James 1:22-25 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. (23) For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: (24) For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. (25) But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
Yesterday, we discussed James 1:22....being DOERS of the word and not hearers only. But in verses 23-25, James continues this thought and so shall we.
James ended verse 22 by saying that if we are hearers only we deceive ourselves. In verse 23-24 he elaborates that concept by offering an illustration to support his statement.
James 1:23-24 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: (24) For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
For most of us, what is the LAST thing that we do before we walk out of the door to go into public? If you are like me, you look at the mirror. Why do we do that? Because it is the final look! The last inspection! We want to make sure that everything is properly done; that we have not forgotten something. It gives us one last chance in case we find that something is lacking.
Now, here really is the crux of this point...What if we find something wrong? For instance, what if we look in the mirror and realized that men, we didn’t shave our face or ladies, you didn’t put on your make-up? What if you look in the mirror and see that there is a big coffee stain on your shirt? What do you do?
Really we have one of two options:
1. You can say.....”aah, no big deal, that interviewer won’t mind that big stain”
2. You go and fix the problem that you found in the mirror.
If you go with option number 1.....If you see a problem and choose not to fix it...Why did you look? What was the point? Isn’t the WHOLE point of looking in the mirror, right before you walk out the door, to make sure everything is RIGHT?
That is exactly the illustration that James is making as it pertains to our spiritual lives. If we look in the “Perfect Law of Liberty”, the Bible, and see that our lives do not measure up, What do we do? Will we go away and say to ourselves ”aah, no big deal, God won’t mind that sin”? If we react that way, we are the forgetful hearers that James is warning us about. If we walk away without changing the problem, we are deceiving ourselves by thinking that reading the Bible is having any benefit to us.
The alternative of course is that we do as the text suggests and be Doers of the word. We see the problem in our lives and we make the proper adjustments to make things right. Remember what James said in verse 21 from a couple of days ago?
James 1:21 ...and receive with MEEKNESS the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
James said that we should receive with humility or meekness the word of God. If we look at Bible and say to ourselves that we are not going to change, that is not receiving it with humility, it is REJECTING it with ARROGANCE.
In James’ last statement, he said that if we do what we find in the word of God, we will be blessed in our deeds. There is a real benefit, to US, for changing our coffee stained shirts before we walk out the door. Likewise, there is a REAL benefit to both us and God if we look into the word of God, recognize that there is a problem and become DOERS of what we read, by making the proper changes in our lives.
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