James Chapter 1

¹ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

² My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
Temptation here is from the Greek word peirasmos… it means trial or temptation. It can mean a situation where a person is given an opportunity to sin and this puts their commitment to God on trial. For example, a person is left alone with a pile of money during a time when the person is struggling financially. No one will know it they take it except for them and God. This is an opportunity to say no to sin and reaffirm the person’s faith that God will help them with their financial situation. The resistance is a lot more than just not taking the money. When we as humans desire something that we know we shouldn’t have, we can start to reason with our conscience, which might sound like this……
“God must have put this money here for me, knowing how badly I need it right now.”
“I’m going to take it, God will forgive me because he knows what I’m dealing with.”
We are to count it as a blessing to be joyful over when these situations occur because they are an opportunity to show ourselves where we are with our faith and commitment to God…. but also to bless God by counting our relationship more important than a quick gain of money. Each time we pass a trial like this, we grow stronger and wiser from it. We have to confront those rationalizations with the truth… “No, God did not put this money here for me to take, that would be stealing which is a sin. God doesn’t permit sin.” and “I don’t need to steal this money, God knows what I’m going through, and he will take care of me.” Meeting all those rationalizations with truth and resisting the temptation.
There is joy in knowing that you chose God over sin.
Another type of trial is when a situation happens where we have to rely completely on God for his guidance and help to overcome. This could be a situation our own sin got us in to or one that happened to us through no fault of our own that presents us with 2 paths to take, one is a Godly path and the other is a sinful path.

³ Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
The interlinear has it this way…. “Knowing that the testing of ye of the faith is producing endurance.”
Endurance is from the Greek word hypomonē meaning steadfastness, constancy, endurance, sustaining, perseverance.

⁴ But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
I used to view the trying of my faith as something to avoid. There is this saying “Never pray for patience because you will end up in a trial.” Well, first, God isn’t a trickster sitting there waiting for us to make a mistake like praying for patience so he can bring a trial down on us. God is a patient father who wants his children to grow up, grow stronger in faith and mature. When we look at a body builder, for example, they grow their muscles by working them to the point of exhaustion…. which creates small little tears in the muscle fibers. This is why you feel sore and stiff the day after working out hard…. then your body repairs these tears and adds reinforcements along with the repaired tissue, so the muscle will be bigger and stronger the next time. Another example is a tree’s roots that will snap off under strong wind…. then the roots will grow back stronger and deeper than before. Look at the Apostle Peter, who denied Jesus twice before the cock crowed… he was afraid of what was happening, so he stumbled and denied even knowing Jesus. He was filled with sorrow over this sin and the bible says in Luke 22:62 “And“…. Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” Peter repented and ended up growing from his fall, so later when it came time that Peter was also going to be crucified Peter was strong, having grown from that moment and from all the other trials he endured. He was made ready to face the death that he would glorify God with through his faith, and that faith was built by all the trials he endured. Every hard and difficult thing Peter endured made him ready for that moment.
Trials causes even the unsaved person to turn towards God, and if the person is already committed to God, this will be a time of growth. This is also where your armor is put to the test. The whole armor of God is given to us, but we have to develop it into the strong armor we need. We have the armor developed by first, understanding what each part is and how it functions as protection, secondly how to use this protection and thirdly BATTLE TESTING for weaknesses so we can strengthen those parts.

⁵ If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

If we are facing a situation and need wisdom on how to solve the problems we’re facing, we should go to God, who will give us the wisdom we seek.

⁶ But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

When we pray for God to give us wisdom we need to be ready to begin walking in the wisdom God imparts. If God imparts wisdom to us when we pray and we aren’t settled in making God’s wisdom the final authority we live by, then we are unstable.
God will give us the wisdom we need to face the situations we’re dealing with ….BUT, when we ask God for this wisdom, we need to be willing to do what God tells us to do…. or in other words, we need to ask expecting to follow through with the answer. We pray for wisdom to solve a problem, God will answer and the solution to this problem is to follow through with the wisdom God gave us… if we don’t do what the Lord God has instructed us to do, then there will be no other solution from God for this problem.


⁷ For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

⁸ A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

This brings to mind a person who professes to be a Christian and still reads the horoscopes and listens to psychics. These are contradictory to one another, and it leads to the person being spiritually unstable.

⁹ Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:

¹⁰ But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.

¹¹ For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

Poor people live by faith… every single bill gets paid for by faith…. their food is received by faith… their home is theirs by faith…. they pray about all of these things often and remain close to God because they know he provides for them and they are thankful to him for all he gives them. Life is always a struggle, and they know how to survive through faith. There is constant joy in the Lord because the Lord is always answering their prayers for survival.
The wealthy person never has to pray to get their needs met… they have money enough to pay the bills, eat, keep a roof over their head, buy a new car…. go on nice vacations etc…. they don’t need faith for their daily needs to be met…. so when they lose all of those things, or those things become useless to them, the person is destroyed by the loss… they have nothing without those things. now even though by the world’s standards they are on the same level financially as the poor person who lives by faith, the formerly wealthy is far more devastated by the same level of poverty because they lack the kind of long endurance faith they need to survive….and they have no pleasure in life….. the poor with faith have joy and this makes them stronger.

