Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Parallel translations
- KJV And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
- BSB Peacemakers who sow in peace reap the fruit of righteousness.
- NKJV Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
- NASB And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
- NLT And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Those who make peace sow in peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. Right living grows out of a peaceable, not a quarrelsome, spirit.
Overview
Concluding the contrast between earthly and heavenly wisdom, James says the genuine righteousness God desires is cultivated by peacemakers, not by the envious and contentious. The agricultural image pictures peaceable people planting and gathering a crop of right standing and right conduct. This anticipates the next chapter's diagnosis of strife and echoes Jesus' blessing on the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), who reflect the God of peace reconciling sinners through Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Matt 5:9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
- Hos 10:12Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to kindness. Break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek Yahweh, until he comes and rains righteousness on you.
- Phil 1:11being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
- Isa 32:16–17Then justice will dwell in the wilderness; and righteousness will remain in the fruitful field.
- Gal 6:8For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
- Prov 11:30The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. He who is wise wins souls.
- Prov 11:18Wicked people earn deceitful wages, but one who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.
- Heb 12:11All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised thereby.
- John 4:36He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
- Jas 1:20for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.
- Prov 11:28He who trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous shall flourish as the green leaf.
- Amos 6:12Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness;
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Christ at the center
The wisdom from above and the royal law of love are the life of those who belong to 'our glorious Lord Jesus Christ' — faith in him made visible in works.
How James 3:18 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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