James 1:4

1:4 And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything.

James 1:2

Joy in Trials

1:2 My brothers and sisters, ¹  consider it nothing but joy ²  when you fall into all sorts of trials,

James 4:5

4:5 Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, ³  “The spirit that God ⁴  caused ⁵  to live within us has an envious yearning”? ⁶ 

James 1:6

1:6 But he must ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed around by the wind.

James 1:23

1:23 For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone ⁷  who gazes at his own face ⁸  in a mirror.

James 2:14

Faith and Works Together

2:14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, ⁹  if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can this kind of faith ¹⁰  save him? ¹¹ 

James 1:11

1:11 For the sun rises with its heat and dries up the meadow; the petal of the flower falls off and its beauty is lost forever. ¹²  So also the rich person in the midst of his pursuits will wither away.

James 2:16

2:16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,” but you do not give them what the body needs, ¹³  what good is it?

¹ tn Grk “brothers,” but the Greek word may be used for “brothers and sisters” or “fellow Christians” as here (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 1, where considerable nonbiblical evidence for the plural ἀδελφοί [adelfoi] meaning “brothers and sisters” is cited). Where the plural term is used in direct address, as here, “brothers and sisters” is used; where the term is singular and not direct address (as in v. 9), “believer” is preferred.

² tn Grk “all joy,” “full joy,” or “greatest joy.”

¹ tn Grk “vainly says.”

² tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tc The Byzantine text and a few other mss (P 33 Ï) have the intransitive κατῴκησεν (katwkhsen) here, which turns τὸ πνεῦμα (to pneuma) into the subject of the verb: “The spirit which lives within us.” But the more reliable and older witnesses (Ì⁷⁴ א B Ψ 049 1241 1739 al) have the causative verb, κατῴκισεν (katwkisen), which implies a different subject and τὸ πνεῦμα as the object: “The spirit that he causes to live within us.” Both because of the absence of an explicit subject and the relative scarcity of the causative κατοικίζω (katoikizw, “cause to dwell”) compared to the intransitive κατοικέω (katoikew, “live, dwell”) in biblical Greek (κατοικίζω does not occur in the NT at all, and occurs one twelfth as frequently as κατοικέω in the LXX), it is easy to see why scribes would replace κατῴκισεν with κατῴκησεν. Thus, on internal and external grounds, κατῴκισεν is the preferred reading.

⁴ tn Interpreters debate the referent of the word “spirit” in this verse: (1) The translation takes “spirit” to be the lustful capacity within people that produces a divided mind (1:8, 14) and inward conflicts regarding God (4:1-4). God has allowed it to be in man since the fall, and he provides his grace (v. 6) and the new birth through the gospel message (1:18-25) to counteract its evil effects. (2) On the other hand the word “spirit” may be taken positively as the Holy Spirit and the sense would be, “God yearns jealously for the Spirit he caused to live within us.” But the word for “envious” or “jealous” is generally negative in biblical usage and the context before and after seems to favor the negative interpretation.

¹ tn The word for “man” or “individual” is ἀνήρ (anhr), which often means “male” or “man (as opposed to woman).” However, as BDAG 79 s.v. 2 says, here it is “equivalent to τὶς someone, a person.”

² tn Grk “the face of his beginning [or origin].”

¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

² tn Grk “the faith,” referring to the kind of faith just described: faith without works. The article here is anaphoric, referring to the previous mention of the noun πίστις (pisti") in the verse. See ExSyn 219.

³ sn The form of the question in Greek expects a negative answer.

¹ tn Or “perishes,” “is destroyed.”

¹ tn Grk “what is necessary for the body.”