James 1:19-27 (NASB)
19 You know this, my beloved brothers and sisters. Now everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; 20 for a man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore, ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. 22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 25 But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does. 26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
In last week’s sermon, I included part of this section from James and so I want us to look closer at the context and meaning of those verses. Throughout church history, James has gotten a bad rap. Some historians have questioned whether his book should even be included in the Bible. Some theologians say that he preaches salvations by works and that he contradicts other Scripture. I humbly disagree with those ideas. I believe that if God didn’t want James included in the canon, He would have prevented it from being included. I also don’t think James ever states that our works save us. He is simply explaining that our actions must match our confession. That’s another sermon for another Sunday, though, maybe next week? All that to say, I really like James, because he gets right to the point. He seems very direct and he uses an economy of words.
By saying, “you know this, my beloved brothers and sisters,” we know he is speaking to believers who are not brand new in the faith and as James 1:1 told us, he is writing “To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.” He tells these believers that they “must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for a man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God.”
This directive is as applicable today as it was then. How many problems in our world could be avoided if everyone followed James’ counsel? By saying that we should “be quick to hear” he’s saying that we should listen to others. Instead of running our mouths, hurrying to get our turn to talk, we should “hurry” to hear. Before we talk, we should listen to what the other person has to say. Then when we do speak, we should be “slow to speak” so we are careful and deliberate with the words we say. After all, Jesus says in Matthew 12:36, “But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.” That warning makes me want to be very slow and very careful about the words I say. By being slow to speak, that will also help us not to say things out of anger. I’m sure you’ve heard the adage that if we become angry we should count to ten to help us cool off before we spout off at the mouth or do something even worse. It’s solid advice, for as James says, “a man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God.” It’s better to calm down than to let the anger cause us to sin. Our anger will not produce the righteousness of God, for when we are angry, it’s harder to do the right thing. How can we produce the fruit of the Spirit when we are angry?
While we should be quick to hear what other people have to say, more important than listening to other people, we should be quick to hear what the Word is speaking. James explains the way we hear God’s word is by: “Therefore, ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.”
The Greek words for filthiness and wickedness, according to Strong’s Concordance, are rhuparia which means filth or pollution, “metaphorically, of wickedness as moral defilement” and kakia which means “malignity, malice, ill-will, desire to injure.” That means we are to put off sin and humbly receive God’s word. In thinking about this, I wonder, can a person be angry and humble at the same time? I don’t mean righteously angry. I mean, lose-your-temper kind of angry. This particular Greek word for anger is orge. And it’s the same word used in Ephesian 4:31 which says, “All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice.” That word for malice is the same word in James for wickedness, by the way. I think if we are humble, we would be far less likely to give in to any of those things.
Why do we need to receive the word with humility? Receiving the “implanted word” of God is how we come to salvation. That is how our souls are saved. One thing I really love about the Bible is that it all fits together so amazingly. It is proof to me that God Himself is the Author of Scripture, for we have so many different writers, but they all paint the same collective picture. That is because there is really only one painter making the brush strokes. God continues His beautiful image of the word being a seed that gets planted into our hearts. Here, James is using that same metaphor to say that the humble receive the seed of the word of God as it is implanted into us. Like Jesus’ metaphor in Matthew 13 of the seed and the rocky soil or fertile ground, if we are full of malice and filthiness, how can the word take root? It will be choked and could die off.
Then James continues, “22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves.” This is not a controversial statement. We are to prove ourselves to be doers of God’s word. We are not to just hear God’s word and then do nothing with it. We are to apply God’s word. We are to do what He says. Faith is a verb. It is an action. We do faith, or prove faith, by how we act. Verses 23-24 say, “23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.”
I really like how the NASB words this closely to the Greek. Some translations say “forgets what he looks like” which honestly, has never made much sense to me. This clarifies that the person forgets what kind of person he was. That better matches what the end of verse 22 says about the people who only hear the word but do not do the word. Those people “deceive themselves.”
I think that goes right along with humility. Do you remember Webster’s 1828 Dictionary definition, which said that being humble means that we reduce arrogance and self-dependance? If we are humble, we will not think we are something that we are not. In humility, we won’t pretend we are better than we are. It makes me think of 1 John 1:8, which says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” If we know who we are, if we remember we are sinners who are saved by the merciful grace of Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross, then won’t that make us more likely to want to follow Him and do what He says? Whereas, if we forget what Jesus has done for us, if we forget who we are apart from Christ, then won’t we most likely do what we want and not worry about following Jesus? I think James is saying that if we call ourselves a Christian, but we hear God’s word and do not follow what it says, then we have forgotten who we are supposed to be. For if someone doesn’t follow the word of God, are they a Christian? They are deceiving themselves if they think they can be a Christian and deliberately choose not to follow God’s commands. James says if we just hear the word but do not do what the word says, we deceive ourselves. The risk is we’ve deceived ourselves into thinking that we are saved when possibly we are not. We are proved to be who we say we are when we do what the word tells us to do. Our actions should line up with God’s word.
Now to verse 25, which is what I quoted from last week. The NIV translates James 1:25 as, “But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”
In this text, we see that God’s law is two things: it is perfect, and it gives freedom. Because it is perfect, it is not overly burdensome. I’ve heard people say in the past that the reason they don’t want to be a Christian is because there are too many rules. I don’t know that anyone would say that anymore now that there are plenty of “churches” today that don’t place any sort of prohibition on any behavior. But if we want to live, true to what scripture teaches, we find there are a lot of rules. These rules are not arbitrary or without reason, they are for our good. That is why James can say that the person who follows these perfect laws, that “person will be blessed in what he does.” It is for our blessing and benefit that God has given us laws to follow.
