James 2

Warning against Prejudice

1 My friends, as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, you must never treat people in different ways according to their outward appearance.

2 Suppose a rich man wearing a gold ring and fine clothes comes to your meeting, and a poor man in ragged clothes also comes.

3 If you show more respect to the well-dressed man and say to him, “Have this best seat here,” but say to the poor man, “Stand over there, or sit here on the floor by my feet,”

4 then you are guilty of creating distinctions among yourselves and of making judgments based on evil motives.

5 Listen, my dear friends! God chose the poor people of this world to be rich in faith and to possess the kingdom which he promised to those who love him.

6 But you dishonor the poor! Who are the ones who oppress you and drag you before the judges? The rich!

7 They are the ones who speak evil of that good name which has been given to you.

8 You will be doing the right thing if you obey the law of the Kingdom, which is found in the scripture, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

9 But if you treat people according to their outward appearance, you are guilty of sin, and the Law condemns you as a lawbreaker.

10 Whoever breaks one commandment is guilty of breaking them all.

11 For the same one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Even if you do not commit adultery, you have become a lawbreaker if you commit murder.

12 Speak and act as people who will be judged by the law that sets us free.

13 For God will not show mercy when he judges the person who has not been merciful; but mercy triumphs over judgment.

Faith and Actions

14 My friends, what good is it for one of you to say that you have faith if your actions do not prove it? Can that faith save you?

15 Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don’t have enough to eat.

16 What good is there in your saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!”—if you don’t give them the necessities of life?

17 So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead.

18 But someone will say, “One person has faith, another has actions.” My answer is, “Show me how anyone can have faith without actions. I will show you my faith by my actions.”

19 Do you believe that there is only one God? Good! The demons also believe—and tremble with fear.

20 You fool! Do you want to be shown that faith without actions is useless?

21 How was our ancestor Abraham put right with God? It was through his actions, when he offered his son Isaac on the altar.

22 Can’t you see? His faith and his actions worked together; his faith was made perfect through his actions.

23 And the scripture came true that said, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” And so Abraham was called God’s friend.

24 You see, then, that it is by our actions that we are put right with God, and not by our faith alone.

25 It was the same with the prostitute Rahab. She was put right with God through her actions, by welcoming the Israelite spies and helping them to escape by a different road.

26 So then, as the body without the spirit is dead, also faith without actions is dead.

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James 3

The Tongue

1 My friends, not many of you should become teachers. As you know, we teachers will be judged with greater strictness than others.

2 All of us often make mistakes. But if a person never makes a mistake in what he says, he is perfect and is also able to control his whole being.

3 We put a bit into the mouth of a horse to make it obey us, and we are able to make it go where we want.

4 Or think of a ship: big as it is and driven by such strong winds, it can be steered by a very small rudder, and it goes wherever the pilot wants it to go.

5 So it is with the tongue: small as it is, it can boast about great things.

Just think how large a forest can be set on fire by a tiny flame!

6 And the tongue is like a fire. It is a world of wrong, occupying its place in our bodies and spreading evil through our whole being. It sets on fire the entire course of our existence with the fire that comes to it from hell itself.

7 We humans are able to tame and have tamed all other creatures—wild animals and birds, reptiles and fish.

8 But no one has ever been able to tame the tongue. It is evil and uncontrollable, full of deadly poison.

9 We use it to give thanks to our Lord and Father and also to curse other people, who are created in the likeness of God.

10 Words of thanksgiving and cursing pour out from the same mouth. My friends, this should not happen!

11 No spring of water pours out sweet water and bitter water from the same opening.

12 A fig tree, my friends, cannot bear olives; a grapevine cannot bear figs, nor can a salty spring produce sweet water.

The Wisdom from Above

13 Are there any of you who are wise and understanding? You are to prove it by your good life, by your good deeds performed with humility and wisdom.

14 But if in your heart you are jealous, bitter, and selfish, don’t sin against the truth by boasting of your wisdom.

15 Such wisdom does not come down from heaven; it belongs to the world, it is unspiritual and demonic.

16 Where there is jealousy and selfishness, there is also disorder and every kind of evil.

17 But the wisdom from above is pure first of all; it is also peaceful, gentle, and friendly; it is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deeds; it is free from prejudice and hypocrisy.

18 And goodness is the harvest that is produced from the seeds the peacemakers plant in peace.

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James 4

Friendship with the World

1 Where do all the fights and quarrels among you come from? They come from your desires for pleasure, which are constantly fighting within you.

2 You want things, but you cannot have them, so you are ready to kill; you strongly desire things, but you cannot get them, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have what you want because you do not ask God for it.

