Chapter 2

¹My brothers, do you try to combine faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with acts of partiality? ²For if a finely dressed man with a gold ring comes into a meeting, and a poor man in shabby clothes comes in also, ³and you pay attention to the man in the fine clothes and say to him, “Sit here; this is a good place!” and say to the poor man, “Stand up, or sit on the floor at my feet,” ⁴have you not wavered and shown that your judgments are guided by base motives? ⁵Listen, my dear brothers. Has not God chosen the world’s poor to be rich in faith, and to possess the kingdom that he promised to those who love him? ⁶But you humiliate the poor. Are not the rich your oppressors? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who slander the noble name you bear? ⁸If you really obey the supreme law where the Scripture says, “You must love your neighbor as you do yourself,” you are doing right, ⁹but if you show partiality, you are committing a sin, and stand convicted before the Law as lawbreakers. ¹⁰For anyone who obeys the whole of the Law but makes one single slip is guilty of breaking it all. ¹¹For he who said, “You must not commit adultery,” said also, “You must not commit murder.” Now if you abstain from adultery, but commit murder, you are still a violator of the Law. ¹²You must talk and act like men who expect to be judged by the law that treats men as free. ¹³For the merciless will be mercilessly judged; but mercy will triumph over judgment.

¹⁴My brothers, what is the good of a man’s saying he has faith, if he has no good deeds to show? Can faith save him? ¹⁵If some brother or sister has no clothes and has not food enough for a day, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Goodbye, keep warm and have plenty to eat,” without giving them the necessaries of life, what good does it do? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no good deeds to show, is dead. ¹⁸But someone may say, “You have faith, and I good deeds.” Show me your faith without any good deeds, and I will show you my faith by my good deeds. ¹⁹Do you believe in one God? Very well! So do the demons, and they shudder. ²⁰But do you want proof, my senseless friend, that faith without good deeds amounts to nothing? ²¹Was not our forefather Abraham made upright for his good deeds, for offering his son Isaac on the altar? ²²You see that in his case faith and good deeds worked together; faith found its highest expression in good deeds, ²³and so the Scripture came true that says, “Abraham had faith in God, and it was credited to him as uprightness, and he was called God’s friend.” ²⁴You see a man is made upright by his good deeds and not simply by having faith. ²⁵Was not even Rahab the prostitute made upright for her good deeds, in entertaining the scouts and sending them off by a different road? ²⁶Just as the body without the spirit is dead, faith is dead without good deeds.