James 1:19-21
In the previous post we learned that one key to enduring trials and avoiding temptation is to delight in God’s goodness and to delight in the gospel. James now turns to some practical expressions of our living out the gospel. Remember that this letter is written to Christians. James is not writing here about becoming a Christian, he’s writing about behaving as a Christian.
The phrase at the beginning of this passage seems to build upon this gospel foundation. James writes, “So then,” which is better translated, “So know this,” or “Take note of this.” We might say, “Listen up!” And then James goes on to call for practical Christian evidences that flow from a changed life.
Particularly in view here are Christian behaviors related to speaking, hearing, and thinking. Given this area of focus, you could say James is asking us to participate in a “Check-up from the neck up.” First, let’s “check-out” the text:
19 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;
20 for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Watch Your Mouth
James instructs first: “Let every man be swift to hear” and “slow to speak.” In the words used by many of our mothers: Watch your mouth! There are two important actions regarding proper use of our mouths: we must close them tightly when we listen and open them slowly when we speak.
Close tightly when you listen
Be a good listener. Don’t become the person you yourself recognize as a bad listener. We all know the type. You’re talking to this person and all the while you get the sense that this person isn’t really listening, but is rather thinking of what they’re going to say when you are finished. And you feel like you need to hurry through the rest of your words in order to make a point because they’re getting ready to interrupt you to say what they’re going to say. Don’t do that!
Exercise restraint and keep your mouth closed while you listen to whoever is talking to you. Honor them by looking them in the eye and taking time to hear them out. Listen. Then, when it is your turn to speak, take care to speak wisely.
Open slowly when you speak
Someone said God has given us two ears and one mouth so we would listen twice as much as we would speak. Be a good listener. Know the danger of talking too much, of being a chatterbox.
Solomon warns, “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise (Proverbs 10:19).” In another place he advises, “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue (Proverbs 17:28).”
Are you a good listener? Here’s a helpful question: What do you do with your cell phone when someone is talking to you? Let me suggest you put it away. Put it in your pocket or in your purse. Silence it. Honor the person who is talking to you by giving your full attention. When you turn to your phone to look at a text or a tweet or whatever, you are dishonoring the person who is talking to you and turning to someone else who is actually interrupting and doesn’t know it. Exercise the wisdom of restraint. Be swift to hear.
James moves from the discipline of proper speaking and hearing, to the discipline of proper thinking, especially the thinking we do in response to emotions.
Keep Your Head
Our initial response to jarring emotions is often wrong. We may allow our emotions to get the best of us and fail to “keep our head” as Rudyard Kipling advises in his famous poem “If—” which begins with a call to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
Keep your head. In other words, don’t react in a way you will later regret. Paul writes, “Be angry and do not sin (Ephesians 4:26).” Don’t allow your anger lead you down a path that will hurt others and bring shame upon the Lord. Rather, James says, be “slow to wrath.”
Be calm
To be “slow to wrath” is to be calm, unruffled, and even-tempered. Apply this to the context of James’ call for wise listening and speaking. If we respond rashly to a criticism or concern we may sin by saying or doing something we later regret. We may even lash out in response, endeavoring to project our wrong onto others.
Hear again the wisdom of Solomon: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger (Proverbs 15:1).”
Watch your mouth. Keep your head. They go together. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”
A lady once approached Evangelist Billy Sunday in an effort to defend her frequent angry outbursts. She reasoned, “There is nothing wrong with losing my temper,” adding, “I just quickly blow up, and then it’s all over.” Sunday wisely responded, “So does a shotgun. It quickly blows up, and look at the damage it leaves behind.”
It is nearly always better to be in the position of wishing you had said something than to be in the position of regretting what you actually said. How often do we wish we had not said what we actually said to our son, daughter, parents, or spouse? Indeed, “when words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise (Proverbs 10:19).”
Be Christlike
James goes on to say why being an angry and bitter person is so unbecoming of a Christian. He argues, “for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
When James uses the word “righteousness” in his letter, the meaning is generally different from the way Paul uses the same word in his letters. James is not talking about “saving righteousness,” or, “imputed righteousness,” the righteousness of Christ. He does not have the doctrine of justification in mind. Again, his letter is not about becoming a Christian, but about behaving as a Christian.
When James uses the word “righteousness” in his letter, he generally has in view the practical expression of one’s faith, the daily behavior of believers, actions that are consistent with their faith.
It’s the same understanding of righteousness Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, for example, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them…So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others (Matthew 6:1-2; NIV).”
So James warns: “the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” A paraphrase this verse may be: “When you lash out at someone, allowing your anger to get the best of you, you do not look like a follower of Jesus. Your behavior is inconsistent with the faith you profess. This does not please God!”
Hear from God
In an effort to correct the inconsistent actions of Christians who allow their emotions to get the better of them, James turns to helpful correction, correction culminating in our receiving the word of God, or hearing from God. There are two actions necessary for believers to be in a position to hear from God: rejecting and receiving.
Reject all wicked activity
James admonishes: “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness.” The “laying aside” of all wickedness conveys the action of removing things that are undesirable, things that don’t look right on us, things that don’t “suit” us, much the way dirty clothes don’t look right on us. So what do we do? We take off the dirty clothes, laying them aside, putting on clean clothes. Applied to Christian living, the dirty clothes are the ways we used to live before we became Christians. Now that we are Christians, we live differently and look differently. We are spiritually clean so we endeavor to look that way and live that way. We will not put on our old, dirty clothes, our old behavior any longer, because we are now different.
