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HEARING AND DOING

James 1:22–4

Prove yourselves to be doers of the word, and not only hearers, for those who think that hearing is enough deceive themselves. For, if a man is a hearer of the word and not a doer of it, he is like a man who looks in a mirror at the face which nature gave him. A glance and he is gone; and he immediately forgets what kind of man he is.

AGAIN James presents us with two of the vivid pictures of which he is such a master. First of all, he speaks of those who go to the church meeting and listen to the reading and expounding of the word, and who think that that listening has made them Christians. They have shut their eyes to the fact that what is read and heard in church must then be lived out. It is still possible to identify church attendance and Bible-reading with Christianity, but this is to take ourselves less than half the way; the really important thing is to turn that to which we have listened into action.

Second, James says such people are like those who look at themselves in a mirror – ancient mirrors were made not of glass but of highly polished metal – see the smuts which disfigure their faces and the dishevelment of their hair, and go away and forget what they actually look like, and so fail to do anything about it. Listening to the true word reveals to individuals what they are and what they ought to be. They see what is wrong and what must be done to put it right; but, if they are only hearers, they remain just as they are, and all the hearing has been to no avail.

James does well to remind us that what is heard in the holy place must be lived in the market place – or there is no point in hearing at all.