“Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (Jas. 1:22). James wrote to believers not to pagans: “To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (Jas. 1:1). We might explain his recipients as those of the Faith who live in a godless world. He is not writing because we—the faithful—fail listen to the word. We hear it in church each Sunday; hopefully we’re reading the Bible (even one paragraph) daily, listening to Christian radio in the car or at work. Our hearts have known the peace of Christ; even in the midst of pain we recall the joy to come.
But, as if we were come to a pool, all of that is like sitting on the edge dabbling toes in the water, perhaps wading in to our ankles. There’s so much more to the pool than that. We are called to not only splash timidly in the word from the edge, but to get in and swim. Listening to the word gets your clothes damp; doing the word is casting them off and leaving nothing between you and it. And, if we have utter faith in He who is the Word, we can become drowned beneath its waters, and find out that we are truly made to be fish, and there is more than just this pool, there’s a whole ocean in God where hearing His word and doing what it says goes on for endless ages. That kind of total submission to listening and doing of the word is holding onto the commandments of God that Jesus wanted from the Pharisees.
“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks likes. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does” (Jas. 1:23–25).
Magnificent the truth contained
Within these words of life!
Sublime the thought of our own face
Which truth itself supplies.
On one hand we have man looking at his natural face, and on the other hand we have man looking into the perfect law that gives freedom. One goes away while the other continues to look intently. One immediately forgets what he looks like, and the other doesn’t forget but does what he has heard.
What does a man see looking into a mirror? He sees his natural face, his created visage, the appearance of his person. A mirror shows the form of the one looking into it. What is my form? What is appearance? A man. When we look into a mirror, James tells us that we should see more than just the man; we should see the perfect law that gives freedom. Do you see that? A man looks into a mirror to see his created face, but he looks into the mirror of the Law to see his perfected appearance, his ideal form.
The word is what a man sees in a mirror if he is living as the Father’s firstfruits. What’s the purpose of the word? Why has God given us this?
When we look into the mirror, we should see the Law. Yes, the Law. Does that smack of legalism? Absolutely not. Law and Word are not two disconnected things. In Christ Jesus, the Law and the Word are one; from the beginning, they always were one in Him. If the Law appears in me, I am at home and most fully myself. Fr. John Worgul, says, “The law isn’t rules and regulations. The law is paradise.” God made us for abundant life. In lawlessness there’s no life, only flight, hiding, fear, and judgment; in law, there’s life, freedom, belonging, and acceptance. “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world” (1 Jn. 5:2–4).
Why do we look into a mirror? To see whether our shirt is tucked in, our tie is straight, the collar isn’t turned up, the shirt placket lines us with the trouser’s fly, the pant cuffs aren’t bunched up, there isn’t a cowlick, no dangling boogers. We look into the mirror to confirm that we appear as we ought. And if we find something that isn’t right, we don’t walk away and forget to correct it (or decide not to bother), rather we stand there before the mirror and fix the crooked tie until it is straight.
Why do we look into the Law, into the Word? To see whether our souls appear as they should, to know whether our lives are aligned with the ideal to which we hold. Week by week we pray the confession and ask God to flick off the boogers that hang from our moustache, to tuck the tag down our shirt. Every service, we listen to God’s word, to learn what His voice sounds like and the kinds of things He says, so that we can discern His truth from the devil’s lies. Each Sunday, we pray not individuals, but as a single body to train us that the glories and wounds of any one member are shared by us all. We gather around the table, and join again as one body in the sharing of Christ’s one Body and Blood, uniting our selves at once with Him and each other. Looking into the Law is like tracing your letters in school: you have solid and dashed lines, and you can see the shapes dotted in the background.
St. Augustine wrote: “We ought to look upon the commandments of God, whether they are read, or when they are recalled to memory, as a looking-glass, as the Apostle James saith. This man wisheth himself to be such, that he may regard as in a mirror the commandments of God, and may not be confounded; because he chooses not merely to be a hearer of them, but a doer” (on the Psalms). In the mirror of the commandments of God, we find the truest form of who we are. The world says, “inside you’re ugly like [we are]” (Staind, “Outside), but the word says, “keep looking, you’ve not dug deep enough.” There is more to us than meets the eye. The Law shows us that. Insofar as we align with it, we see the resemblance come out.
Jesus blasted the Pharisees, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, as it is written: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men” (Mk. 7:6–8).
The Pharisees look to the Law, not to redefine who they were, but to justify who they were. The Law was not a mirror to look into; it was a legal text to be used for precedent. When so used, the Law becomes a dead-end road.
But remember, “The Law is paradise!” With the coming of Christ, the law was perfected, completed, made ready for man to live in it. There were moments, “Stand[ing] behind the wall, gazing through the windows, peering throught the lattice” (S.S. 2:9), that the transcendent was glimpsed.
“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planed by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers” (Ps. 1:1–3).
“Blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord. Blessed are they who keep his statues and seek him with all their heart” (Ps. 119:1–2).
But in Christ we have the key to the story, the ending. Paul was able to read the law, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain” (1 Cor. 9:9), and see the spiritual truth behind the words, that the worker deserves his wages, as he told the Corinthians and assured Timothy (1 Ti. 5:18).
So, your homework this week is this: turn to the left in your Bibles. Go to the books of Moses, Exodus through Deuteronomy, and find an ordinance or law that seems mundane, whether the regulations for infectious skin diseases (Lev. 13), or “Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together” (Dt. 22:11). Meditate on it and seek the face of the Lawgiver. Look into the mirror and inspect whether the tie isn’t a little crooked. And if it is, make an adjustment.
