James

¹ From: Jacob, a worker enslaved to God and Lord Jesus Christ

To: The twelve tribes that are scattered.

Rejoice!

² My Family, be brought to full joy when you fall into all sorts of tests, ³ knowing that examination of your faithfulness results in perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance have its complete work so that you can be complete and whole and not fall short with anything. ⁵ If someone among you falls short in wisdom, have them ask for it from the God who gives to everyone liberally and without criticizing, and it will be given to them. ⁶ Have them ask with trust, not separating themselves from everyone; whoever separates themselves is like a surging wave of the sea, driven and agitated by the wind. ⁷ That person must not think that they will receive anything from the Lord ⁸ as an individual with a double life, unstable on all their paths.

⁹ Have the low status member of the Family take pride in how high their status is, ¹⁰ but have the wealthy take pride in their low status because they will pass away like a flower in a meadow. ¹¹ The sun rises along with its scorching heat and dries up the meadow, and the flower falls off, and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed. This is also how the wealthy person will be withered away during their pursuits. ¹² The individual who endures examination is gratified because since they have come to be verified as genuine, they will receive the laurel crown, the life that was promised to those who love God. ¹³ No one who is being tested should say, “I am tested by God.” God is untestable by cruelties, so God tests no one. ¹⁴ Each person is tested by their own desires, lured out and baited. ¹⁵ Then after the desire conceives, it gives birth to deviation, and when the deviation has grown up, it gives birth to death.

¹⁶ Do not be misled, my beloved Family. ¹⁷ Every generous act of giving and every completed gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, from whom there is no change or shadow of turning. ¹⁸ After deciding to do so, God gave birth to us through the discussion of truth for us to be something of an offering of the first portion of the things created by God.

¹⁹ Understand this, my beloved Family. Each person should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. ²⁰ An individual’s anger does not accomplish God’s justice. ²¹ Because of that, put away all filth—overflowing hostility. With gentleness, accept the conversation germinating within you that is able to liberate your very beings.

²² Become people who live by the conversation and not only people who hear it, having aligned yourselves with a different line of thinking. ²³ Because if someone hears the conversation but doesn’t live by it, they are like an individual who focuses their mind on the outward appearance reflected in a mirror ²⁴ since they focus their mind on themselves and go away and immediately forget what sort of person they were. ²⁵ But whoever studies the complete Torah, which is of freedom, and stays with it—not turning out to be a forgetful hearer but someone who does the work—that person will be gratified with what they do. ²⁶ If anyone thinks they are loyal to God—without guiding their tongue as if with a bit and bridle—but is deceiving their heart, their loyalty to God is useless. ²⁷ Loyalty that is clean and uncontaminated in the view of our God and Father is this: watching over orphans and widows during their oppression, carefully keeping yourself unstained by the world system.

¹ My Family, have the faithfulness of our shining example, Lord Jesus Christ, not preferential treatment of people with high status. ² If an individual wearing gold rings comes into your gathering place in expensive clothes and someone experiencing poverty comes in with filthy clothes, ³ do you give your attention to one wearing expensive clothes and say, “You are welcome to sit here,” and say to the person experiencing poverty, “You stand there,” or “Sit under my footstool”? ⁴ Have you not created separation between yourselves and become judges presiding over harmful deliberations?

⁵ Listen, my beloved Family! Didn’t God choose those who are in poverty within the world’s system to be wealthy with faithfulness and heirs of the Reign that was promised to those who love God? ⁶ But you have treated people experiencing poverty as worthless. Don’t wealthy people abuse their power over you and drag you into court? ⁷ Aren’t they utterly disrespecting the respectable name given to you? ⁸ Nevertheless, if you complete the royal Torah based on this scripture, “You will love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. ⁹ But if you give preferential treatment based on high status, you are producing deviation and are exposed by the Torah as sidesteppers. ¹⁰ You see, whoever pays attention to the whole Torah but stumbles with one thing has become liable for all of them ¹¹ since the one who said, “Do not engage in marital unfaithfulness,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you don’t engage in marital unfaithfulness but still murder, you have sidestepped Torah. ¹² Speak like and act like people who are going to be assessed based on a Torah of freedom. ¹³ The legal sentence that is without compassion is for those who didn’t practice compassion. Compassion prides itself in being above the sentence.

