The Doctrinal Mirror
James 1:23-25
James 1:21 NASB "Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and {all} that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls." A preferable translation would be: "Therefore, put aside all moral uncleanness and all the abnormal growth which evil is, and receive by means of humility the word implanted, which is able to sanctify [swzw] your souls." The word swzw is also applied to the spiritual life, and in this verse it refers to sanctification, not justification. The subject of James refers to the believer's life, he is not addressing unbelievers in terms of how to have justification salvation, he is addressing believers in terms of how to have sanctification salvation and be saved from the power of sin in the day-to-day life. The mandate is given in the verb "receive." We have to take in the Word of God but there is a prerequisite, and that involves two aspects. First, what is not mentioned in this text is confession, 1 John 1:9. With confession we recognize that there is sin in the life and we admit it. All confession does is restore us to a position where we are once again filled with the Spirit and can begin to apply doctrine and grow. Growth is not automatic, we still have to exercise our volition and make decisions. Part of this means that we are going to stay in the bottom circle [in fellowship] and not commit those sins that easily beset us (Hebrews 12:2), those sins that get us out of fellowship. That is why we have this command to put aside the sin in our life, and this is done under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit and the application of doctrine. That sets up the prerequisite which is indicated by the grammatical structure of verse 21. The main verb is DECHOMAI [dexomai], an aorist imperative which is preceded by the participle from APOTITHEMI [a)potiqemi] which is always a case of what is called a participle of attendant circumstances. This is important because it always expresses the prerequisite for fulfilling the command: "by means of humility." Humility is so rare to find and so rarely understood. It is having objectivity; it is related to grace orientation, that all that we are comes from God and has nothing to do with our own efforts, talents and abilities; and it has to do with teachability. Without humility there is no teachability.
Humility
1) Humility emphasizes true objectivity and a lack of arrogance.
2) This includes authority orientation, which means respect for the authority of God the Father and the authority of Jesus Christ, and the Word of God which is the mind of Christ.
3) Humility is teachability. Psalm 25:8-9 NASB "Good and upright is the LORD; Therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in justice, And He teaches the humble His way." Without humility one cannot learn the plan of God and the purposes of God, and when a believer acts on arrogance he makes himself an enemy of God and antagonistic to the plan of God.
4) Every believer has the opportunity to learn Bible doctrine on the basis of the filling of the Holy Spirit and humility. Humility is what keeps the person in the status of teachability.
5) Teachability recognizes two things: the authority of the teacher and the content of the message.
James 1:22 NASB "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves." This is a verse that has been yanked out of context, misinterpreted, misapplied, and used as a proof text for legalism. This is a bad translation initially, it does not say "prove yourselves" anything. It begins with the Greek imperative from the verb GINOMAI [ginomai] which means to be, to become, to come into existence, to happen, to become something. So let's translate that "become." Because it is a second person plural imperative it is "you all become." Parsing the verb: it is a present imperative. The present is a customary present, which means it emphasizes the continuousness of an action that may or may not have already been in progress. So they may or may not have already been doing this, and it is addressed to every believer that whether or not you have been doing this, if you have keep doing it, if you haven't start doing it. That is the emphasis of the present tense. The present imperative emphasizes a general mandate for the development of the spiritual life and a Christ-like character. So this has to do with becoming something, something that you were not originally. The middle voice emphasizes the fact that this must be done from your own volition. That means it is a moment-by-moment decision to continue to do this. The imperative of command emphasizes again authority orientation, that God has the authority to dictate what we do and how we live in our lives. So it begins with the particle DE [de], which should be translated here either "and" or "then," it is not a contrast; "you all become," and then the important word, "doers," and it is not really doers here at all.
The word is POIETES [poihthj]. It is a masculine plural nominative plus the genitive of LOGOS [logoj] which stands for the Word of God. To understand this we have to first understand the significance of the genitive. It is a genitive of production, which means that it is the Word here in the genitive which produces the action of the main noun. So it is the LOGOS of God that produces the doer. POIETES is often taken to mean some kind of program in the church, that you need to start doing things for God, you need to work in the Sunday school, you need to go out and start witnessing, and you need to start doing all of these things. It is normally taken as some kind of overt activity in the Christian life, but that is absolutely wrong. The average pastor out there is going to teach that the way you grow in the spiritual life is through prayer, witnessing, giving, doing all kinds of things around the local church. But that is not what the Bible says. The Bible says that all of these things are the result of something else. It is the result of an inner transformation that comes from the Word of God. What has to have priority is learning the Word of God, studying the Word of God. That is the priority; that is the cause and effect, and most people out there are trying to produce the effect without the cause. If there is no transformation from the Word of God transforming the mentality of the soul, then everything else is pure superficiality and has nothing to do with true Christianity. It is just works. This does not mean go out and do, do, do for Jesus. What it means is to apply the Word of God.