3 And when you ask, you do not receive it, because your motives are bad; you ask for things to use for your own pleasures.

4 Unfaithful people! Don’t you know that to be the world’s friend means to be God’s enemy? If you want to be the world’s friend, you make yourself God’s enemy.

5 Don’t think that there is no truth in the scripture that says, “The spirit that God placed in us is filled with fierce desires.”

6 But the grace that God gives is even stronger. As the scripture says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

7 So then, submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will run away from you.

8 Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you hypocrites!

9 Be sorrowful, cry, and weep; change your laughter into crying, your joy into gloom!

10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Warning against Judging One Another

11 Do not criticize one another, my friends. If you criticize or judge another Christian, you criticize and judge the Law. If you judge the Law, then you are no longer one who obeys the Law, but one who judges it.

12 God is the only lawgiver and judge. He alone can save and destroy. Who do you think you are, to judge someone else?

Warning against Boasting

13 Now listen to me, you that say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to a certain city, where we will stay a year and go into business and make a lot of money.”

14 You don’t even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears.

15 What you should say is this: “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.”

16 But now you are proud, and you boast; all such boasting is wrong.

17 So then, if we do not do the good we know we should do, we are guilty of sin.

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James 5

Warning to the Rich

1 And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you!

2 Your riches have rotted away, and your clothes have been eaten by moths.

3 Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire. You have piled up riches in these last days.

4 You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty.

5 Your life here on earth has been full of luxury and pleasure. You have made yourselves fat for the day of slaughter.

6 You have condemned and murdered innocent people, and they do not resist you.

Patience and Prayer

7 Be patient, then, my friends, until the Lord comes. See how patient farmers are as they wait for their land to produce precious crops. They wait patiently for the autumn and spring rains.

8 You also must be patient. Keep your hopes high, for the day of the Lord’s coming is near.

9 Do not complain against one another, my friends, so that God will not judge you. The Judge is near, ready to appear.

10 My friends, remember the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Take them as examples of patient endurance under suffering.

11 We call them happy because they endured. You have heard of Job’s patience, and you know how the Lord provided for him in the end. For the Lord is full of mercy and compassion.

12 Above all, my friends, do not use an oath when you make a promise. Do not swear by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Say only “Yes” when you mean yes, and “No” when you mean no, and then you will not come under God’s judgment.

13 Are any among you in trouble? They should pray. Are any among you happy? They should sing praises.

14 Are any among you sick? They should send for the church elders, who will pray for them and rub olive oil on them in the name of the Lord.

15 This prayer made in faith will heal the sick; the Lord will restore them to health, and the sins they have committed will be forgiven.

16 So then, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you will be healed. The prayer of a good person has a powerful effect.

17 Elijah was the same kind of person as we are. He prayed earnestly that there would be no rain, and no rain fell on the land for three and a half years.

18 Once again he prayed, and the sky poured out its rain and the earth produced its crops.

19 My friends, if any of you wander away from the truth and another one brings you back again,

20 remember this: whoever turns a sinner back from the wrong way will save that sinner’s soulfrom death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.

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Hebrews 1

God’s Word through His Son

1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways through the prophets,

2 but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son. He is the one through whom God created the universe, the one whom God has chosen to possess all things at the end.

3 He reflects the brightness of God’s glory and is the exact likeness of God’s own being, sustaining the universe with his powerful word. After achieving forgiveness for the sins of all human beings, he sat down in heaven at the right side of God, the Supreme Power.

The Greatness of God’s Son

4 The Son was made greater than the angels, just as the name that God gave him is greater than theirs.

5 For God never said to any of his angels,

“You are my Son;

today I have become your Father.”

Nor did God say about any angel,

“I will be his Father,

and he will be my Son.”

6 But when God was about to send his first-born Son into the world, he said,

“All of God’s angels must worship him.”

7 But about the angels God said,

“God makes his angels winds,

and his servants flames of fire.”

8 About the Son, however, God said:

“Your kingdom, O God, will lastforever and ever!

You rule over yourpeople with justice.

9 You love what is right and hate what is wrong.

That is why God, your God, has chosen you

and has given you the joy of an honor far greater

than he gave to your companions.”

10 He also said,

“You, Lord, in the beginning created the earth,

and with your own hands you made the heavens.

11 They will disappear, but you will remain;

they will all wear out like clothes.

12 You will fold them up like a coat,

and they will be changed like clothes.

But you are always the same,

and your life never ends.”

13 God never said to any of his angels:

“Sit here at my right side

until I put your enemies

as a footstool under your feet.”