¹⁴ My Family, what is the benefit if someone claims to have trust but doesn’t have actions? Can that trust liberate them? ¹⁵ If a poorly dressed brother or sister starts the day and food is lacking, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Go peacefully. Stay warm and eat well,” but doesn’t give them what their body needs, what is the benefit? ¹⁷ That’s how trust is too; if it doesn’t have actions, it’s dead by itself. ¹⁸ Nevertheless, someone will say, “You have trust, and I have actions.” Show me your trust with actions, and I will show you trust by my actions. ¹⁹ You trust that God is one; you’re doing well. Demons also trust it and are terrified.

²⁰ Do you want to learn, you purposeless person, that trust without actions is useless? ²¹ Wasn’t our father Abraham shown to be in alignment by actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? ²² You see, trust was working together with his actions, and trust was made complete by his actions. ²³ And the scripture was lived out that says, “Abraham faithfully trusted God, and it was credited to him as justness,” and he was called ‘God’s friend’ ²⁴ You see, a person is shown to be just by actions and not by trust alone. ²⁵ Similarly, wasn’t Rahab (the one who was a sex worker) also shown to be just by actions when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another way? ²⁶ Like the body without the Life-breath is dead, trust without actions is also dead in the same way.

¹ My Family, don’t have many of you become teachers, having understood that we will receive a more thorough assessment ² since we all stumble a lot. If anyone doesn’t stumble with what they say, they are a mature individual, being also able to guide the whole body as if with a bridle. ³ If we bridle horses, putting bits in their mouths to persuade them for us, then we direct their whole bodies. ⁴ Look at ships too: while they are so large and driven by rough storm winds, they are directed by the smallest rudder wherever the impulse of the pilot wants. ⁵ In the same way, the tongue is a small part of the body yet acts as if it were big.

Look, such a small fire starts such a large forest burning. ⁶ The tongue is that fire. The tongue is the unjust world system showing up among the parts of our bodies when it contaminates the whole body, and it is ignited by the Hinnom Valley. ⁷ Every kind of wild animal—even birds, reptiles, and sea creatures—is tamed and has been tamed by every human group, ⁸ but no one is able to tame the tongue of humans, which is unstable, cruel, and full of deadly poison. ⁹ We praise the Lord and Father with it, and we speak contemptuously against people who are made according to the image of God with it. ¹⁰ Out of the same mouth comes praise and contempt. My Family, these things must not to become that way. ¹¹ Would it be possible for a spring to gush with sweet and bitter water from the same opening? ¹² My Family, can a fig tree produce olives or a vine produce figs? Saltwater can’t produce sweet water either.

¹³ Who is wise and knowledgeable among you? Have them show their actions by the kind way they live with the gentleness that comes from wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you have bitter competitiveness and self-promotion in your heart, do not boast of being better than others and tell lies against the truth. ¹⁵ This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but just the opposite, it’s from the ground, selfish, demonic. ¹⁶ Where there is competitiveness and self-promotion, there is instability and every mean-spirited practice. ¹⁷ But the wisdom that’s truly from above is first pure, then peaceable, equitable, open-minded, full of committed compassion and honorable fruit, nondiscriminatory, not acting under false pretenses. ¹⁸ The fruit—justness—is planted with peace between those who make peace.

¹ Where are battles and fights among you coming from? Isn’t it from here: from your desire for pleasures waging war between the parts among you? ² Your desires are set on what you don’t have; you murder and ambitiously contend, and you can’t obtain it. You fight and battle. You don’t have it because of you not asking; ³ you ask but don’t receive it because you ask belligerently so that you can waste it with your desire for pleasures.

