James 1:21-25 – “Free to Be Doing”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²¹Wherefore, putting off all filthiness and excess of badness, receive in humility the engrafted Word, the one being able to save your soul; ²²and be doers of [the] Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves, ²³because, if someone is a hearer of [the] Word and not a doer, this one is like a man observing the face of his birth in a mirror; ²⁴for he saw himself and has gone away, and immediately forgot what he was; ²⁵but the one looking [intently] into the perfect law, the one of freedom, and continues [in it], not becoming a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in his doing.

As I related in my last post, I think a key to understanding this passage is seeing that the central issue is whether or not we truly value the Word. Superficially, the question will be whether we are doers of the Word or just hearers. But I would suggest those are not causes but rather effects. To be a doer of the Word one must first deliberately seek and ponder what it says. As Proverbs admonishes us, “My son, if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will find the knowledge of God.” The promise is “Seek and you will find,” but notice the finding only comes after the seeking.

So it is here in James, just from a different angle. I think this is all borne out by the contrast James presents. On the one hand there is the man who glances at his face in the mirror and hurries away unchanged. James contrasts that man to someone who “looks intently” into the “perfect law that gives freedom” and “continues in it.”

First of all, the word translated “looks intently” pictures someone stopping and actually stooping down to peer into something. It is used of the disciples peering into Jesus’ empty tomb. The word can be just another synonym for “looking” at something, like the man “looking” at his face in the mirror. However, James clearly chose to change from one word to the other and I believe the context supports the translation “looks intently.” I believe he did intend to convey the picture of stopping to stoop down and peer into something. That is his contrast with the hurried, glancing man.

Again, I would suggest being a doer of the Word is an effect, not the cause. We don’t just decide to be a doer. Instead we have to recognize the activities and choices we can make which will then result in being a doer. One of those choices or activities that will result in being a doer of the Word is the old children’s adage “Stop, look, and listen!” A doer of the Word will one way or another work into his schedule times when he stops everything else, pulls out his Bible, and takes the time to not only read but pause and ponder over its truth. The same thing happens when we’re hearing the Word in church. We can allow our minds to simply go on racing around all the issues of our lives or we can shout to our heart, “Stop, look, and listen!” Like the Bereans, we may even need to take some notes, then go home and “search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so.” At any opportunity we have to ingest the Word, whether we’re reading it, studying it, or listening to others teach it, the first step toward being a doer is this “Stop!”

The man looking in the mirror spent but a short second there and hurried on to whatever was pressing him. (Frankly, what most of us see in the mirror probably isn’t worth more than a glance anyway!) On the serious side, we simply cannot be like him when it comes to the mirror of the Word. We must at points take the time to stop and really ponder over its meaning.

Secondly, I would suggest then also that it is no arbitrary choice James calls it “the perfect law that gives freedom.” When we stop, when we stoop down to peer, what does our heart think we’re looking into? This question I believe is the second step on our way to being doers of the Word. People see the Word as many things, a “list of rules,” “facts and knowledge to make me smarter than everyone else,” “material to teach others and fill up an obligation to teach or preach,” “interesting history,” even “secret codes to discover and help me sell books.”

But the doer of the Word will be someone who has come to see it is a “perfect law that gives freedom.” It is perfect in every possible way, of course, but what comes to my mind is that it is perfect in the sense that it is completely true. Every other book I can read is at best someone’s perceptions of truth. The Bible alone is Truth itself. I can lay my heart open before it and never fear at all that I’ll find out later it wasn’t really completely true after all, like pretty much any other book. It is perfect too because, as James says, it is a perfect law that “gives freedom.” As I noted above, some people see it as a book of rules. I would suggest that person will likely never be a very good doer. Even as they’re peering into the Word, they’re actually assigning to it a sort of harsh, uncaring, “do it or else” sort of posture. Our natural bent will be to resist that sort of master.

