James 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

James writes to Jewish believers scattered outside their homeland. He tells them to treat trials as a chance for endurance to grow, to ask God for wisdom without doubting, and to see that temptation comes from a person's own desire and not from God, who gives only good gifts. The chapter closes by pressing them to act on the word rather than only hear it, to control the tongue, and to care for orphans and widows while keeping clear of the world's corruption.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • A man named James sends this letter.
   • James is a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
   • The letter is addressed to the twelve tribes.
   • The twelve tribes are scattered abroad.
   • James sends them a greeting.
2. 1:2
   • James addresses his hearers as his brethren.
   • James tells them to count it all joy when they fall into various trials.
   • The trials are of many kinds.
3. 1:3
   • The hearers know that the testing of their faith produces endurance.
4. 1:4
   • Endurance is to have its complete work.
   • The purpose is that the hearers may be perfect and whole.
   • The purpose is that they may lack nothing.
5. 1:5
   • If any of them lacks wisdom, he is to ask of God.
   • God gives to all liberally.
   • God does not reproach the one who asks.
   • Wisdom will be given to the one who asks.
6. 1:6
   • The one asking must ask in faith.
   • The one asking must not doubt.
   • The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.
7. 1:7
   • That man must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
8. 1:8
   • A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
9. 1:9
   • The brother of low degree is to boast in his exaltation.
10. 1:10
    • The rich man is to boast in his humiliation.
    • The rich man will pass away like a flower of the grass.
11. 1:11
    • The sun rises with burning heat.
    • The sun withers the grass.
    • The flower of the grass falls.
    • The beauty of the flower's appearance perishes.
    • In the same way the rich man will fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
12. 1:12
    • Blessed is the man who endures trial.
    • When that man has been proved, he will receive the crown of life.
    • The Lord has promised the crown of life to those who love him.
13. 1:13
    • No one being tempted is to say that he is tempted by God.
    • God cannot be tempted by evil.
    • God himself tempts no one.
14. 1:14
    • Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire.
    • Every man is tempted when he is enticed by his own desire.
15. 1:15
    • When desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin.
    • Sin, when it is completed, gives birth to death.
16. 1:16
    • James tells his beloved brethren not to be deceived.
17. 1:17
    • Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.
    • Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.
    • With the Father of lights there is no variation.
    • With the Father of lights there is no shadow cast by turning.
18. 1:18
    • By his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth.
    • The purpose was that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
19. 1:19
    • James addresses his beloved brethren.
    • Every man is to be quick to hear.
    • Every man is to be slow to speak.
    • Every man is to be slow to anger.
20. 1:20
    • The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
21. 1:21
    • The hearers are to put away all filthiness and all excess of wickedness.
    • The hearers are to receive with meekness the implanted word.
    • The implanted word is able to save their souls.
22. 1:22
    • The hearers are to be doers of the word.
    • They are not to be hearers only.
    • Hearers only deceive themselves.
23. 1:23
    • If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror.
24. 1:24
    • That man observes himself.
    • That man goes away.
    • That man immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25. 1:25
    • The one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work.
    • That man will be blessed in his doing.
26. 1:26
    • If any man among them seems to be religious and does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his own heart.
    • The religion of such a man is worthless.
27. 1:27
    • Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.
    • Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"The twelve tribes" is the old name for the whole people of Israel, descended from Jacob's twelve sons. "Scattered abroad" renders the word diaspora, used for Jews living outside the homeland, spread through the cities of the Roman world. "Servant" translates a word that normally meant a bought slave, used here as a title of belonging. The single word "greeting" was the standard opening formula of a Greek letter.

1:2

"Divers" is 1611 English for various. "Temptations" here means testings or hard circumstances of any kind, not an inner pull toward sin; the one Greek root covers both senses, and James turns on the difference in verses 13 and 14. "Brethren" addresses a whole congregation, men and women together.

1:3

"Patience" translates a word meaning holding your ground under weight, staying put under pressure, rather than waiting calmly. "Worketh" means produces or brings about.

1:4

"Perfect" here means finished, complete, having reached its proper end, not morally flawless. "Wanting" means lacking.

1:5

"Upbraideth not" means does not reproach or sneer, does not throw the request back in the asker's face.

1:8

"Double minded" renders a rare word meaning literally two souled: a person divided inside, pulled two ways at once. No Greek writer before James is known to use it.

1:9

"Of low degree" and "exalted" are social status terms, high and low position. The poor believer is told to boast in a high standing that is not visible in his circumstances.

1:10

The Greek of this verse says only "the rich" and does not repeat the word "brother" from verse 9, so it is left open whether James means a rich believer who has been humbled or the rich in general, whose fall is coming.

1:11

"Burning heat" translates a word that can mean scorching sunshine or the sirocco, the dry desert wind that could shrivel a field in a single day. "The grace of the fashion of it" means the beauty of its appearance.

1:12

"When he is tried" pictures metal assayed and found genuine. The "crown" is not a royal crown but a stephanos, the wreath given to the winner of a race or set on a guest's head at a feast.

1:13

"Tempted of God" means tempted by God; "of" carried that sense in 1611. The word that meant outward trial in verse 2 is used here in the narrower sense of being drawn toward evil.

1:14

"Lust" in 1611 English meant any strong desire, not only sexual desire. "Drawn away" and "enticed" are hunting and fishing words: the animal is lured out of cover, the fish is drawn to the bait.

1:15

The verse runs one continuous metaphor of conception, birth and growing up. "When it is finished" means when sin has come to full term or full growth, not when it stops.

1:16

"Do not err" means do not be led astray or taken in, not "do not make mistakes".

1:17

"Father of lights" means the maker of the sun, moon and stars. "Variableness" and "shadow of turning" borrow the vocabulary of those same lights: heavenly bodies shift, rise, set and throw moving shadows. James says God does not.

1:18

"Begat he us" means gave us birth. "Firstfruits" was the first portion of a harvest, brought to God before the rest could be used; the first sheaf both belonged to God and was the sign that the full crop was on its way.

1:20

"The righteousness of God" can mean the right conduct that God requires of people or the rightness that God himself produces. The Greek allows either reading.

1:21

"Naughtiness" in 1611 meant wickedness, with none of the modern sense of mild misbehavior, and "superfluity" means an excess or overflow of it. "Engrafted" translates a word meaning implanted or planted in, as a seed is set into soil. "Meekness" means a teachable lack of self assertion, not weakness.

1:23

"A glass" is a mirror. Ancient mirrors were disks of polished bronze or silver, usable but dim and somewhat distorted compared with modern glass.

1:25

"Looketh into" translates a verb meaning to stoop down and peer closely at something, deliberately set against the passing glance of verse 23. "Liberty" means freedom.

1:26

"Religious" and "religion" here translate words for the outward practice of worship: rites, observances and devotion in the form other people can see. That is narrower than the modern word. "Bridleth" is the image of a bit and reins controlling a horse. "Vain" means empty, worthless, with no result.

1:27

"Undefiled" and "unspotted" come from the vocabulary of ritual purity, describing something clean enough to be brought into God's presence. "To visit" means to go to someone in order to help them, not to pay a social call; the same verb is used of God coming to the aid of his people. "The fatherless and widows" were the standard pair for the most exposed people in that society, left without a male provider and with little standing to defend themselves in court.