Articles
Doers of the Word
Having told us how to listen to God’s word—humbly, sincerely, patiently, thoughtfully, etc.—James proceeds to the obvious next step, without which even the best listening is useless.
“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves” (1:22). God does not speak to satisfy our curiosity. He intends for His word to fill our hearts and direct our lives.
In his typical homey manner, James emphasizes the point with a simple illustration. "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; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But he who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does" (1:23-25).
The comparison begins with two mirrors. As a bedroom mirror reflects our physical image, so God’s word shows us what we look like spiritually. James might be contrasting two looks since he uses different words for each, yet both words indicate something more than a casual glance. The main contrast is in the result of looking.
In either case, a man who looks in a mirror and sees changes that need to be made but does nothing about them has wasted his time. He immediately forgets, either because he just doesn’t care or he gets busy with something else. The profitable look is the one that changes things, that results in doing. It is the look of one who abides by or lives by what he sees. Notice that James says, “This man will be blessed by what he does,” not by what he reads or hears. The richest blessing of God’s word comes in its application. Only then is Bible reading or Bible preaching complete.
One more thing. The “word” that James has in view as our spiritual mirror is “the word of truth” (v. 18), the word which when implanted “is able to save your souls” (v. 21). That is the gospel. Now James calls that word “the perfect law, the law of liberty” (v. 25). It is perfect because God’s revelation was completed in Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2), and God’s complete revelation is sufficient to make us complete (2 Timothy 3:16-17). It is law. The gospel is, of course, much more than divine law, yet it nevertheless is God’s law for us (1 Corinthians 9:27). It is a law of liberty. Peter called the law of Moses “a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear” (Acts 15:10). The law of Christ is one of liberty; it is not merely a law but a system of grace (Romans 6:14), freeing us from the yoke of the old law and especially from sin and its terrible consequences.
Let’s be doers of the word.
