New Testament
James
James is plain, practical and bracing, a letter about faith that actually shows up in how we speak, work, treat the poor and bear trials. He will not let belief stay a private idea. He wants it to change the way you live on Monday.
James 1
Let Perseverance Finish Its Work
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
James 1:6Faith Is Not Hoping God Can
“But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.”
James 1:12Blessed Is The One Who Perseveres Under Trial
“Blessed is a person who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those who love him.”
Passages discussed across 316Quotes
Use this list to find the article where each passage is explained or placed in context.
- James 1:1
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion: Greetings.
Discussed in: - James 1:2-4
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Read the passage article - James 1:5
But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
Discussed in: - James 1:7
For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord.
Discussed in: - James 1:8
He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
Discussed in: - James 1:9-11
Let the brother in humble circumstances glory in his high position; and the rich, in that he is made humble, because like the flower in the grass, he will pass away. For the sun arises with the scorching wind and withers the grass; and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So the rich man will also fade away in his pursuits.
Discussed in: - James 1:11
For the sun arises with the scorching wind and withers the grass; and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So the rich man will also fade away in his pursuits.
Discussed in: - James 1:13
Let no man say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one.
Discussed in: - James 1:13-15
Let no man say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when it is full grown, produces death.
Discussed in: - James 1:14
But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed.
Discussed in: - James 1:17
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow.
Discussed in: - James 1:22
But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.
Discussed in:
James 2
Passages discussed across 316Quotes
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- James 2:8
However, if you fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” you do well.
Discussed in: - James 2:14-17
What good is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can faith save him? And if a brother or sister is naked and in lack of daily food, and one of you tells them, “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled;” yet you didn’t give them the things the body needs, what good is it? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself.
Discussed in: - James 2:14-26
What good is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can faith save him? And if a brother or sister is naked and in lack of daily food, and one of you tells them, “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled;” yet you didn’t give them the things the body needs, what good is it? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself. Yes, a man will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons also believe, and shudder. But do you want to know, vain man, that faith apart from works is dead? Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith worked with his works, and by works faith was perfected. So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see then that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.
Discussed in: - James 2:15-16
And if a brother or sister is naked and in lack of daily food, and one of you tells them, “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled;” yet you didn’t give them the things the body needs, what good is it?
Discussed in: - James 2:23
So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.
Discussed in:
James 3
Passages discussed across 316Quotes
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- James 3:8-10
but nobody can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who are made in the image of God. Out of the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
Discussed in: - James 3:9-10
With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who are made in the image of God. Out of the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
Discussed in: - James 3:15-16
This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed.
Discussed in: - James 3:17-18
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
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James 4
Passages discussed across 316Quotes
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- James 4:2
You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
Discussed in: - James 4:8
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Discussed in: - James 4:13-14
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.” Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Discussed in: - James 4:15
For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”
Discussed in:
James 5
Passages discussed across 316Quotes
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- James 5:4
Behold, the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies.
Discussed in: - James 5:11
Behold, we call them blessed who endured. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and have seen the Lord in the outcome, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
Discussed in: - James 5:12
But above all things, my brothers, don’t swear, not by heaven, or by the earth, or by any other oath; but let your “yes” be “yes”, and your “no”, “no”, so that you don’t fall into hypocrisy.
Discussed in: - James 5:14
Is any amongst you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;
Discussed in: - James 5:14-15
Is any amongst you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
Discussed in: - James 5:16
Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective.
Discussed in: - James 5:19-20
Brothers, if any amongst you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
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More about James
James does not waste time on a long introduction. By tradition the letter comes from James, the brother of Jesus and a leader in the Jerusalem church, and it reads like the work of someone who has watched faith go wrong in practical ways and means to set it right. It is short, plain and bracing, closer to the wisdom of Proverbs or to Jesus' own Sermon on the Mount than to Paul's long arguments. The big concern is simple and searching: does your faith actually show up in how you live? James cannot abide a belief that stays in the head and never reaches the hands, and he says so without much cushioning.
He covers a lot of ground for such a small letter, and most of it lands close to home. He writes about the tongue and the damage careless words do, about money and the way churches fawn over the rich and slight the poor, about anger, favouritism, quarrels and the gap between what we say and what we do. None of it is abstract. You finish a paragraph and find you have been described. Yet for all his bluntness, James is not unkind. He wants something good for his readers, a faith with integrity, a life that hangs together, the same person on Monday as on Sunday.
Some of his most quoted lines come right at the start, where he tackles suffering head on. Consider it pure joy, he writes in 1:2 to 4, whenever you face trials, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that you are mature and complete. He is not telling people to enjoy pain; he is saying that God is doing something in it. He follows it with a promise about asking God for wisdom, but in 1:6 he adds that we should ask in faith, not doubting, and in 1:12 he calls blessed the one who perseveres under trial. Endurance is a steady theme.
If you have grown weary of faith that is all talk, or if you are in the middle of a trial and cannot see what good could come of it, James is bracing in the best way. He treats you as someone capable of growing, and he is honest that growth often comes through hard things rather than around them. Take him a little at a time, because he is direct and he means it. But take him seriously, because few books will do more to close the gap between the faith you profess and the life you actually live, and that closing is its own kind of freedom.
Questions about James
- Who wrote the letter of James?
- By long tradition it is James, the brother of Jesus, who became a leading figure in the early church in Jerusalem. He is not one of the twelve apostles named James, but the Lord's own brother, who did not believe during Jesus' ministry and then became a pillar of the church afterwards. The letter's plain, practical wisdom and its many echoes of Jesus' teaching fit that background well. He writes to scattered Jewish believers, and his tone is that of a respected leader who has seen real problems up close and cares enough to be direct about them.
- Does James contradict Paul on faith and works?
- It can look that way at first, but on a closer read they are answering different questions. Paul insists we are saved by faith and not by earning it through works of the law. James insists that real, saving faith will show itself in action, so a faith that never changes how you live was never the living thing it claimed to be. Paul is guarding against trying to earn God's acceptance; James is guarding against an empty profession that costs nothing. They are two sides of one coin: grace saves us, and grace that has truly taken hold begins to show.
- What does James say about going through trials?
- He says something surprising. In James 1:2 to 4 he tells believers to consider it joy when they face trials, not because the trials are pleasant, but because God uses the testing of faith to produce perseverance, and perseverance to make us mature and complete. He is not asking anyone to pretend pain does not hurt. He is saying there is purpose in it. He goes on to promise that God gives wisdom generously to those who ask, and in 1:12 calls blessed the person who endures, holding out a real hope to those in the middle of something hard.
Topics in James
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