Probably the best way to translate this is, "And you all become appliers [or, practitioners] of the Word of God." POIETES means to do, to act, to work, it has all kinds of meanings, but in the context what James is talking about is applying what you hear. Remember the command is to be quick to hear. In Greek, just as in Hebrew, hearing doesn't mean just having your eardrums vibrated by sound. Hearing includes the idea of application. Husbands, you have probably heard your wife say, "But you don't listen to me." And you say, "Well, I can repeat the words that you said." But she says, "No, no, no, you didn't really hear what I said, you didn't read between the lines." There was no application, is what she is saying. The Greek and Hebrew concept of hearing is that no hearing really takes place unless it results in application. So James is unpacking what he means by the phrase, "be quick to hear," that if you think you are hearing and it doesn't result in application then you have short-circuited the process and you are not going anywhere in the spiritual life. He says, "And you all become appliers of the Word [of God], and not only hearers who delude themselves."
Let's look at the learning process. It starts off with the pastor-teacher, and this is why the gift of pastor-teacher is so important. God has provided different spiritual gifts for the body of Christ. Each gift has a role and a place. The man who has the gift of pastor-teacher is the man who has been spiritually gifted by God to get into the Word, to study it and to extract the biblical principles, and then to communicate them to people, the sheep, so that they can grow. The man with the gift of pastor-teacher has been uniquely gifted and designated by God as the person who has that responsibility to the rest of the body of Christ. He inherently has a position of authority, not because of who he is but because of the message he proclaims. So the pastor-teacher communicates doctrine. That doctrine is made understandable to the believer under the category of PNEUMATIKOS [pneumatikoj], spiritual phenomena. This then enters into the ear of the individual (hearing); then it enters into the mentality of his soul in the outer lobe which the Bible calls the NOUS [nouj]. Here it becomes GNOSIS [gnwsij], and that is merely academic knowledge. What happens here is while the Holy Spirit makes spiritual phenomena understandable He does not understand it for you. That means you have to engage in the mentality of your soul to interact with what the pastor says so that you can comprehend it and understand it. That doesn't mean that you can just go back out and regurgitate it. Just because you have all the points down in your notebook does not man that you understand the doctrine, it just means you are able to take notes and get down what somebody says. You have to think about it. This is why the Bible often commands us to meditate, to cogitate on the Word of God, to think about it to make it understandable in the NOUS. Once it enters the NOUS as GNOSIS, academic knowledge, it has to go through another step because academic knowledge doesn't get you anywhere; it is just a staging ground for real spiritual growth. Having thought about it and meditated on it, it cycles on into the innermost sphere of your thinking, which is called the heart [KARDIA/kardia in the Greek, leb in the Hebrew]. Here it becomes EPIGNOSIS [e)pignwsij]. This is doctrine that is assimilated into the thinking of the soul. It is understood, it is believed, and you say, "This is what I believe." It is assimilated by means of the Holy Spirit into the heart where real transformation begins to take place. It starts on the inside as thinking is transformed. Romans 12:2 NASB "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."
You haven't used it yet. At this point it is just stored in your soul, so when the test comes—and remember, that is the context of James—now you have some doctrine stored in your soul and you can apply it. That is what James is getting at. It is not going to do any good accumulating a lot of academic knowledge spiritually.
Paul talks about knowledge in Corinthians, and when it is translated "knowledge puffed up" it is not EPIGNOSIS, it is GNOSIS, and the believer that does not transfer doctrine into the heart through the filling of the Holy Spirit where it becomes EPIGNOSIS operates on academic knowledge and that is nothing more than arrogance and feeds his arrogance. This is the opposite of humility and therefore there will be no spiritual growth. So are mandated as a general principle for the Christian life that we are to become appliers of the Word. The person who is not an applier of the Word is self-deceived; he is deluded. There are three arrogance skills that feed one another. First, self-absorption. When a person focuses on themselves before long they begin to justify themselves, and that goes to self-justification, the second arrogance skill, which culminates in self-deception. This feeds further self-absorption. These are the three arrogance skills, and what we see here is that the person who does not submit himself to the authority of the Word of God, believe it, store it in his soul as EPIGNOSIS and then use it and apply it in the tests of life, is self-deceived and is operating on arrogance.
