In contrast with what many Christians teach...

In contrast with what many Christians teach, sin is not a mental disposition or something inborn, such as original sin, but rather the act of transgressing the law. The final step is death, which is primarily the condition in which right knowledge of God is no longer active. The rest of the section deals with how we can overcome temptation. James's theory could be called salvation by the action of the word of truth. The word of truth is intro­duced in verses 17-21.

The word of truth is described in four points. The first point is that God is the source of all good things. The…