Instead, we should see its truths as liberating. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!” In one sense, this is the very thing that has driven me to the Word my whole life. I want to be free. I don’t want to be who I was. I don’t want to be enslaved to my own stupid ideas and misperceptions of reality. I don’t want to be enslaved to the endless barrage of church traditions about who God is and what a Christian “should do.” I don’t want to be enslaved to other peoples’ approval and trying to live up to whatever they think I’m supposed to be and do.

The wonderful thing about the Bible is that it liberates me from all of that. It shows me clearly who God really is. It shows me clearly what is really true and what isn’t. And it shows me what is really important and what is not. Just learning the simple truth that it all comes down to “love God, love people” is so liberating, words fail me to express my wonder and gratitude.

Here is another place where, I would suggest, legalism hurts us, our families, and our churches far more than we realize. Until we repent of our legalism, we’ll always think of the Bible as being about rules. We think it says, “Do this and live.” That sounds good but it is fundamentally legalistic. Grace says to us, “Live and do this.” It is not a law of bondage but a law of freedom. To know God’s Word is not a matter of finding more rules to live by, it is about the freedom to genuinely understand God, to understand what really matters, to see the world through His eyes, and hence, because I see the world differently, I now want to live differently. I want to do it His way. But I want to. That is freedom. I guess my point is that, if all our children see in the Bible is a lot of rules, they’ll likely never fall in love with its Author, they’ll likely never be drawn to stop and stoop and ponder what this book of freedom has to say to them. And the result will be they’ll likely never know the blessing of being doers of the Word.

Once again, in this admonition to be doers, I think this second important ingredient James presents is this question of how we (and our children) see the Word to begin with. Is it or is it not to you fundamentally a book of freedom? Is the “law” that you find in it a path to real joy? If it is (back to grace!), you will naturally stop to ponder it. When my girls were little someone once told me “She’s so pretty, I can’t stop looking at her.” Her doting father agreed, but you see the case in point -- when we truly see the beauty of the Word, this perfect law that gives freedom, we will find that we “can’t stop looking at it.” We’ll want to stop and stoop down and ponder it.

Finally (for this post), notice he adds, “and continues in it.” Once again, we are travelling further and further away from the man and his mirror. We’re getting further and further away from his hurried glance. We’re not only stopping to ponder, we’re in some sense “continuing in it.”

For me, it seems almost weekly that the Lord shows me truths that literally rock my world. As I sit and ponder over the Word, it’s like He sets off bombs that demolish my misperceptions of life and show me the truth that really does set me free. But then I find it is still a challenge to be remembering those things. I have to make a deliberate effort to be recalling those truths throughout my day and it is easy not to. On the one hand, it is true that simply having seen the truth, I am changed. I can never be the same. But on the other hand, I also struggle forgetting what I’ve learned.

That is actually one reason why I post my foolish ramblings in this blog. Having studied the Word myself, I find I need to do this in some fashion. I need to “pull it all together” and “write it down” somewhere. It helps me to digest it to begin with, helps me toward remembering it throughout my day, and it also allows me to go back and read what I learned. It helps me not to forget.

Whatever you do, however you do it, there must be some deliberate effort to help you remember what you’ve learned, to have it available throughout your days as you deal with life. It is not some kind of legalistic thing, “Oh, great, just what I need, another self-discipline rule!” That’s not it at all. I think again it is a matter of freedom. I want to remember the liberating truths I’ve learned. It’s just that, on my way to being a doer of the Word, I realize it isn’t enough to have learned liberating truth, I must remember it as I face my day, whatever that takes for me.

I have some thoughts about this forgetfulness/remembering thing I want to record, but I think I’d better end this post today and save those for next time.

To sum up, I would say again, I don’t think we actually decide to be doers. Instead, as James presents, and working backwards, we want to live a life of freedom and joy, we realize that very freedom and joy is to be found only in the liberating truths of the Bible, and so we often make those times in our life when we stop to look intently into the truth of the Word and ponder over its meaning. My contention is, and I believe it is what James is teaching is that, if we in fact live these things, we’ll find ourselves being doers, free to be doing!