James 1-2

EasyEnglish Bible

James says ‘Hello’

1 This letter is from me, James. I am a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.^[a]

I am writing to the 12 tribes of God's people who live in many different parts of the world. I say ‘hello’ to all of you.^[b]

What to do when you have troubles

² My Christian friends, remember to be happy, even when many kinds of trouble happen to you. Troubles can help you. ³ God wants to see if you really trust him. Your faith in God will become stronger as a result of these troubles. ⁴ So you should continue to trust God all the time. Then you will become stronger as a believer. You will become completely how you should be. You will not need anything more.

⁵ But maybe you need to know how to be wise. Then ask God to help you. He is ready to give everyone what they need. And he never says that it is wrong to ask. So God will help you to be wise. ⁶ But when you ask God for something, you must trust him completely. Do not have other ideas in your mind. People who are not sure that God will help them are like the waves in the sea. The wind blows the water one way and then it blows the water another way. ^7-8 A person who is like that never knows what to do. He has many ideas in his mind. He should not think that he will receive anything from the Lord.

⁹ The believers in your group who are poor should be happy. Why? Because God says that they are valuable to him. ¹⁰ And the believers who are rich should also be happy. Why? Because God has shown them that they are not so great. Rich people should remember that they will die, like a wild flower quickly dies. ¹¹ When the sun rises, its heat causes plants to become dry. Their flowers fall to the ground. They are no longer beautiful. In the same way, rich people will die when they are busy in their work. Then they will have nothing.

¹² Some people continue to trust God even when troubles happen. God will bless those people, if they show that they really trust him. He will give them the gift which is life with him. He has promised to give this gift to all people who love him.

¹³ When troubles happen to you, you may want to do something bad. But do not say, ‘God is causing me to do wrong things.’ Nothing can make God do anything bad. And God does not try to make anyone do a wrong thing. ¹⁴ It is our own thoughts that make us do bad things. When we want to do something wrong, our thoughts lead us in a bad way. ¹⁵ We may agree to do what our bad thoughts tell us to do. When we do that, it becomes a sin. Then, we may not stop doing those bad things. If we continue to live like that, the result of our sins is death.^[c]

¹⁶ My Christian friends, do not make a mistake. ¹⁷ Remember that every good gift comes to us from God. He only does what will help us. He is our Father in heaven. He made everything in the sky that gives us light. Those things do not give us the same light all the time. They change, but God does not change. ¹⁸ He chose to make us his children. He used his true message to do that. Because of that, we are like the first special gift that belongs to him from among everything that he has made.

Listen and do what God wants

¹⁹ Understand this, my Christian friends: We must all be careful to listen. We should not be too quick to speak. We should not get angry quickly. ²⁰ God wants us to do what is right. But when someone is angry, they do not do those right things. ²¹ So stop doing disgusting things. Stay away from the wicked things that are all around you. God has put his message deep inside you, and it can save you. So be careful to accept that message.

²² But be careful to do what God says in his message. Do not only listen to it. Do not make that mistake! ²³ You must obey God's message. Do not be like a man who quickly looks at his face in a mirror. ²⁴ That man looks at himself, but then he goes away. He immediately forgets what he is really like. ²⁵ So do not just listen to God's message and then forget it. It is a completely good message that makes people free. Look at it carefully and keep it in your mind. Do what it tells you to do. God will bless anyone who lives in that way.

²⁶ Maybe some of you think that you are serving God well. But if you also say bad things about people, you do not serve God well at all. You are doing something bad even when you think you are doing good things. ²⁷ If you want to serve God in a completely good way, do things like this: Help children who have no parents and women who are widows. Help them in their troubles. If you serve God our Father like that, he will be pleased with you. Do not let the bad people in this world make you bad too.

Every person has equal value

2 My Christian friends, you must be kind to everyone. You trust the Lord Jesus Christ, who is great in heaven. So do not think that anyone is more valuable than any other person.

² When you are meeting together as believers, maybe two men will come to join with you. One of them is wearing beautiful clothes, and he has gold rings on his hands. The other man is poor, and he is wearing old clothes that are dirty. ³ You are kind to the man who is wearing beautiful clothes. You say to him, ‘Please sit here in this good place.’ But you say to the poor man, ‘Go and stand over there.’ Or you may say to him, ‘Sit on the floor near my feet.’ ⁴ If you do that, you are thinking bad thoughts. You have decided that one person among you is better than another person. You must not do that.

⁵ My Christian friends, listen to me. God has chosen to bless people who are poor in this world. He has helped them to trust him. So really they are rich. God will give to them a place in his kingdom. He has promised to do that for all people who love him. ⁶ But you have not been kind to people who are poor. You have caused them to feel ashamed. Who causes you to have troubles? It is the rich people! They are the people who want the judges to punish you. ⁷ It is the rich people who say bad things against the good name of Jesus Christ. And you are called Christians because you belong to him.

⁸ But the message of God's kingdom is this: ‘Love other people as much as you love yourself.’ That is what the Bible says. If you really do that, you do well. ⁹ But if you are kind to some people and you are not kind to others, then you are doing a bad thing. God's Law shows that you are wrong. ¹⁰ Even if you fail to obey only one rule in God's Law, it means that you are guilty. It is the same as if you fail to obey all God's Law. ¹¹ For example, God has said in his Law, ‘You must not have sex with anyone who is not your husband or your wife.’ But God has also said, ‘Do not kill another person.’ Perhaps you do not have sex in a wrong way like that. But if you then murder someone, God's Law shows that you are still wrong.

¹² Remember that God will judge you one day. When he does that, he will use a law which makes us free. So remember this in everything that you say and in everything that you do. ¹³ God will not forgive anyone who has not forgiven other people. But God is kind! He judges us, but even more than that, he forgives us!

Believe God and do good things

¹⁴ My Christian brothers, you say that you believe in God. Then you must show this in the things that you do. If not, your faith will not help you. It will not save you. ¹⁵ For example, maybe a believer does not have enough clothes to wear or enough food to eat. ¹⁶ Then one of you may say to them, ‘Go with God's peace! I pray that you will be warm. I pray that you will eat well.’ But if you do not give to them what they need, that does not help them at all. ¹⁷ How we believe in God is also like that. If our faith does not lead us to do good things, then it is not worth anything. It is dead!

¹⁸ Someone may say, ‘You believe in God, but I do good things to help people.’ Then I would say, ‘You cannot show me that you believe in God if you do not do good things. I do good things, and that shows that I really believe in God.’ ¹⁹ You believe that there is only one God. That is good! But even the demons believe that! And it makes them very afraid.

²⁰ You fool! If someone's faith does not lead them to do good things, it is not worth anything. You should know that! ²¹ Think about our ancestor Abraham. He offered his son Isaac on the altar as a gift to God.^[d] Because he did that good thing, God accepted him as right with himself. ²² Abraham believed in God, and he did what God asked him to do. So you can see that both of these were necessary. When he did this good thing, he showed that he believed in God completely. ²³ The Bible tells us what happened. It says, ‘Abraham believed God. As a result, God accepted Abraham as right with him.’^[e] God also called Abraham his friend.

²⁴ So you see how God accepts someone as right with himself. That person must not only believe in God. He must also do good things to show that he has faith.

²⁵ It was the same with Rahab, long ago. She was a prostitute. She helped some of God's people who came to her house. She kept them safe from their enemies and she sent them away again by a different road.^[f] Because she did those good things, God accepted her as right with himself. ²⁶ If our bodies have no spirit, they are dead. In the same way, if our faith does not lead us to do good things, it is dead.