I remember thinking, once upon a time, that God had made an awful lot of crazy sounding rules for the Israelites to follow. Reading through Exodus, Leviticus or Deuteronomy, we come across very detailed laws that God gives to the Israelites. For example, in Leviticus 6:28, God tells Moses, “The clay pot the meat is cooked in must be broken; but if it is cooked in a bronze pot, the pot is to be scoured and rinsed with water.” That is just one example of the many laws they were to follow, but it is not without reason. It is practical instructions for good hygiene in order to avoid food-borne illnesses. God’s law is perfect and has purpose.
Psalm 19:7&8 (NASB) says:
The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
Not only is God’s law perfect, it gives freedom to those who follow it. James describes God’s law as the “perfect law that gives freedom.” I don’t tend to think of laws as bringing freedom, do you? Don’t laws bring restraint?
It might seem that way at first thought, if we think of laws as being restrictive and burdensome. We don’t want overbearing laws that hinder our freedoms. We want to be free, unrestricted, having liberty and autonomy. But without any laws, there would not be peace, there would be anarchy. We can’t have freedom if we don’t have peace. Anarchy is not actual freedom. In anarchy there are no laws, but people are not free. They are still under the oppression of whoever holds power and usually power is kept through violence. Good laws on the other hand, bring freedom to people. They are free to live, work and move about. Think of police officers. They are also called peace officers. Their presence in a community is supposed to bring peace. Unfortunately, there are some unjust police officers and so often police presence does not bring peace, but fear. But good police officers should ideally bring peace. In our current society, in the cities that have petitioned to defund the police, these communities have not gained any peace. They have actually become less peaceful as people have acted more unlawful. Whereas in cities whose citizens have respect for police officers, there is less crime and more peacefulness. When people follow the law, there is peace. Of course, governments can take laws too far and unduly burden their citizens with too many laws and too much restriction. That is why James clarifies that God’s law is unusual, because it is perfect.
This lines up with Psalm 119:165 (NASB) which says, “Those who love Your Law have great peace, And nothing causes them to stumble.” Here the Psalmist is saying that following God’s law will give us peace. When we follow God’s law, we find peace, because then we are not acting contrary to God’s will. Following God’s law keeps us from sinning. When we sin, we cause trouble and strife. This is the opposite of peace. Sin takes away our freedom. We become entrapped by sin. We become slaves to sin. Only in Jesus can we experience freedom from sin. As Jesus said in John 8:36 (NASB), “if the Son sets you free, you really will be free.”
The thing is, in order to follow God’s perfect law and have freedom, we first need to know God’s law. Looking at verse 25 again, it says, “But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.” We need to look intently at the law so we can understand it. I am blessed to have inherited my grandfather’s Bible. He was a faithful pastor and scholar of God’s word. His hand-written notes on this verse state that the Greek words for “look intently” can be translated as “bend down to see something better, look into something.” I like that word picture. We are to carefully look into God’s law. We are to get up close to God’s word. We can’t keep it at a distance and hope to understand it. We need to peer into it and really look into the word.
Then we get to the final two verses of this passage which say, “26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Again, our actions must match our self-proclaimed identity. N.T. Wright says in The Early Christian Letters, about verse 26, “A pious person with a foul mouth is a contradiction in terms. Such a person is deceiving themselves- but nobody else” (p.12). James took it even further though. He says that person’s religion is worthless! He is saying again that a Christian should bridle their tongue, being careful to choose their words wisely and to be slow to anger. If we don’t watch our words, our religion is worthless. Other translations say it is “in vain.” The Greek word here is mataios and it is translated as vain or useless.
This whole passage is stressing the importance of our actions matching who we are supposed to be. If there is a contradiction, like N.T. Wright said, we have a problem, for we are really just deceiving ourselves. If we want religion that is pure and undefiled, and acceptable to God, then we are “to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Some churches have a tendency to emphasize one or the other of these two things. I see churches that concentrate on what they call “social justice” issues but ignore the mandate to keep oneself unstained by the world. I also see churches that focus on holiness but sometimes ignore those outside their walls. James is stating that we need to do both things. We should care for those who need help, but keep ourselves unstained or undefiled.
As with all passages from the Bible, the key to understanding is to put it into the context of the entirety of scripture. When we do that, I don’t think we run into any problems understanding what James is saying. It is not works based religion, it is merely our works lining up with our confession of faith.
If we want to be consistent and not a contradiction, we can’t forget who we are. We must apply God’s word to our lives and do the actions of faith. And why wouldn’t we want to follow His ways? It is for our blessing and good. But if we fail to do this, and we act the opposite of what we know we should do, we have a decision to make. We can keep going and ignore the Holy Spirit and forget who we are. But remember what 1 John 1:8 says? “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” That path is leading us away from God. Or, we choose what the verse that follows that one offers us: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). That path keeps us on the path of righteousness.
If we forget who we are and deceive ourselves, we are not without hope. We can confess our sin and He will forgive us and He will cleanse us, changing us, removing from us the filthiness and wickedness, and He will give us His righteousness. This is where true freedom is found.
Pray: Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your love for us. Thank You for sending Jesus to die in our place so we can find freedom from sin. Please help us by Your Holy Spirit to do what Your word tells us to do. Help us to follow Your perfect law so we can be free from the burden of sin. Thank You for forgiving us when we fail to follow You perfectly. Thank You for giving us the righteousness of Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen.
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