich man, too, while going about his business, will wither away.
12 Blessed is the man who patiently endures trials and temptations, because once he has been approved as genuine, he will receive the victor’s crown of life, which God has promised to those who remain loyal to him.
13 No one, when he is being tempted, should say, “It is God who is tempting me.” God is incapable, you see, of being tempted by evil things, and he himself tempts no one.
14 Each person, rather, is tempted by his own evil desires, his will being seduced and baited by them.
15 Then desire, having become pregnant, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters!
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father who created the lights in the skies, whose nature and ways never change and whose light, unlike that of the heavenly bodies, never varies.
18 In accordance with his plan he brought us forth in new life through the message of truth, so that we would be a firstfruits offering, so to speak, harvested first and as the choicest of everything he created.
“Remember This, My Dear Brothers”
19 Remember this, my dear brothers and sisters: Everyone must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
20 Human anger and arrogance do not produce, you see, the righteousnesss of God.
21 That is why, taking off, like old clothes, every kind of moral filth and any remaining hint of malice, you must accept the message planted in your hearts peaceably and humbly, since it has the power to save you.
22 Make sure that you don’t merely listen to the message, but that you also obey it. Otherwise you are only deceiving yourselves.
23 If someone hears the message but doesn’t obey it, he is like a man who stares at his own face in a mirror,
24 but then forgets, as soon as he leaves, what it was that he looked like.
25 If, however, someone looks intently into the perfect Torah that sets sinners free, and continues to do so, not just hearing the message and then forgetting it, but obeying it and putting it into practice, this person will be truly blessed for doing so.
26 If someone considers himself to be devout, but doesn’t keep a tight rein on his tongue, he is only deceiving himself; such a person’s devotion is utterly worthless and deluded.
27 Devotion that is pure and undefiled in the eyes of our God and Father looks like this: Coming to the aid of orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping oneself from being stained by the moral filth of the world.