see to it that no one misses the grace of God, that no root of bitterness grows up to be a trouble by contaminating all the rest of you;

You know how later on, when he wanted to obtain his inheritance of blessing, he was set aside; he got no chance to repent, though he tried for it with tears.

You have come to mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels in festal gathering,

to the assembly of the first-born registered in heaven, to the God of all as judge, to the spirits of just men made perfect,

Therefore let us render thanks that we get an unshaken realm; and in this way let us worship God acceptably ??29 but with godly fear and awe, for our God is indeed a consuming fire.

Let marriage be held in honour by all, and keep the marriage-bed unstained. God will punish the vicious and adulterous.

Remember your leaders, the men who spoke the word of God to you; look back upon the close of their career, and copy their faith.

and so Jesus also suffered outside the gate, in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.

And by him let us constantly offer praise to God as our sacrifice, that is, the fruit of lips that celebrate his Name.

Do not forget beneficence and charity, either; these are the kind of sacrifices that are acceptable to God.

I urge you to this all the more, that I may get back to you the sooner.

May the God of peace who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, with the blood of the eternal covenant,

James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: greeting.

Whoever of you is defective in wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all men without question or reproach, and the gift will be his.

that man need not imagine he will get anything from God,

Let no one who is tried by temptation say, 'My temptation comes from God'; God is incapable of being tempted by evil and he tempts no one.

all we are given is good, and all our endowments are faultless, descending from above, from the Father of the heavenly lights, who knows no change of rising and setting, who casts no shadow on the earth.

Pure, unsoiled religion in the judgment of God the Father means this: to care for orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself from the stain of the world.

if you attend to the wearer of the handsome clothes and say to him, "Sit here, this is a good place," and tell the poor man, "You can stand," or "Sit there at my feet,"

Listen, my beloved brothers; has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and to inherit the realm which he has promised to those who love him?

If you really fulfil the royal law laid down by scripture, You must love your neighbour as yourself, well and good;

if any of you says to them, "Depart in peace! Get warm, get food," without supplying their bodily needs, what use is that?

You believe in one God? Well and good. So do the devils, and they shudder.

and the scripture was fulfilled: Abraham believed God, and this was counted to him as righteousness ??he was called God's friend.

So too with Rahab the harlot. Was she not justified by what she did, when she entertained the scouts and got them away by a different road?

With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with the tongue we curse men made in God's likeness;

Who among you is wise and learned? Let him show by his good conduct, with the modesty of wisdom, what his deeds are.

You crave, and miss what you want: you envy and covet, but you cannot acquire: you wrangle and fight ??you miss what you want because you do not ask God for it;

you do ask and you do not get it, because you ask with the wicked intention of spending it on your pleasures.

(Wanton creatures! do you not know that the world's friendship means enmity to God? Whoever, then, chooses to be the world's friend, turns enemy to God.

Yet he gives grace more and more: thus it is said, The haughty God opposes, but to the humble he gives grace.

Well then, submit yourselves to God; resist the devil, and he will fly from you:

draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

whom God the Father has predestined and chosen, by the consecration of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood: may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a life of hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

and the power of God protects you by faith till you do inherit the salvation which is all ready to be revealed at the last hour.

to them it was revealed that they got this intelligence not for themselves but for you, regarding all that has now been disclosed to you by those who preached the gospel to you through the holy Spirit sent from heaven. The very angels long to get a glimpse of this!

Brace up your minds, then, keep cool, and put your hope for good and all in the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

it is by him that you believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory; and thus your faith means hope in God.

You are born anew of immortal, not of mortal seed, by the living, lasting word of God;

come to him then ??come to that living Stone which men have rejected and God holds choice and precious,

come and, like living stones yourselves, be built into a spiritual house, to form a consecrated priesthood for the offering of those spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

a stone over which men stumble and a rock of offence; they stumble over it in their disobedience to God's word. Such is their appointed doom.

But you are the elect race, the royal priesthood, the consecrated nation, the People who belong to Him, that you may proclaim the wondrous deeds of Him who has called you from darkness to his wonderful light ??10 you who once were no people and now are God's people, you who once were unpitied and now are pitied.

Conduct yourselves properly before pagans; so that for all their slander of you as bad characters, they may come to glorify God when you are put upon your trial, by what they see of your good deeds.

and to governors as deputed by him for the punishment of wrongdoers and the encouragement of honest people ??15 for it is the will of God that by your honest lives you should silence the ignorant charges of foolish persons.

Live like free men, only do not make your freedom a pretext for misconduct; live like servants of God.

Do honour to all, love the brotherhood, reverence God, honour the emperor.

Servants, be submissive to your masters with perfect respect, not simply to those who are kind and reasonable but to the surly as well ??19 for it is a merit when from a sense of God one bears the pain of unjust suffering.

Where is the credit in standing punishment for having done wrong? No, if you stand suffering for having done right, that is what God counts a merit.

but inside, in the heart, with the immortal beauty of a gentle and modest spirit, which in the sight of God is of rare value.

