It is a mirror that helps us examine ourselves (vv. 23–25) and cleanse our lives. We must do the Word of God, not just read it or study it; the blessing is in the doing.
The call to “do what it says” lies at the center of all that James teaches and sums up the whole book: Put into practice what you profess to believe.
James 1:22-25 NIV 22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
- Those who listen to the Word do so attentively and at length, so that they understand what they hear. They know what God expects them to do.
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
The reason for this blessing is fourfold.
- (1) He “looks intently” (GK 4160) into God’s truth, a verb that described John’s act of stooping and peering into the tomb of Jesus (Jn 20:5). Here it is as though a person stoops over the Scripture, zealously searching for its message.
- (2) “He continues to do this.” He is the blessed man of Ps 1 who meditates on God’s law day and night.
- (3) He does not forget “what he has heard.”
- (4) Most important, he puts the tr