Sorry for the huge gap in posts on my James Bible study. Things got busy ;)
Let’s move on today looking at James 1:21-25. We’ll take it in pieces.
21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Ah “therefore”, therefore operates in the same fashion as “so then.” You’ve heard it a million times, right, “You have to find out what the therefore is there for.” Therefore, or, “since the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God, lay aside…..” Get it? So, in order to produce the righteousness of God, we must lay aside, or get rid rid of all filthiness, and overflow of wickedness.
Filthiness…dirtiness, staining your soul.
Wickedness… evil, malice, spite!
Ouch!
Can we lay aside these things on our own? No way!
There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
Romans 3:10-11for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:23But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
Isaiah 64:6
But thank the Lord that we have His grace!
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the Lord,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
Isaiah 40:28-29
Through His power and strength, we must lay aside things in our lives which dirty our soul, and all malice and spite. Why? So that we may meekly (humbly) received the implanted word(God’s word) which is able to save our souls! How powerful are His words!!! Don’t you want to hear them? Don’t you want them to save your soul? We must set aside our flesh to hear God’s word in our heart.
When we lay aside the evil soul-staining deeds, which is a daily task, what then? Laying aside these things has the potential to free up quite a bit of our time. If we are laying aside the old ways, we must take up new ways…
22But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
I remember so clearly hearing a sermon on this topic when I was a teenager. The Pastor told us to think about what that is saying….if we hear the Word of God, but do not act on it we are the same as a person who looks at their reflection in a mirror, and the instant they walk away from the mirror, they forget what their face looks like! It sounds incredulous, doesn’t it? But isn’t that the reality of the situation? If we read the Word of God, and walk away forgetting all that it says, and we continue living in a soul staining fashion, haven’t we forgotten who we are? Or rather, who’s we are? Our actions always reflect the reality of who we are…. Christ said:
“If you love Me, keep My commandments. John 14:15.
In order to keep His commandments, we must be familiar with them. We must know them, remember them, cling to them. When we do there are blessings. Verse 25 of James chapter 1 says
But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
How many dear souls have looked into the perfect law of liberty and walked away? How many have not continued? How often do you and I walk away and refuse to continue….Dear one, we must be knowledgeable about God’s commandments and walk in them. It is not an easy thing, but the Lord promises to bless the things that we do, when we act on His commandments and do His work.
What a great task is laid before us, to put off soul staining deeds, so that we can heard the Word of God. How grateful I am that He has declared that we can do all things through His strength! And that He has promised a blessings for those who choose to actively follow Him and be a doer of His work.
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