Be Doers of the Word
NOT HEARERS ONLY
The train that is the Book of James keeps on chugging and churning along the way to spiritual wholeness. So far in our journey, we’ve left the station on the way to wisdom, traversed through the valley of trials, and now we come to a scenic lookout point that arrests our attention. In 1:19-20, James offers us a panoramic view of the landscape we’ll be covering throughout the remainder of the journey, a frame for reading the rest of the book. Along with this, he provides a broad-stroke portrait of what it looks like to live the wise Christian life: “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (1:19). It’s a picture of wisdom in action. A theology that comes into our heads, takes root in our heart, and comes out our fingertips. This is the burden of what follows in 1:21-27. God is not after “arm-chair theologians” who are always consuming information and taking in content but never getting in the game of actually pursuing holiness. He’s after those who are “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (1:22). On the path of wisdom, faithful hearing of God’s word always travels side by side with the obedient doing of what we’ve heard.