The Devotional – Search the Scriptures – 269


The Devotional – Search the Scriptures – 269

Doers—Not Hearers Only

James 1:21-27 – Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 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; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 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. If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Christ/Messiah is Our Only Hope

Faith, trust, and believe; are of the same primary verb in the Greek language—[pi-tho] to be convinced by argument that what is being presented is either true are false via the evidence. In the New Testament, written in Konia Greek the word [pis-tis] from [pi-tho] is used interchangeably as the action word that describes the FAITH, TRUST, and BELIEF response of the child of God as he or she grows in grace. Now, I am not a Greek word scholar; shucks, I am not even an English word scholar, as some are (or think they are) so don’t take this as anything other than a ‘kick-start’ to motivate you to study the Word of the Living God.

The apostle James is challenging his readers to action, to be a doer of the Word of God. The requirement of doing is to actively lay aside (via trust) the overflow of wickedness and filthy ways of life that the world around us does, and to do or promote and receive the action of the Word of God. How? By trusting, believing and walking in faith. “Faith, trust and believe, are the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” Receiving the Word of God in this manner is the ‘implanted word which will save (deliver) your soul, this is not a section of the Word of God on Justification, but of Sanctification, leading to Glorification for the child of God.

Observation of who we are in Christ becomes obscured if we are not ‘doers’ of ‘believing, trusting and faithfully walking in the Light of who we are in Christ. Religion is just what it becomes “false and useless’ as it is in most religious circles, James is right on target when he says that when we fail to bridle our tongue at our feasts and agape events, and yet we preach or teach to do the Word of God that the results are useless and vain. Learning to do good is to cease from doing evil; Isaiah 1:16-17. As we will see, the tongue, unbridled is a very small part of our bodily character, but if it is not controlled by the person who owns it, it becomes halitosis from the pit of hell.

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