⁴ You unfaithful people! Haven’t you understood that friendship with the world system is enmity with God? So, whoever decides to be a friend of the world system positions themselves as an enemy of God. ⁵ Or, do you think that the scripture says emptily, “The Life-breath which took up residence among us misses you, resulting in jealousy.” ⁶ But God provides bigger generosity. That’s why it says, “God resists the arrogant, but provides generosity to people of low status.” ⁷ Therefore, cooperate with God, but resist the False Accuser and it will flee from you. ⁸ Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Deviators, cleanse your hands; you with double lives, purify your motivations. ⁹ Feel the misery, express grief, and weep. Let your laughter be turned around toward mourning, and your joy toward sorrow. ¹⁰ Be lowered in the Lord’s presence, and the Lord will lift you up.

¹¹ Family, don’t malign each other. Whoever maligns a member of the Family or sit in judgment over their Family member maligns Torah and sits in judgment over Torah. If you sit in judgment over Torah, then you’re not someone who lives out Torah but its judge instead. ¹² There is one Torah-giver and judge who is able to liberate and destroy. So, who are you to be a judge over your neighbor?

¹³ Now, come on, whichever of you says, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to some city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit,” ¹⁴ you who don’t consider what your lives will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that’s visible for a short time and then invisible. ¹⁵ It’s the opposite of you saying, “If the Lord wants, then we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ But as it is, you boast about your pretentiousness. All boasting of that kind is harmful. ¹⁷ Whoever has learned to behave kindly but doesn’t do it, deviation is with them.

¹ Now, come on, you who are wealthy, weep—wailing at the hardships coming upon you! ² Your wealth has rotted, and your clothing has become moth-eaten. ³ Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be a testament for you, and it will consume your body like fire. You hoarded assets in the final days. ⁴ Look, the pay of the workers who harvested your fields that you deprived them of cries out from you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of The-Lord-of-the-Multitudes. ⁵ You lived indulgently and luxuriously in the land, feeding your hearts’ desires during a day of slaughter. ⁶ You have rendered judgment against and murdered the just person, without the just person resisting you.

⁷ Therefore, Family, patiently persevere until the Lord’s arrival. Look how the farmer anticipates the valued produce from the land, patiently persevering for it until they receive the early and late rains. ⁸ You too, patiently persevere and secure your motivations because the Lord’s arrival is close. ⁹ Family, don’t complain against each other so that you won’t be assessed. Look, the judge stands in front of the gates!

¹⁰ Family, accept the example of suffering and patient perseverance from the prophets who spoke representing the Lord. ¹¹ Look, we gratify those who endured it. You heard of Job’s endurance, and you saw the Lord at the end, that the Lord is full of motherly love and compassionate.

¹² Now, my Family, before anything else, don’t swear an oath, neither by the land nor by any other oath. Have your ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no,’ so you don’t fall under assessment.

¹³ Have anyone suffering hardship among you pray. Have anyone who is happy sing praise. ¹⁴ Have anyone chronically ill among you call the elders of the assembly to them, and have them pray for the person, anointing them with olive oil as a representative of the Lord. ¹⁵ The trusting prayer will restore the person who is sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and if deviations have been made, the Lord will dismiss them. ¹⁶ Therefore, acknowledge deviations to each other, and pray for each other that you would be healed. The request of a just person is powerful when it’s at work. ¹⁷ Elijah was a person like us, and he prayed a prayer for it not to rain, and it didn’t rain in the land for three years and six months! ¹⁸ Then he prayed again, and the heavens provided rain, and the land produced its fruit.

¹⁹ My Family, if anyone among you is misled away from the truth and someone turns them back around, ²⁰ let them know that whoever turns a deviator back around from their misleading path rescues their very life from death and covers over a huge number of deviations.