April 13
We are to be ‘’doers of the Word,’’ not mere hearers (James 1:23-25). The gospel is not something to which we merely give assent with our lips; it is something we are to live. In Romans 2:13, the Apostle Paul makes the same assertion regarding the law, adding, “…it is not the hearers of the law but the doers of the law who shall be justified.”
James, the half-brother of Jesus tells us another advantage that those who live the law achieve over those who know the law but do not use the law as the foundation for their lives. He says, “The man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom… doing what he has heard and seen in the law…will be blessed in all he does,” James 1:25.
Our loving Heavenly Father knows our frame. He understands our proclivity to disobedience and to sin. He knows the calamity we bring upon ourselves by our failure to follow godly paths; He knows our fallen nature inclines us toward the denizens of sin, so He has established His law as a roadmap to guide us back from the destructive, sinful places to which we’ve wandered.
When we realize our miserable state, grasp the reality that we are helpless to extricate ourselves from sin without the help of Jesus; when we allow Him to cleanse us from sin, set us on a path of righteousness—then we can go forward in the power of the Word and the law which the Lord kept perfectly in our behalf. Then we discover the blessing of being doers, not mere hearers, of God’s immutable Word and His perfect law.
Who among us would be satisfied with a spouse who professed love but whose actions did not evidence it! Few could be content with words when deeds do not match them.
ReplyDeleteIn that regard, we evidence the heart of God who desires that we not only hear His Word and parrot it to the listening ears around us, but that we live the Word--our deeds manifesting the Gospel of Christ in all its aspects (faith, hope, truth, love)--to everyone around us.