14 What are the angels, then? They are spirits who serve God and are sent by him to help those who are to receive salvation.

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Hebrews 2

The Great Salvation

1 That is why we must hold on all the more firmly to the truths we have heard, so that we will not be carried away.

2 The message given to our ancestors by the angels was shown to be true, and those who did not follow it or obey it received the punishment they deserved.

3 How, then, shall we escape if we pay no attention to such a great salvation? The Lord himself first announced this salvation, and those who heard him proved to us that it is true.

4 At the same time God added his witness to theirs by performing all kinds of miracles and wonders and by distributing the gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his will.

The One Who Leads Us to Salvation

5 God has not placed the angels as rulers over the new world to come—the world of which we speak.

6 Instead, as it is said somewhere in the Scriptures:

“What are human beings, O God, that you should think of them;

mere human beings, that you should care for them?

7 You made them for a little while lower than the angels;

you crowned them with glory and honor,

8 and made them rulers over all things.”

It says that God made them “rulers over all things”; this clearly includes everything. We do not, however, see human beings ruling over all things now.

9 But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that through God’s grace he should die for everyone. We see him now crowned with glory and honor because of the death he suffered.

10 It was only right that God, who creates and preserves all things, should make Jesus perfect through suffering, in order to bring many children to share his glory. For Jesus is the one who leads them to salvation.

11 He purifies people from their sins, and both he and those who are made pure all have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his family.

12 He says to God,

“I will tell my people what you have done;

I will praise you in their meeting.”

13 He also says, “I will put my trust in God.” And he also says, “Here I am with the children that God has given me.”

14 Since the children, as he calls them, are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like them and shared their human nature. He did this so that through his death he might destroy the Devil, who has the power over death,

15 and in this way set free those who were slaves all their lives because of their fear of death.

16 For it is clear that it is not the angels that he helps. Instead, he helps the descendants of Abraham.

17 This means that he had to become like his people in every way, in order to be their faithful and merciful High Priest in his service to God, so that the people’s sins would be forgiven.

18 And now he can help those who are tempted, because he himself was tempted and suffered.

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Hebrews 3

Jesus Is Greater than Moses

1 My Christian friends, who also have been called by God! Think of Jesus, whom God sent to be the High Priest of the faith we profess.

2 He was faithful to God, who chose him to do this work, just as Moses was faithful in his work in God’s house.

3 A man who builds a house receives more honor than the house itself. In the same way Jesus is worthy of much greater honor than Moses.

4 Every house, of course, is built by someone—and God is the one who has built all things.

5 Moses was faithful in God’s house as a servant, and he spoke of the things that God would say in the future.

6 But Christ is faithful as the Son in charge of God’s house. We are his house if we keep up our courage and our confidence in what we hope for.

A Rest for God’s People

7 So then, as the Holy Spirit says,

“If you hear God’s voice today,

8 do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were when they rebelled against God,

as they were that day in the desert when they put him to the test.

9 There they put me to the test and tried me, says God,

although they had seen what I did for forty years.

10 And so I was angry with those people and said,

‘They are always disloyal

and refuse to obey my commands.’

11 I was angry and made a solemn promise:

‘They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!’”

12 My friends, be careful that none of you have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from the living God.

13 Instead, in order that none of you be deceived by sin and become stubborn, you must help one another every day, as long as the word “Today” in the scripture applies to us.

14 For we are all partners with Christ if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at the beginning.

15 This is what the scripture says:

“If you hear God’s voice today,

do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were

when they rebelled against God.”

16 Who were the people who heard God’s voice and rebelled against him? All those who were led out of Egypt by Moses.

17 With whom was God angry for forty years? With the people who sinned, who fell down dead in the desert.

18 When God made his solemn promise, “They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest”—of whom was he speaking? Of those who rebelled.

19 We see, then, that they were not able to enter the land, because they did not believe.

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Hebrews 4

1 Now, God has offered us the promise that we may receive that rest he spoke about. Let us take care, then, that none of you will be found to have failed to receive that promised rest.

2 For we have heard the Good News, just as they did. They heard the message, but it did them no good, because when they heard it, they did not accept it with faith.

3 We who believe, then, do receive that rest which God promised. It is just as he said,

“I was angry and made a solemn promise:

‘They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!’”

He said this even though his work had been finished from the time he created the world.

4 For somewhere in the Scriptures this is said about the seventh day: “God rested on the seventh day from all his work.”

5 This same matter is spoken of again: “They will never enter that land where I would have given them rest.”

6 Those who first heard the Good News did not receive that rest, because they did not believe. There are, then, others who are allowed to receive it.

