James 1-5 (Contemporary English Version)

James 1

 ¹From James, a servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   Greetings to the twelve tribes scattered all over the world. ^[a]

Faith and Wisdom

 ²My friends, be glad, even if you have a lot of trouble. ³You know that you learn to endure by having your faith tested. ⁴But you must learn to endure everything, so that you will be completely mature and not lacking in anything.

    ⁵If any of you need wisdom, you should ask God, and it will be given to you. God is generous and won't correct you for asking. ⁶But when you ask for something, you must have faith and not doubt. Anyone who doubts is like an ocean wave tossed around in a storm. ^7-8If you are that kind of person, you can't make up your mind, and you surely can't be trusted. So don't expect the Lord to give you anything at all.

   

Poor People and Rich People

 ⁹Any of God's people who are poor should be glad that he thinks so highly of them. ¹⁰But any who are rich should be glad when God makes them humble. Rich people will disappear like wild flowers ¹¹scorched by the burning heat of the sun. The flowers lose their blossoms, and their beauty is destroyed. That is how the rich will disappear, as they go about their business.

   

Trials and Temptations

 ¹²God will bless you, if you don't give up when your faith is being tested. He will reward you with a glorious life, ^[b] just as he rewards everyone who loves him. ¹³Don't blame God when you are tempted! God cannot be tempted by evil, and he doesn't use evil to tempt others. ¹⁴We are tempted by our own desires that drag us off and trap us. ¹⁵Our desires make us sin, and when sin is finished with us, it leaves us dead.

    ¹⁶Don't be fooled, my dear friends. ¹⁷Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father who created all the lights in the heavens. He is always the same and never makes dark shadows by changing. ¹⁸He wanted us to be his own special people, ^[c] and so he sent the true message to give us new birth.

Hearing and Obeying

 ¹⁹My dear friends, you should be quick to listen and slow to speak or to get angry. ²⁰If you are angry, you cannot do any of the good things that God wants done. ²¹You must stop doing anything immoral or evil. Instead be humble and accept the message that is planted in you to save you.

    ²²Obey God's message! Don't fool yourselves by just listening to it. ²³If you hear the message and don't obey it, you are like people who stare at themselves in a mirror ²⁴and forget what they look like as soon as they leave. ²⁵But you must never stop looking at the perfect law that sets you free. God will bless you in everything you do, if you listen and obey, and don't just hear and forget.

    ²⁶If you think you are being religious, but can't control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and everything you do is useless. ²⁷Religion that pleases God the Father must be pure and spotless. You must help needy orphans and widows and not let this world make you evil.

   

James 2

Warning against Having Favorites

 ¹My friends, if you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, you won't treat some people better than others. ²Suppose a rich person wearing fancy clothes and a gold ring comes to one of your meetings. And suppose a poor person dressed in worn-out clothes also comes. ³You must not give the best seat to the one in fancy clothes and tell the one who is poor to stand at the side or sit on the floor. ⁴That is the same as saying that some people are better than others, and you would be acting like a crooked judge.

    ⁵My dear friends, pay attention. God has given a lot of faith to the poor people in this world. He has also promised them a share in his kingdom that he will give to everyone who loves him. ⁶You mistreat the poor. But isn't it the rich who boss you around and drag you off to court? ⁷Aren't they the ones who make fun of your Lord?

    ⁸You will do all right, if you obey the most important law ^[d] in the Scriptures. It is the law that commands us to love others as much as we love ourselves. ⁹But if you treat some people better than others, you have done wrong, and the Scriptures teach that you have sinned. ¹⁰If you obey every law except one, you are still guilty of breaking them all. ¹¹The same God who told us to be faithful in marriage also told us not to murder. So even if you are faithful in marriage, but murder someone, you still have broken God's Law.

    ¹²Speak and act like people who will be judged by the law that sets us free. ¹³Do this, because on the day of judgment there will be no pity for those who have not had pity on others. But even in judgment, God is merciful! ^[e]

Faith and Works

 ¹⁴My friends, what good is it to say you have faith, when you don't do anything to show that you really do have faith? Can that kind of faith save you? ¹⁵If you know someone who doesn't have any clothes or food, ¹⁶you shouldn't just say, "I hope all goes well for you. I hope you will be warm and have plenty to eat." What good is it to say this, unless you do something to help? ¹⁷Faith that doesn't lead us to do good deeds is all alone and dead!

    ¹⁸Suppose someone disagrees and says, "It is possible to have faith without doing kind deeds."

   I would answer, "Prove that you have faith without doing kind deeds, and I will prove that I have faith by doing them." ¹⁹You surely believe there is only one God. That's fine. Even demons believe this, and it makes them shake with fear.

    ²⁰Does some stupid person want proof that faith without deeds is useless? ²¹Well, our ancestor Abraham pleased God by putting his son Isaac on the altar to sacrifice him. ²²Now you see how Abraham's faith and deeds worked together. He proved that his faith was real by what he did. ²³This is what the Scriptures mean by saying, "Abraham had faith in God, and God was pleased with him." That's how Abraham became God's friend.

    ²⁴You can now see that we please God by what we do and not only by what we believe. ²⁵For example, Rahab had been a prostitute. But she pleased God when she welcomed the spies and sent them home by another way.

    ²⁶Anyone who doesn't breathe is dead, and faith that doesn't do anything is just as dead!

   

James 3

The Tongue

 ¹My friends, we should not all try to become teachers. In fact, teachers will be judged more strictly than others. ²All of us do many wrong things. But if you can control your tongue, you are mature and able to control your whole body.