¹² Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

The trials we endure make us stronger and able to endure even greater trials next time. I remember when my own life fell apart…. I reached out to God, and it was hard… moment by moment I had to confess my faith that God had it under control. Months went by…. where I had to keep my confession of faith that God would take care of everything. When he showed me what to do… I did that and waited. When it was all over with, I was able to see clearly all the things God did on our behalf even before the situation began. I came out of this extremely hard battle stronger because I had to hold on to faith until it was exhausted….but like a muscle, my taxed faith came back with even stronger faith…. and patience because it didn’t happen overnight. When the next major battle kicked in…. I was stronger…. I could feel it…. and wiser because instantly wisdom came forward into my spirit to guide me…. I hear God better…. I’m calmer in this battle… not always, but more than before…. and I’m brought to tears in praising God for allowing me to go through the battle and winning the victory for me, knowing God is in control.

¹³ Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

¹⁴ But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

The second we begin bargin with truth, the lust door is open. Two examples are first Eve in the garden who when Satan began to tempt her she started to consider what Satan was saying…. she ended up checking out the fruit and rationalizing that the fruit looked good to eat and would give her a new level of knowledge…. and she ate this fruit, fed it to Adam and all of mankind fell into sin. Satan created a lust in Eve and Eve was lead away by it. God wasn’t there enticing Eve, he had already forbidden this fruit with Adam.
The next example is Jesus… he had been fasting 40 days and nights… he was in the widerness and was hungry…. then Satan said, “Command these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Then Satan tried to get Jesus to jump off of a pinnacle of the temple saying that he wouldn’t be harmed, God would protect him if he was the Son of God. Jesus answered with, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Then Satan took Jesus to the see all the kindoms of the world and said he would give them to Jesus if he fell down and worshipped him and Jesus answered, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” And Satan left and the Angels came to minister to Jesus.
Temptation and trials are not sins….and the desire for something isn’t either… like Jesus was hungry because he had been fasting for 40 days….his hunger was natural. Satan was trying to get him to lust for bread because of this hunger….but Jesus shut down this attempt with “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Jesus did not allow the lust any room and shut it down before it could draw him away. Eve started out by saying that God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would die. Then Satan said “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Then Eve started checking out the fruit… the bible says, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

Jesus quoted God’s wisdom by quoting the scriptures as a response to the temptations of the devil.

15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

Lust was conceived when Eve started considering the fruit….and when it was finished, she ate the fruit and gave it to Adam….and mankind died spiritually and slowly they began to die physically.

¹⁶ Do not err, my beloved brethren.

¹⁷ Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

¹⁸ Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

¹⁹ Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

We need to be reasonable and willing to be reasoned with and to control our mouth…and our anger.

²⁰ For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

We must contain the fleshly wrath and not allow it to control our flesh.The flesh in a moment of rage can do things that can not be fixed or undone. In a moment of unchecked anger lives are destroyed and ruined.

²¹ Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

Subdue sin and receive the engrafted word…. which is able to save our soul. The Word is Jesus, Jesus died for us to reconcile us to God. When Adam sinned, the connection to eternal life with God died…..we were cut off from God because of it. Jesus then came here, born of a virgin… conceived when the Holy Spirit came over Mary. Jesus was born… lived a sinless life, was cruicified for our sins…. he laid down his life to pay this price that we could not pay….so we could be reconciled to God and like Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, we who believe and receive his gift of salvation are resurrected into life again and reconnected to God…. like Adam was before the fall.

²² But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

We must commit to doing the word…. or another way is to say FOLLOWING JESUS. Lots of people know about Jesus…. and lots of them can quote verses of the Bible… but what we are called to do is to LIVE the word of God…. to make the WORD of GOD the way be live our life. If we truly do accept Jesus as our savior…. then we accept the Word as true and his way as truth…. and if we accept that Jesus is the way and the truth and the Life and no one is saved without knowing that… then there will be evidence of this because we will live our lives governed by the Word. Receiving Jesus is to become ONE with the Word.

²³ For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

²⁴ For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

It’s not enough to say you follow the word of God…..you have to do what the word says….and we all fall short, that’s why Jesus died for our sins, so we can be forgiven.

²⁵ But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

²⁶ If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

This is not the slip of the tongue as much as it is the practice of sinful communications. Examples are people who say mean things, use vulgarities, curse words, gossiping, lies and sowers of doubt.

²⁷ Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.