Being a Doer not a Listener

Becoming a Doer not a Listener

James 1:19-25

“But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.”

                  The greatest threat to our Christian faith is not ignorance but complacency.  It is easy to know about the Bible; the challenge is to be transformed by the Bible so we are living in obedience, daily growing in our faith.  However, this challenge is not new but has plagued all who have verbally consented to the Bible.

                  In verses 12-18, James warns his readers of the danger of temptation. Our sinful nature is always present, ready to distort the message and character of God to manipulate God according to our wishes. When we sin, we seek to justify our actions. Instead of accepting responsibility, we blame others and God (vs 12-15). Instead of obeying God’s word, we justify our actions by rejecting His word as false and accusing God of being a liar. We fail to recognize or acknowledge that sin is a problem that dwells deep within us. How do we avoid sin when it is so powerfully at work in our soul? 

In 18, James gives us the answer and the basis for living rightly before God. We find clarity in the “word of truth.”  God has given us His word to transform our lives and give us a clear perspective of how we live (vs. 19-21). This begins with our relationships with people (19-20) and being transformed in our moral conduct. But to have the proper conduct, we must have the right attitude towards the Bible.  To live rightly before God, we must humbly receive the word implanted in us.  The command “receive” carries with it a sense of urgency.  We need to start now to accept that God’s word is right and proper and that our responsibility is not to evaluate the word to determine if it is true but to live by His truth.  James warns us of the danger of deception.  The word “delude”  means ‘to deceive by arguments or false reasons.’

However, the deception does not come from false teachers, but it comes from our soul (vs. 22). Our most significant threat to our spiritual growth is deep within us; it is our complacency towards the Scriptures.  We know the Bible; we can quote the verses and tell the story, but we fail to live by the Bible.  We become “forgetful hearers.” We become plagued by spiritual Alzheimer’s.  We have studied the Bible and given verbal consent to the Bible, but we have forgotten to implement the teachings of the Bible in our daily lives.  We are like a man who looks into a mirror and quickly forgets that his hair is uncombed and his face dirty.  We become indifferent to the Bible, affirming its truths but not living in light of them. 

We must look intently at the perfect law to be a genuine disciple of Christ.  The picture is of one who stoops down to gaze at something carefully.  It is like a person walking along notices something, so they stop and bend down to stare intently at it to determine what it is.  In other words, we must carefully consider and meditate on the scriptures (see Psalm 1) to properly understand their meaning.  However, we must do more than merely understand the Word; we must become an “effectual doer”  (literally “a doer of work”) of the Word.   It is not enough that we fill our minds with the knowledge of the Bible; we must work diligently to live in light of the Bible. It is not what we know but how we live.  As Christians, the more mature we become, the greater the threat that we equate knowledge with spiritual growth.  Knowledge is essential, but our understanding of the Bible must be revealed in our practice of the Bible.  The measure of our spiritual growth is not how many Bible verses we know and how well we can find verses in the Bible; it is measured by how much we live by the Bible. Knowledge can breed complacency.  Instead, we must read the bible with a sense of urgency. The more we know about the Bible, the more we should resolve to live by the Bible.  Only then will we be genuine disciples of Christ.