It was in this way long ago that the holy women who hoped in God adorned themselves. They were submissive to their husbands.

he who would love Life and enjoy good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking guile:

see that you have a clean conscience, so that, for all their slander of you, these libellers of your good Christian behaviour may be ashamed.

For it is better to suffer for doing right (if that should be the will of God) than for doing wrong.

Christ himself died for sins, once for all, a just man for unjust men, that he might bring us near to God; in the flesh he was put to death but he came to life in the Spirit.

who had disobeyed at the time when God's patience held out during the construction of the ark in the days of Noah ??the ark by which only a few souls, eight in all, were brought safely through the water.)

Baptism, the counterpart of that, saves you to-day (not the mere washing of dirt from the flesh but the prayer for a clean conscience before God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

who is at God's right hand ??for he went to heaven after angels, authorities, and powers celestial had been made subject to him.)

Well, as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, let this very conviction that he who has suffered in the flesh gets quit of sin,

nerve you to spend the rest of your time in the flesh for the will of God and no longer for human passions.

(for this was why the gospel was preached to the dead as well, that while they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live as God lives in the spirit).

You must serve one another, each with the talent he has received, as efficient stewards of God's varied grace.

If anyone preaches, he must preach as one who utters the words of God; if anyone renders some service, it must be as one who is supplied by God with power, so that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. The glory and the dominion are his for ever and ever: Amen.

If you are denounced for the sake of Christ, you are blessed; for then the Spirit of glory and power, the Spirit of God himself, is resting on you.

but if a man suffers for being a Christian, he must not be ashamed, he must rather glorify God for that.

It is time for the Judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the fate of those who refuse obedience to God's gospel?

So let those who are suffering by the will of God trust their souls to him, their faithful Creator, as they continue to do right.

be shepherds to your flock of God; take charge of them willingly instead of being pressed to it, not to make a base profit from it but freely,

You younger men must also submit to the presbyters. Indeed you must all put on the apron of humility to serve one another, for the haughty God opposes, but to the humble he gives grace.

Humble yourselves under the strong hand of God, then, so that when it is time, he may raise you;

Once you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will repair and recruit and strengthen you.

By the hand of Silvanus, a faithful brother (in my opinion), I have written you these few lines of encouragement, to testify that this is what the true grace of God means. Stand in that grace.

Symeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have been allotted a faith of equal privilege with ours, by the equity of our God and saviour Jesus Christ:

when he was invested with honour and glory by God the Father, and when the following voice was borne to him from the sublime Glory, "This is my son, the Beloved, in whom I delight."

for prophecy never came by human impulse, it was when carried away by the holy Spirit that the holy men of God spoke.

For if God did not spare angels who had sinned, but committing them to pits of the nether gloom in Tartarus, reserved them under punishment for doom:

they have gone wrong by leaving the straight road, by following the road of Balaam son of Bosor, who liked the profits of evil-doing ??16 but he got reproved for his malpractice: a dumb ass spoke with human voice and checked the prophet's infatuation.

After escaping the pollutions of the world by the knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, if they get entangled and overpowered again, the last state is worse for them than the first.

They wilfully ignore the fact that heavens existed long ago, and an earth which the word of God formed of water and by water.

you who expect and hasten the advent of the Day of God, which dissolves the heavens in fire and makes the stars blaze and melt!

Here is the message we learned from him and announce to you: 'God is light and in him there is no darkness, none.'

but whoever obeys his word, in him love to God is really complete. This is how we may be sure we are in him:

fathers, I have written to you, because you know him who is from the very beginning: young men, I have written to you, because you are strong, and the word of God remains within you, and you have conquered the evil One.

and the world is passing away with its desire, while he who does the will of God remains for ever.

'Born of him!' Think what a love the Father has for us, in letting us be called 'children of God!' That is what we are. The world does not recognize us? That is simply because it did not recognize him.

We are children of God now, beloved; what we are to be is not apparent yet, but we do know that when he appears, we are to be like him ??for we are to see him as he is.

he who commits sin belongs to the devil, for the devil is a sinner from the very beginning. (This is why the Son of God appeared, to destroy the deeds of the devil.)

Anyone who is born of God does not commit sin, for the offspring of God remain in Him, and they cannot sin, because they are born of God.

Here is how the children of God and the children of the devil are recognized; anyone who does not practise righteousness does not belong to God, and neither does he who has no love for his brother.

But whoever possesses this world's goods, and notices his brother in need, and shuts his heart against him, how can love to God remain in him?

whenever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart, and he knows all.

If our heart does not condemn us, beloved, then we have confidence in approaching God,

and we get from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight.

Do not believe every spirit, beloved, but test the spirits to see if they come from God; for many false prophets have emerged in the world.

You can recognize the Spirit of God by this: every spirit which confesses Jesus as the Christ incarnate comes from God,

and every spirit which does not confess Jesus [incarnate] does not come from God. This latter is the spirit of antichrist; you were told it was coming, and here it is already in the world.

My dear children, you belong to God, and you have conquered all such, for He who is within you is greater than he who is in the world.

we belong to God ??he who knows God listens to us, he who does not belong to God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love belongs to God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God;