7 This is shown by the fact that God sets another day, which is called “Today.” Many years later he spoke of it through David in the scripture already quoted:

“If you hear God’s voice today,

do not be stubborn.”

8 If Joshua had given the people the rest that God had promised, God would not have spoken later about another day.

9 As it is, however, there still remains for God’s people a rest like God’s resting on the seventh day.

10 For those who receive that rest which God promised will rest from their own work, just as God rested from his.

11 Let us, then, do our best to receive that rest, so that no one of us will fail as they did because of their lack of faith.

12 The word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It cuts all the way through, to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow come together. It judges the desires and thoughts of the heart.

13 There is nothing that can be hid from God; everything in all creation is exposed and lies open before his eyes. And it is to him that we must all give an account of ourselves.

Jesus the Great High Priest

14 Let us, then, hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God—Jesus, the Son of God.

15 Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin.

16 Let us have confidence, then, and approach God’s throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.

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Hebrews 5

1 Every high priest is chosen from his fellow-men and appointed to serve God on their behalf, to offer sacrifices and offerings for sins.

2 Since he himself is weak in many ways, he is able to be gentle with those who are ignorant and make mistakes.

3 And because he is himself weak, he must offer sacrifices not only for the sins of the people but also for his own sins.

4 No one chooses for himself the honor of being a high priest. It is only by God’s call that a man is made a high priest—just as Aaron was.

5 In the same way, Christ did not take upon himself the honor of being a high priest. Instead, God said to him,

“You are my Son;

today I have become your Father.”

6 He also said in another place,

“You will be a priest forever,

in the priestly order of Melchizedek.”

7 In his life on earth Jesus made his prayers and requests with loud cries and tears to God, who could save him from death. Because he was humble and devoted, God heard him.

8 But even though he was God’s Son, he learned through his sufferings to be obedient.

9 When he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him,

10 and God declared him to be high priest, in the priestly order of Melchizedek.

Warning against Abandoning the Faith

11 There is much we have to say about this matter, but it is hard to explain to you, because you are so slow to understand.

12 There has been enough time for you to be teachers—yet you still need someone to teach you the first lessons of God’s message. Instead of eating solid food, you still have to drink milk.

13 Anyone who has to drink milk is still a child, without any experience in the matter of right and wrong.

14 Solid food, on the other hand, is for adults, who through practice are able to distinguish between good and evil.

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Hebrews 6

1 Let us go forward, then, to mature teaching and leave behind us the first lessons of the Christian message. We should not lay again the foundation of turning away from useless works and believing in God;

2 of the teaching about baptismsand the laying on of hands; of the resurrection of the dead and the eternal judgment.

3 Let us go forward! And this is what we will do, if God allows.

4 For how can those who abandon their faith be brought back to repent again? They were once in God’s light; they tasted heaven’s gift and received their share of the Holy Spirit;

5 they knew from experience that God’s word is good, and they had felt the powers of the coming age.

6 And then they abandoned their faith! It is impossible to bring them back to repent again, because they are again crucifying the Son of God and exposing him to public shame.

7 God blesses the soil which drinks in the rain that often falls on it and which grows plants that are useful to those for whom it is cultivated.

8 But if it grows thorns and weeds, it is worth nothing; it is in danger of being cursed by God and will be destroyed by fire.

9 But even if we speak like this, dear friends, we feel sure about you. We know that you have the better blessings that belong to your salvation.

10 God is not unfair. He will not forget the work you did or the love you showed for him in the help you gave and are still giving to other Christians.

11 Our great desire is that each of you keep up your eagerness to the end, so that the things you hope for will come true.

12 We do not want you to become lazy, but to be like those who believe and are patient, and so receive what God has promised.

God’s Sure Promise

13 When God made his promise to Abraham, he made a vow to do what he had promised. Since there was no one greater than himself, he used his own name when he made his vow.

14 He said, “I promise you that I will bless you and give you many descendants.”

15 Abraham was patient, and so he received what God had promised.

16 When we make a vow, we use the name of someone greater than ourselves, and the vow settles all arguments.

17 To those who were to receive what he promised, God wanted to make it very clear that he would never change his purpose; so he added his vow to the promise.

18 There are these two things, then, that cannot change and about which God cannot lie. So we who have found safety with him are greatly encouraged to hold firmly to the hope placed before us.

19 We have this hope as an anchor for our lives. It is safe and sure, and goes through the curtain of the heavenly temple into the inner sanctuary.

20 On our behalf Jesus has gone in there before us and has become a high priest forever, in the priestly order of Melchizedek.

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