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| Maturity Through Doing | | Date Created: Sep 26, 2005, 10:27 PM |
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks repeatedly at his beginning face then goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who continues to look into the mature instruction, the law of freedom, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. - James 1:22-25
James is a book about wisdom - wisdom from James for the persecuted, scattered church (1:1b; Acts 8:1-3). How are we to rule with Christ in this situation? How is it that we, the bride of Christ, now reign with him as his queen when all we experience is persecution, affliction, and estrangement from Jewish and Roman civilization?
James tells them that their suffering has all come about to test their faith and to strengthen them into mature, well-rounded disciples, lacing nothing (1:2-4). Maturity and wisdom are common themes in James (1:4, 5, 17, 25; 3:13f.). One needs wisdom to be mature and maturity to rule. They are being trained for "the crown of life" (1:12).
And we know from the life of Jesus that maturity comes through suffering, more particularly through trusting the Father and remaining faithful through suffering. Jesus "learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made mature he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him" (Heb. 5:9; cf. 2:10). One becomes mature through the experience of obeying God in the midst of suffering.
Indeed, Paul goes on in Hebrews 5 to chastise his hearers because they are not yet wise enough to receive instruction concerning Christ as the Greater Melchizedek. Why? Because they are unskilled in the word of righteousness. They are children (5:13). "But solid food is for the mature mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good and evil" (5:14). It's clear that maturity comes through patient obedience during trial.
It is just this Christological model (suffer -> faithful obedience -> maturity) that James works with in his epistle. This is not so much because he connects all the dots himself with the life of Jesus, as Paul does repeatedly in Hebrews (see also Heb. 12:3ff); rather, James restates Jesus teaching and applies it to his flocks current crisis.
More could be said about that, of course; but what interests me in this passage is how James uses the mirror imagery in his argument. The mirror functions to reflect back to the man his "beginning face." The Greek word here is genesis. Sure, it could be a reference to a man's genealogical/natural self. But it's much more fitting, in context, to take it as a reference to the way the man's face looks at the start because it is contrasted with what he ought to be at "the end."
The word translated "perfect" in most English translations is the Greek word teleios. Context, of course, determines its precise meaning in any given text, but it's hard to imagine that James would use the words "beginning" and "end" in parallel lines and not want us to think: start and finish, beginning and end, how I am now and what I am to become. It is the law that shows us maturity, the mature instruction. James warns against not making progress toward the goal, the end, revealed in the mature instruction (of Christ). Jesus instruction reveals the goal for his disciples, indeed for renewed mankind.
If you are not being transformed into the Image of the Son, more and more conformed to his instruction (as given in the Sermon on the Mount, for example), then you are self-deceived, deluded about your status and spiritual health in the kingdom of Jesus. James longs for his flock to attain "to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).
This means being "doers of the word, and not hearers only." The man does not do what he hears makes no progress. He deceives himself if he thinks his face has changed any from the last time he looked. It hasn't. It's still his beginning face. One who is a hearer only makes not progress toward maturity and therefore will not be fit to rule wisely with Jesus.
To be only hearers of the word is such a common seduction for Reformed people. We become connoisseurs of preaching, teaching, lectures, books, articles on the Bible and theology. We think we have arrived at the pinnacle of Christian maturity when we elevate ourselves to theological Critic. Boy, do we know how to hear and evaluate other people's theological errors. But the goal (telos) of the word of God is not that we might all be theological inquisitors, but that we might all be like Jesus and learn to trust the Father and sacrificially serve one another even in very difficult times. |
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