Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
James 1:23–25
“If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
Expanding on his admonition to be “doers of the word” and not hearers only (James 1:22), the Apostle James uses a metaphor in today’s passage to drive home his point. In so doing, he expands on what he means by the “word” (vv. 23–25).
Let us begin with the phrase “the perfect law, the law of liberty” in James 1:25. As a Jewish Christian, James certainly has the law of Moses in view. Yet the Greek word nomos (“law”) translates the Hebrew word torah, meaning “teaching.” Thus, James is referring not merely to legal commands but to the whole body of divine instruction found in the Old Testament. In verse 25, the one who “looks into” this law parallels the person in verses 22–23 who looks into and either does or does not do “the word.” This, in turn, recalls the “implanted word” of verse 21 and the “word of truth” in verse 18 that brings new birth—the gospel of Jesus Christ. Taken together, these connections show that James uses the phrase “the perfect law, the law of liberty” (v. 25) to describe the Old Testament Scriptures as interpreted and fulfilled by Christ. The “word” or “law” we are to look into, then, is the entirety of God’s revealed Scriptures and their teaching.
James’ reference to the law’s perfection and liberty reflects passages such as Psalm 19, which describe the law’s perfection and rewards. Scripture is perfect because our perfect Creator inspired it as the perfect standard for our living in such a way that we fulfill our purpose as divine image bearers (see Gen. 1:26–28). We keep the law not to free ourselves but because Christ has freed us from sin, but one reward of obeying the Scriptures for those who trust in Jesus alone is the full enjoyment of that freedom. God’s Word establishes healthy boundaries for us; transgressing these boundaries takes us out of orderly liberty into the anarchy of evil.
This brings us to the metaphor of the one who looks into a mirror but forgets what he has seen (James 1:23–24). John Calvin comments that James “speaks of the external glance of the eye, not of the vivid and efficacious meditation which penetrates into the heart. . . . A doctrine merely heard and not received inwardly into the heart avails nothing, because it soon vanishes away.” One who only hears the Scriptures but does not put them into practice is like the person who looks into the mirror, sees his need to wash his face, and then does not clean it. Looking without acting does him no good. So it is for people who hear but do not obey God’s Word.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Matthew Henry writes, “How many are there who, when they sit under the word, are affected with their own sinfulness, misery, and danger, acknowledge the evil of sin, and their need of Christ; but, when their hearing is over, all is forgotten, convictions are lost, good affections vanish, and pass away like the waters of a landflood.” May it never be so with us. May we put into practice what we find in the Word of God.
For further study
- Exodus 24:7
- Psalm 119:165
- Matthew 21:28–32
- James 2:12
The bible in a year
- Genesis 48–49
- Matthew 15:1–28