It’s the same idea conveyed by the Apostle Paul: “Let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light (Romans 13:12; cf Colossians 3:5-14).”
James describes that old behavior, that pre-conversion behavior, as “all filthiness and overflow of wickedness.” He suggests we must “lay aside” these dirty ways of thinking and living in order to be in a proper position to “receive” the word, to hear from God—much like the way we need to clean out our ears so we can hear properly.
Consider how anger and wrath can impede your ability to hear the Word. If you have anger and bitterness in your spirit, it’s really hard to listen to preaching or teaching of the Word. I know that from my own experience. To hear from God we must reject all wicked activity.
Receive the word in humility
Having described what we must reject, James turns next to what we must receive: “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
The “implanted word” is God’s Word, namely what God says as recorded in Scripture. This is the Word “which is able to save your souls,” and James most likely uses the word “save” here in a general sense as in, “saving you from a lot of trouble,” because he is addressing professing Christians, folks who are already saved. At the same time, however, the Word of God is certainly that Word which is able to save all souls! The Word of God contains the saving message of the gospel and all who believe and receive the gospel message may be saved.
Yet James’ main concern here is on how one receives the Word of God. He writes: “Receive with meekness the implanted word.” The word meekness connotes humility, a teachable spirit. Receive the word by listening sincerely, assuming the posture of a teachable spirit.
Do you have a teachable spirit? Do you receive the Word of God with anticipation? Consider how you arrive for public worship where the Word is preached or a small group setting where the Word is taught. Do you hunger for preaching and teaching of the Word? Do you thirst for it because you really want to learn and grow? Or does your body language and general disposition suggest you’ve pretty well learned all you care to learn?
James says, “Receive with meekness (with humility) the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls.” Have a teachable spirit. Demonstrate a willingness to hear, to listen, to learn.
And James refers to the Word as that which is “implanted” in the Christian. When the Christian reads or hears the Word, the Word is planted within. To borrow from Jesus’ parable, the word is sown in the heart just as a farmer’s seed is sown in the ground (Luke 8:4-15). The Christian must receive the Word with a fertile attitude if he is to benefit from it. Whether the implanted Word ripens to a harvest depends upon the receptivity, the meekness, of the one receiving it.
True believers have a natural thirst and hunger for the Word of God. Because believers have been “born again,” they have new natures with new desires. Their soul yearns for the food that results in spiritual growth, the Word of God.
Before a person is saved, the Word is not that important to him. He may find it occasionally helpful or interesting. After all, a person doesn’t need to be a Christian in order to find the Bible interesting. A lost person, a non-Christian, may find sections of the Bible rather engaging, even useful at times.
But one of the ways a person knows he is born again is that the Bible is more to him than merely an interesting or helpful book; it is food for his soul! The Christian has an inherent love for the Word of God and feels he or she must have it, must read it, must hear it, or there will be no growth, no power, no life.
Imagine you have been marooned on and island and haven’t eaten for several weeks and you are famished. After your rescue you are seated at a table where there’s a roast and potatoes and gravy. How will you respond? Will you think to yourself, “Well, this all looks rather interesting. I suppose if I eat some of this it will even be helpful.” No, you are hungry! You have natural desires within causing you to crave that meat and you are going to take in as much as you can with great delight.
One reason many professing Christians may lose their joy of feasting upon the Word is because they are trying to satisfy their spiritual hunger pangs with the wrong “food.” There is so much “junk food” in our culture, so much “filthiness and overflow of wickedness” that we may be receiving this “food” perhaps without our even realizing it. In the same way a person may gorge himself on unhealthy food, depriving his body of necessary nutrients, so a Christian may unwittingly fill himself with the unhealthy food of contemporary culture, causing his spiritual body to languish and weaken.
Think of all the “noise” in our culture that prevents us from hearing the Word: there is ungodly conversation, ungodly music, ungodly books, magazines, and websites. There are ungodly movies, sitcoms, and Broadway productions. I realize in broaching this topic there are those who would earnestly defend Christian participation in some of these activities. My point is that there is so much unhelpful “noise” blasting into our ears that we must take care not to allow the Word of God to be silenced. To the Christian, God’s Word is naturally “music” to his ears. It is beautiful. It is wholesome. It is healthy. It is life.
So it is not enough merely to “plug our ears,” keeping out the noise. As we’ve noted before, we must not only say “No” to something, we must also say “Yes” to something else. We must reject that which is bad and receive that which is good.
In the Greek mythological epic, The Argonautica, there is a memorable scene where the legendary musician Orpheus helps his sailing companions overcome the beguiling music of the Sirens. These are the same Sirens Odysseus encounters in Homer’s The Odyssey where Odysseus puts wax into the sailers’ ears so that they would not be enchanted by the music and be drawn inexorably to certain death. In The Argonautica, Orpheus plays masterfully upon his lyre, drowning out the seducing sounds of the Sirens so that the Argo sailers may pass by safely.
The bewitching music of the Sirens is much like the noise of the world. Christians must take care to say “No” to so much that is unhelpful and dangerous. At the same time, however, they must also say “Yes” to that which is helpful and life-giving: the Word of God. We must listen to the beautiful music of God’s Word, receiving with meekness the Word that is able to save our souls.
What About You?
- Do you have a natural hunger for the Word of God? If not, why do you think that is?
- How might you best prepare to “hear” the Word in corporate worship? In Bible study?
- What is some of the “noise” in your life that competes with your hearing from God?
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