Verses 23 & 24 describe the person who has short-circuited the grace learning spiral. It is grace because it is true for every single believer. Every believer has equal access to learning doctrine. [23] "For if [if, and it is true, 1st class condition] anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer [applier], he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror." This is the person who gets this far. They hear the Word, they understand it but they don't exercise positive volition toward it and transfer it by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit into the innermost part of the thinking of the soul. They are simply a hearer accumulating academic knowledge, but it is not in their soul. There is a fairly perceptive analogy here: "…he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror." It is literally, "he is like a man with the face he was born with." The Bible is compared at this point to a mirror. The harsh thing we all know about mirrors is that they never lie; they are completely objective. We always pay attention to what the mirror tells us. In other words, the person who is merely an accumulator of academic knowledge is really a fool. He is leading a superficial life and he is in denial about reality. The Bible is like a mirror. It is true; it is objective; it is going to tell us exactly how things are and it behoves us to pay attention to it. [24] "for {once} he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was." Out of sight; out of mind. He completely forgets what the objective reflection told him. That is the person who is the accumulator of academic knowledge.
Verse 25 tells us about the person who is a practitioner of Bible doctrine: "But one 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."
So in the context we have the hearer and the applier, the person who is applying doctrine.
Summary
1) Only Bible doctrine provides objectivity for honest self-evaluation. It is the only way you can know yourself; only the Bible can tell you exactly the way you are; it defines reality.
2) Thus humility is the pre-requisite. We all know that if anybody tells us how things really are in our life we need a tremendous amount of humility to accept it. We can't let arrogance get in the way or it will destroy our objectivity.
3) Without humility the response will be self-deception and arrogance and denial of reality.
4) Without humility doctrine will never become anything more than simple academic knowledge and will have no spiritual value.
So what do we learn from the successful believer in verse 25? The attitude of the advancing believer begins with humility and objectivity and advances through diligence. Why do we say diligence? Look at the main verb. It is the aorist active participle of the verb PARAKUPTO [parakuptw]. It portrays a person who is looking and concentrating on what he is looking for to the point that he stoops over, maybe even gets down on his hands and knees, and digs around to try to find that for which he is searching. It implies energy, concentration and diligence—"…the one who looks diligently at the perfect law." So the growing believer is not someone who just has a passing academic curiosity but is intent. He has made learning doctrine the highest priority in his life. He is not just going to show up at church once a week or two or three times a month, he is going to be there at every opportunity he has in order to let the mirror of God's Word reflect upon his life. He looks intently at what? The "perfect law," but that is not a very good translation. The word "perfect" is the Greek word TELEIOS [teleioj], and it can mean perfect in the sense of flawless, but it is doubtful that there is any place in the New Testament where it means that. It also means to bring something to completion, to complete, to make whole. So here we will translate it with the word "complete"—"the complete law." What is that referring to? It is referring to the completed canon of Scripture. It wasn't complete yet for James. James is one of the earliest of the books of the New Testament. But once the Bible is complete, only then can man have a pure, total view of who he really is. All through the Old Testament and up through part of the New Testament era when the canon was incomplete the mirror of God's Word could give only a partial or incomplete view of man.
Let's look at 1 Corinthians 13:8ff "Love is permanent; but if {there are gifts of} prophecy, they will be abolished; if {there are} tongues, they will cease of their own; if {there is} knowledge, it will be abolished." The same word is used of knowledge and prophecy; both are abolished. Then we continue to talk about knowledge and prophecy because tongues is seen by the passage as being irrelevant; it is just going to disappear. [9] "For we know in part and we prophesy in part." This is the Greek phrase EK MEROUS [e)k merouj] which means partial. Whatever we are saying about prophecy and knowledge they are revelatory gifts, they have to do with the revelation of doctrine. But they only give partial doctrine. No one who had the gift of prophecy or the gift of knowledge knew the whole realm of doctrine. They each contributed a piece of doctrine but not all of it. So verse 9 says these gifts are partial, but [10] "but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away." Once again "perfect" here is a mistranslation of the word TELEIOS. Notice that the context is comparing TELEIOS with something that is partial. It is not comparing something that is perfect, but something that is imperfect. It is contrasting something that is incomplete with completion. When the complete has come the partial shall be done away. What is the partial? Prophecy and knowledge. What abolishes prophecy and knowledge is that which completes. If prophecy and knowledge are revelatory gifts then what abolishes them is going to be of the same kind, i.e. revelation. So when the completed revelation of God comes, the completed canon, then the spiritual gifts of prophecy and knowledge will be done away with. Tongues is viewed as secondary by the writer. Why? Because the purpose of tongues is given chapter 14 as related to God's purpose for Israel in announcing judgment. Once Israel was taken out of the picture through divine discipline in 70 AD tongues was no longer significant. The canon isn't completed until 90-95 AD, so first tongues dies out and then prophecy and knowledge are abolished.
