James 2, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

     My brothers, don’t hold the faith of our reputed Owner Yeshua the Anointed with partiality¹. Because if a gold fingered man should enter into your synagogue with bright clothing, yet a homeless guy also should enter in filthy clothing, and you should look up the guy wearing the bright clothing and should say, “You sit here the best seat,” and to the homeless guy you should say, “You stand there or sit under my footstool,” didn’t you separate yourselves among yourselves and didn’t you become judges with good for nothing inner dialogues?

      Listen, my dear brothers, didn’t the God select those destitute where the illusion of this world is concerned to be wealthy with the realization and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those loving Him? Yet you devalued the homeless guy. Don’t the wealthy wield power against you and drag you into the courts? Don’t they blaspheme the beautiful name which was invoked upon you? If you would really bring the royal Torah to completion in line with the Scripture, “You will love the person next to you like yourself,” you are doing beautifully; yet if you are being partial to people, you are achieving the malfunction; being brought to light under the Torah as violators. Because any guy who should keep the entire Torah yet should step wrong with one thing, he has become guilty of all of them. Because the One having said, “You will not commit adultery,” also said, “You will not commit homicide;” yet if you don’t commit adultery but you commit homicide, you have become a violator of the Torah. In the same way talk and in the same way act like intending to be judged through the Torah of freedom. Because judgment is merciless to those not having done mercy; mercy exults over judgment.²

      What is good is it, my brothers, if anyone should claim to possess the realization yet shouldn’t possess the deeds? This realization can’t rescue him, can it? If a brother or sister starting off naked and being left behind from their daily food yet someone from you should say to them, “Go in peace, be warm and well fed,” yet you don’t give them the suitable things of the body, what is the benefit? In this way also the realization, if it shouldn’t possess things done because of it, is a lifeless corpse by itself.

      But someone will say, “You possess the realization, and I possess the things I’m doing;” show me your realization apart from these things done, and I will show you the realization from the things I’m doing. You trust that “the God is one,”³ you do beautifully; the demons also trust and shake with terror! Yet do you wish to experience, O empty human being, that the realization separated from the things which are done because of it is useless? Wasn’t Avraham our father made right from the things he did having brought Yitzhak his son up upon the sacrificial altar? Do you see that his realization was working together with what he was doing and the realization was brought to completion with what he did, and the Scripture was filled which says, “Yet Avraham trusted in the God, and it was figured to him for a state of right being” and he was called the Divine friend. Yet in the same way also wasn’t Rahav the whore made right from the things she did having entertained the messengers and having tossed them out by a different path? Because just like the body separate from the pneuma is a corpse, in this way also the realization separate from things done because of it is a corpse.

1Lit. “receiving what someone looks like”

2As Jesus told the F'rishe, quoting Hosea 6:6 in the LXX, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than whole burnt offerings.”

3From the “Sh’ma,” Deuteronomy 6:4.