Sixth Sunday of Easter - Epistle (1896)

James 1:22-27 What comes from God is good and the most glorious, most precious gift of God is His Word. For it is the imperishable seed of rebirth, the means, the power of God to save our souls. Last Sunday's Epistle taught this. Yes, a book, that shows the single, secure way back to God, to eternal happiness and salvation in his fellowship, is certainly a treasure of all treasures, that all mankind should highly appreciate and eagerly use. But the greatest treasure is the most criticized and despised. One chases after all others, but not after God's Word. One runs to hear everything else, but not the saving revelation of God. And those who hear it are ridiculed. One often holds hearing the Word of God as the last thing a person should do once he could also go to church. Samuel's words: "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears!" one has mostly turned into: Speak, Lord, as much as you want, what I ask afterward, I do not want to hear. Such appreciation the highest gift of God in the world experiences! This is the thanks that God gets for His Word. Therefore even the great majority of those who are called Christians are lost. Help, whoever can help, would control such misery! But even greater misery. Scripture and experience testifies and confirms that even of those who hear the Word, many are lost because they do not let themselves be doers of the Word. Today's Epistle, therefore, agrees with the praise of God's Word in our previous Epistle: Be doers of the Word and not hearers only! 1. Whoever is a mere hearer has no benefit from the Word and deceives himself. 2. Only where hearing and doing go together closely, things go right with mankind and the Word achieves its purpose. 1. "Receive the Word with meekness!" last week's Epistle thus ends. But in order that no one makes a wrong notion of the word "receive", as it is understood, it quietly puts up with it, that the Word is preached to one, the apostle thus continues: "But be doers of the Word" etc.1 Because a. that only the sound of the Word penetrates the ear, the salutary benefits of it is by no means already acquired with it. (Roman opus operatum. Running the Mass.) The Word is a power of God for salvation. The Word wants in the heart. Where it does not go in the heart, it cannot reveal His power. Hearing is necessary; but the mere hearing is not enough; true Christianity does not consist in mere hearing. God has not given His Word that one only hears it and learns with the head and then remains as he always was, in the old way of life of the flesh. It is a mockery of the Word when one always hears it and yet does not take it to heart; to know the will of God and yet not do it. When he will not even go forth and wash off the perceived dirt
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James 1:22.

that one beholds in a mirror that helps him? And anyone who thinks that it was enough just to hear and to know the Word of God, b. he deceives himself, who imagines himself on the way to heaven and actually is on the road to hell, who thinks he may please God, and yet God's wrath rests on him, who imagines he can double-cross God and be satisfied with a mere semblance of Christianity. But man is wrong, deceives himself to his eternal harm, but he cannot deceive God. God will one day judge not according to your delusion, o man, but according to His Word. He says in His Word exactly what it should work in us; whoever now thwarts these effects of the word in his heart is lost. God changes nothing in His Word to please you. The flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God; but whoever nevertheless thinks he can be saved without rebirth deceives himself. And this self-deception is so terrible that he does not let men not only come into heaven, but has even increased his condemnation, because man knows the will of God and still has not done it. Therefore let everyone beware that he is not like the man that verses 23 and 24 describes.2 2. We are saved not in the superficial hearing of the Word, but in the doing of the Word. The Word heard must work the doing. Where this happens, a. there it is right with mankind. V. 25: This earnestly applies, to hear eagerly for salvation, not merely to cast fleeting glimpses in the mirror of divine truth. It applies, to see thoroughly into the Word, so that we learn to recognize ourselves even in the depths of our hearts and never forget our image. This applies to look into, until we see Him Who is our Savior from sin and Who regenerates us into new men who walk in righteousness. And it applies to persevere in the Word and what the Word teaches, always to hear and do and to keep listening and keep doing. God's will must be done by us. This must always be in the closest connection, hearing and doing, never can be alone, he who does not hear also does not do. The Word must always be received in faith, and what one believes, one must continually live it. Hear the Word and receive it in the heart and then go and live and do the Word. The Word warns you about all sin so beware of them. V. 26 particularly mentioned sins of the tongue. The Word tells you what is pleasing to God, does that, and proves it, that your faith is not dead, but living and busy, working through love.3 And where you thus receive the word first in the true faith in the heart and then always lives there and does it, then the Word has not only worked in you what it should and would work, but it also reaches its ultimate end. b. it saves you. "He will be saved in his doing."4 Not by his doing, for through works no man is saved; but in his doing, as he has a certain characteristic in his doing, that it is right according to his faith, as it brings forth fruits of faith. Therefore be doers of the Word and not hearers only! And 2 Peter 1:10-11. W.H.

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Matthew 7:21. James 1:27. 4 James 1:25.