    ³By putting a bit into the mouth of a horse, we can turn the horse in different directions. ⁴It takes strong winds to move a large sailing ship, but the captain uses only a small rudder to make it go in any direction. ⁵Our tongues are small too, and yet they brag about big things.

   It takes only a spark to start a forest fire! ⁶The tongue is like a spark. It is an evil power that dirties the rest of the body and sets a person's entire life on fire with flames that come from hell itself. ⁷All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and sea creatures can be tamed and have been tamed. ⁸But our tongues get out of control. They are restless and evil, and always spreading deadly poison.

    ^9-10My dear friends, with our tongues we speak both praises and curses. We praise our Lord and Father, and we curse people who were created to be like God, and this isn't right. ¹¹Can clean water and dirty water both flow from the same spring? ¹²Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine produce figs? Does fresh water come from a well full of salt water?

   

Wisdom from Above

 ¹³Are any of you wise or sensible? Then show it by living right and by being humble and wise in everything you do. ¹⁴But if your heart is full of bitter jealousy and selfishness, don't brag or lie to cover up the truth. ¹⁵That kind of wisdom doesn't come from above. It is earthly and selfish and comes from the devil himself. ¹⁶Whenever people are jealous or selfish, they cause trouble and do all sorts of cruel things. ¹⁷But the wisdom that comes from above leads us to be pure, friendly, gentle, sensible, kind, helpful, genuine, and sincere. ¹⁸When peacemakers plant seeds of peace, they will harvest justice.

   

James 4

Friendship with the World

 ¹Why do you fight and argue with each other? Isn't it because you are full of selfish desires that fight to control your body? ²You want something you don't have, and you will do anything to get it. You will even kill! But you still cannot get what you want, and you won't get it by fighting and arguing. You should pray for it. ³Yet even when you do pray, your prayers are not answered, because you pray just for selfish reasons.

    ⁴You people aren't faithful to God! Don't you know that if you love the world, you are God's enemies? And if you decide to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. ⁵Do you doubt the Scriptures that say, "God truly cares about the Spirit he has put in us"? ^{[f] 6}In fact, God treats us with even greater kindness, just as the Scriptures say, "God opposes everyone

   who is proud,

   but he is kind to everyone

   who is humble."

    ⁷Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you. ⁸Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Clean up your lives, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you people who can't make up your mind. ⁹Be sad and sorry and weep. Stop laughing and start crying. Be gloomy instead of glad. ¹⁰Be humble in the Lord's presence, and he will honor you.

   

Saying Cruel Things about Others

 ¹¹My friends, don't say cruel things about others! If you do, or if you condemn others, you are condemning God's Law. And if you condemn the Law, you put yourself above the Law and refuse to obey either it ¹²or God who gave it. God is our judge, and he can save or destroy us. What right do you have to condemn anyone?

   

Warning against Bragging

 ¹³You should know better than to say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to the city. We will do business there for a year and make a lot of money!" ¹⁴What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears. ¹⁵You should say, "If the Lord lets us live, we will do these things." ¹⁶Yet you are stupid enough to brag, and it is wrong to be so proud. ¹⁷If you don't do what you know is right, you have sinned.

   

James 5

Warning to the Rich

 ¹You rich people should cry and weep! Terrible things are going to happen to you. ²Your treasures have already rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. ³Your money has rusted, and the rust will be evidence against you, as it burns your body like fire. Yet you keep on storing up wealth in these last days. ⁴You refused to pay the people who worked in your fields, and now their unpaid wages are shouting out against you. The Lord All-Powerful has surely heard the cries of the workers who harvested your crops.

    ⁵While here on earth, you have thought only of filling your own stomachs and having a good time. But now you are like fat cattle on their way to be butchered. ⁶You have condemned and murdered innocent people, who couldn't even fight back.

   

Be Patient and Kind

 ⁷My friends, be patient until the Lord returns. Think of farmers who wait patiently for the spring and summer rains to make their valuable crops grow. ⁸Be patient like those farmers and don't give up. The Lord will soon be here! ⁹Don't grumble about each other or you will be judged, and the judge is right outside the door.

    ¹⁰My friends, follow the example of the prophets who spoke for the Lord. They were patient, even when they had to suffer. ¹¹In fact, we praise the ones who endured the most. You remember how patient Job was and how the Lord finally helped him. The Lord did this because he is so merciful and kind.

    ¹²My friends, above all else, don't take an oath. You must not swear by heaven or by earth or by anything else. "Yes" or "No" is all you need to say. If you say anything more, you will be condemned.

    ¹³If you are having trouble, you should pray. And if you are feeling good, you should sing praises. ¹⁴If you are sick, ask the church leaders ^[g] to come and pray for you. Ask them to put olive oil ^[h] on you in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵If you have faith when you pray for sick people, they will get well. The Lord will heal them, and if they have sinned, he will forgive them. ¹⁶If you have sinned, you should tell each other what you have done. Then you can pray for one another and be healed. The prayer of an innocent person is powerful, and it can help a lot. ¹⁷Elijah was just as human as we are, and for three and a half years his prayers kept the rain from falling. ¹⁸But when he did pray for rain, it fell from the skies and made the crops grow.

    ¹⁹My friends, if any followers have wandered away from the truth, you should try to lead them back. ²⁰If you turn sinners from the wrong way, you will save them from death, and many of their sins will be forgiven.