Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters,<n id="1" /> or a vine produce figs? Neither can a salt water spring produce fresh water.p>

So too the tongue is a small part of the body,<n id="1" /> yet it has great pretensions.<n id="2" /> Think<n id="3" /> how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze.

For if someone<n id="1" /> comes into your assembly<n id="2" /> wearing a gold ring and fine clothing, and a poor person enters in filthy clothes,

<p class="bodytext">Come now, you who say, &#8220;Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that town<n id="1" /> and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.&#8221;

If a brother or sister<n id="1" /> is poorly clothed and lacks daily food,

You<n id="1" /> do not know about tomorrow. What is your life like?<n id="2" /> For you are a puff of smoke<n id="3" /> that appears for a short time and then vanishes.

since he is a double-minded individual,<n id="1" /> unstable in all his ways.p>

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

he should know that the one who turns a sinner back from his wandering path<n id="1" /> will save that person&#8217;s<n id="2" /> soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.p>

For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone<n id="1" /> who gazes at his own face<n id="2" /> in a mirror.

<t /><p class="bodytext">From James,<n id="1" /> a slave<n id="2" /> of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad.<n id="3" /> Greetings!p>

You have lived indulgently and luxuriously on the earth. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.<n id="1" />

<p class="bodytext">Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters.<n id="1" /> He who speaks against a fellow believer<n id="2" /> or judges a fellow believer speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but its judge.<n id="3" />

A spring does not pour out fresh water and bitter water from the same opening, does it?

But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless<n id="1" /> evil, full of deadly poison.

Speak and act as those who will be judged by a law that gives freedom.<n id="1" />

Then<n id="1" /> he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the land sprouted with a harvest.p>

Look at ships too: Though they are so large and driven by harsh winds, they are steered by a tiny rudder wherever the pilot&#8217;s inclination directs.

By his sovereign plan he gave us birth<n id="1" /> through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.p>

So confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great effectiveness.<n id="1" />