Then we get two interesting analogies. [11] "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things." What do those things relates to—speaking, thinking, reason? They relate to knowledge. This illustrates the difference between incomplete and complete knowledge. A child has incomplete knowledge but when they are an adult they have a complete understanding of things and they put away the incomplete. [12] The same thing in relation to prophecy. "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known." A mirror that is incomplete only gives a partial reflection. The word that is used for "now" there means now at this present time. Verse 13 uses a different word for "now," which means now in this church age: now in the church age, what continues? Faith, hope and love. Verse 12 says, Now at this present time in this pre-canon period during the apostolic age when we have an incomplete canon—we see in that incomplete canon dimly, but then face to face. This isn't face to face with God, this is face to face with the completed mirror. The terminology that is used here is reflective of terminology used back in the Old Testament. God is speaking to Moses and says he is going to speak to Moses mouth to mouth (not face to face), "but with other prophets I speak…" and the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses the word which means dimly, the same word that is translated "dimly" here in v. 12. So the verbiage that is used in v. 12 is reminiscent of the same terminology that is used back in Numbers when God is talking to Moses about the nature of prophetic communication. Too often the prophet doesn't understand the message that he is given. He can communicate it clearly but he doesn't understand all of its ramifications, it is an enigma to him. But when you have the completed canon of Scripture you can know what God has to say. "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known." In other words, the Word of God when it is complete is going to give us that complete objective knowledge of ourselves that we need in order to grow and advance spiritually.
James uses that same kind of imagery: "But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the {law} of liberty…" Here he refers to the Bible as the law of liberty. In Galatians Paul refers to the Mosaic law as a slave master. It enslaves us, we are in bondage to it, we are like a child in the Roman system that is enslaved to a pedagogue, and that pedagogue is the Mosaic law. We are in bondage to the law. But the completed canon, with all of the information about the completed work of Christ on the cross and the spiritual life of the church age, now becomes a law of liberty. The term "law of liberty" reflects the contrast with the Mosaic law which is bondage.
In contrast to the Mosaic law, which was designed to restrain sin, criminality and idolatry, to promote establishment freedom and reveal man's inability to save himself, the law of liberty emphasizes the true freedom of the church age believer—freedom to advance spiritually and to glorify God. This isn't the freedom to sin; this is the freedom to grow. Any time you have freedom to grow and succeed you have to have freedom to fail. If you take away that freedom to fail and you put a safety net there, the higher the safety net goes the lower the ceiling of success becomes, until eventually you end up in socialism when every operates at the level of the lowest common denominator. This take away any incentive to succeed. So freedom is now the right of the church age believer because he is no longer enslaved to the Mosaic law.
"…. and abides by it." This is a word that is loaded with meaning in the Greek: MENO [menw]. In many places it refers to our fellowship with God. We are to abide in Christ. That is a synonym for remaining in fellowship. So remaining in fellowship is related to continuous obedience of God's Word. But we know that if we fail we have immediate restoration through 1 John 1:9.
James is not contradicting Paul here by talking about the law. He agrees with Paul in Romans 6:14 that we are not under law but under grace. He would agree with Peter in Acts 15:10 when Peter said that the law was "a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear." All of this flows out of an understanding of the New covenant which provides the blessing for the church age believer through the filling of the Holy Spirit who transforms the life from the inside out. Cf. Galatians 3:13, 14 NASB "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE"— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."
This is consistent with the statement that Christ makes in John 8:31, 32 NASB "…"If you continue in My word, {then} you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." The truth is Bible doctrine, the Word of God. It is the Word of God that is the power in the believer's life under the filling of the Holy Spirit. It is the Word of God that is the law of liberty and when we abide by it then we have true freedom indeed.
Then we come to the final statement: "…this man will be blessed in what he does." James 1:25. The Greek says, "this person shall be [future tense] shall be blessed by means of what he does." It is EN [e)n] plus the dative of means, not because of what we do. Obedience is the means. Why? As you take in the Word of God and you apply it, and you become an applier of the Word, that produces maturity. As you mature you develop capacity for life. Once you develop capacity for life then God will pour out on you those contingent blessings in time. He holds them back until you are ready. Just you as a good will not give your children gifts that they are not ready for.