Dear Friends in Christ,
Good and reliable information is what we want. Think about the time you were going to a party and asked some person on the street for directions. You followed the directions only to discover the person misled you. Or, the time you trusted that financial advisor and followed her on a particular path only to discover she had led you astray from where you thought you were headed.
I recall Jesus saying in Matthew 15, “If a blind man follows a blind man, both will fall into a ditch.” James did not want Christians to be led astray, deceived, when it comes to the source of sin and the source of every blessing.
Our Lord Jesus’ brother gives us good and reliable information under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. Just before our text, James had written that the source of sin and death is my “own sinful desire.” He now bridges over to the source of every blessing we enjoy as we consider ourselves religious.
Here is that source: Heartfelt Hearing and Doing God’s Word Brings Us Blessings. First, God gives us his Word as one of his perfect gifts; second, God accepts our religion when it is pure and faultless.
You may have heard someone say to you, “I’m not religious. I’m spiritual.” The answer to that is that God made all people spiritual in the sense we have the natural knowledge of God and a conscience. Being religious on the other hand means that I have an object of my worship. I carry out that worship in devotion and ceremony.
The center of our worship in devotion and ceremony as believers is God’s Word. God gives us his Word as one of his perfect gifts. “Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” The goodness and perfection of God’s gifts indicate both the generosity of the Giver and the value of the gift he gives. He is the Father, the one who gave birth to, the sun and the moon and the stars. He is not like the shifting shadows that make us move our lawn chairs from place to place, as the sun makes its course across the summer sky. The Father of the heavenly lights who has given us his Word as one of those good gifts remains always the same. There is no waving or variation in God when it comes to the goodness and perfection of all his gifts to us.
God’s Word is one of his perfect gifts. By means of that word, God has given us new birth “that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” This is our election to salvation through the gospel.
“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers (and sisters).” Heartfelt hearing and doing God’s Word brings us blessings. James wrote, “Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” We are leading ourselves astray if we think just hearing God’s Word will bring us blessing. Hearing God’s word is humbly accepting the Word God has planted in us to save us. Doing it is obeying what the Word commands in our sanctification.
Therefore, “everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” Doing God’s Word comes through an eager desire to listen to the Word. It is a humble willingness to keep quiet about what I think and instead ask God to speak to my heart. Doing God’s Word comes by avoiding the slow burn of anger against God or my neighbor for whatever perceived offence I believe either one has committed against me. Blessing comes by hearing and doing God’s Word. I help myself in that by getting rid of all “moral filth and the evil so prevalent” that my sinful desires produce.
This is what religion “that God our Father accepts” is all about. Heartfelt hearing and doing God’s Word brings us blessings as God accepts our religion when it is pure and faultless.
What is deceptive about hearing God’s Word and not doing it is that then we are kidding ourselves. James gives us a good example of that. “He is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” So is the one who hears God’s Word then goes away forgetting what he has heard and does not do what God says. When we do not forget what we have heard and do it, “he will be blessed in what he does.”
Here is where the heartfelt comes in. We do these things from the heart that beats the new life our Father has given us through Christ by the Spirit. Jesus’ love for us was that he heard his Father’s Word to keep the law and then die on the cross. Jesus did not just listen to the Word and do what he wanted. He obeyed his Father will and laid down his life on the cross to pay for our sins.
With our hearts filled with God’s love for us in Christ, we carry out our religion. Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is our love in action motivated by his love in action for us in Christ. It is hearing about that love and then doing that love to others. It is “to look after widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” True religion is charity and chastity. It is the heartfelt hearing and doing God’s Word that brings blessings.
Just hearing and not doing God’s Word is not pleasing to God. Mere outward doing is not acceptable to God without that inner change the Spirit works through the Word. My dear brothers (and sisters) “take note of this.”
The Spirit is giving us good information through James’ pen. James is not leading us astray but leading us into a proper understanding of religion. Yes, it is the devotion and ceremony we give to our God in worship around the Word. It also is keeping ourselves unstained by the world around us, and showing Christian charity to those in need. These are good and perfect gifts indeed from the Father of the heavenly lights who also is our Father in heaven through Jesus Christ. Amen. <SDG>.