James 2

1My brothers and sisters, you do not hold the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ while you show favoritism, do you? 2Say a man comes into your assembly with gold rings on his fingers and dressed in splendid clothes, and a poor man comes in too, in dirty clothes. 3You give your attention to the man in the splendid clothes and tell him, “Take this good seat here,” and you tell the poor man, “Stand,” or, “Sit on the floor down by my footstool.” 4Have you not drawn distinctions among yourselves and become judges whose reasoning is evil? 5Listen, my dear brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world’s eyes to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him? 6But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who exploit you? Are they not the very ones who drag you into court? 7Are they not the ones who slander the honorable name that was spoken over you? 8If you truly carry out the royal law as Scripture puts it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well. 9But if you show favoritism, you commit sin, and the law convicts you as lawbreakers. 10For if someone keeps the entire law and yet stumbles at one point, that person has become guilty of breaking all of it. 11For the one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” So if you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have still broken the law. 12Speak and act as people who are going to be judged by the law of freedom. 13Judgment will have no mercy on the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy wins out over judgment.

14What use is it, my brothers and sisters, for someone to claim faith if that person has no works? That faith cannot save the person, can it? 15Suppose a brother or sister has no proper clothes and not enough food for the day, 16and one of you tells them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat well,” but you do not give them what the body needs. What use is that? 17It is the same with faith: if it has no works, it is dead in itself.

18But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without any works, and I will show you my faith by means of my works. 19You believe that God is one? Well and good! The demons believe it too, and they tremble. 20Do you want to be shown, you empty-headed person, that faith without works does no work? 21Take Abraham our father: was it not by works that he was justified, when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22You can see that his faith worked together with his works, and his faith reached its goal through those works. 23So the Scripture came true that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24You see, then, that it is by works that a person is justified, and not by faith only. 25In the same way, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them off by a different road? 26Just as a body with no spirit in it is dead, so faith with no works is dead too.