True Religion: A Lived Out Faith

James 1:19 – 27

 

There’s a trend going around lately of people asking ChatGPT what it knows about them. For those who don’t know what ChatGPT is, it is a conversational AI computer program that can have conversations, answer questions, and create content with just a prompt entered by a person.

 

But like all computer programs, it can only produce from what it is given. So, when people ask it what it knows about them ChatGPT can only answer with information it has been given or given access to, like the questions you’ve asked it, the conversations you’ve had with it, the kind of content you’ve asked it to create, and any other personal information you’ve given ChatGPT access to, like social media pages.

 

That’s a scary thought, that so much of our lives and who we are online that computer AI programs can make assessments of us. But it does beg the question, who would it say you are? How would it describe you? It doesn’t even have to be computer AI, this is just a passing trend, it can be a random stranger who has seen you online and in public, out and around town, who would they say you are? How would they describe you?

 

Are you known by your career? Are you known by your family? Are you the loud person screaming at ball games? Maybe you’re the person yelling at other drivers on the highway? Maybe you’re known by your political party because you’re vocal about politics and government. Here’s the big one though, are you known for your faith?

 

If ChatGPT or someone looked at your Facebook profile, would they know without a doubt that you’re a Christian? If someone saw you on the road or on the street, would they know you’re a Christian? If someone saw you at work, interacting with your coworkers and your boss, would they be able to tell that you’re a Christian? Do your coworkers and your boss know you’re a Christian?

 

As we close chapter one in the letter of James, we see James shift from the testing of faith and enduring to how faith ought to be lived out. Faith isn’t meant to be merely lip service, it’s meant to be active, to be lived out, to be visible. Let’s read God’s Word together: James 1:19 – 27.

It’s quite telling that James starts his exhortations for Christian conduct with be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. How often do people race to be the first to say something, and then everyone else gets mad about what was said? I imagine some Baptist church business meetings across the country may have the propensity to get a little heated.

 

But there is a nuance to this opening verse in our passage today that I had missed for a long time, and it’s found in the larger context of this passage and the first chapter.

 

• Actively cut out sin and humbly embrace the Word of God that saves lives.

 

Many folks read v.19 and take from it that they should listen more than they speak. Anyone ever tell you that because God gave you two ears and one mouth that you should listen twice as much as you speak?

 

While that is good advice, that’s not what James is saying here. I found myself asking, what is it that James is saying that every person should be quick to hear? It’s the “word of truth” that James introduced in the previous verse that I ended last week’s sermon on, and that he delves into in today’s passage.

 

That word of truth, the Word of God, Scripture and the gospel message of Jesus Christ that we read in our Bibles and that we study in Bible study and that we hear preached on Sunday mornings, that is what every person should be quick to hear.

 

Because in that “word of truth” is found wisdom, wisdom to persevere through trials, wisdom to overcome temptation, and wisdom to know how to speak to one another and keep control over our emotions, especially anger.

 

Too often, people get a little nugget of information, a little bit of wisdom, and they think they know all there is to know about the subject. When asked by customers how much I knew about computer networks and IT stuff, I’d usually answer that I knew enough to be dangerous.

 

The reality is that many believers know enough about God’s revelation of Himself through His Word to be dangerous themselves.

This isn’t meant to discourage speaking about God unless you have a theological degree, this is meant as a word of caution. Always be quick to hear, to learn as much as you can about God through His Word, both reading it yourself and hearing it preached, but exercise godly wisdom in having restraint in how quick you are to speak, being on guard from puffing yourself up.

 

If everyone in the body of believers is quick to hear the “word of truth” and slow to speak, then naturally everyone will find it easier to put their emotions in check, in particular anger. God’s Word is the sword of the Spirit, but if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of someone wrongly wielding that sword, you know what James means by being slow to anger.

 

Words have the propensity to evoke anger in people, especially when it’s something that’s said in error, or it’s something that people don’t want to hear. Either way, the way to keep anger in check is to be quick listeners to the Word and slow to comment.

 

Some folks would argue that “righteous” anger is ok, that Jesus also got angry. Remember he flipped the tables of merchants in the temple courts because they had turned God’s house into a den of robbers with their immoral business practices.

 

Look, anger is dangerous, even when expressed in words. Even for the Christian under trial, James, and other parts of Scripture, declare that anger is wrong. Jesus was the only one on earth capable of getting angry and yet not sinning, no one else is capable of that.

 

Be slow to anger, so that you don’t fall into sin because of it. As James says, the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God. The righteous life that God desires for every believer cannot be accomplished by human anger. Only God, the righteous judge, can vindicate the righteous by His anger without becoming involved in sin.

 

The truth is that human anger gets in the way of the wholehearted trust necessary for the right relationship between the Christian and God, and it gets in the way of the right relationships between believers, and those outside of the faith. Anger should not be the motivation for action, for doing. It is the Word of God that we should be quick to hear that should be the motive behind action.

I love James’ metaphor here about putting away all filthiness and wickedness. He’s using the imagery of taking off and putting away dirty clothes, and I don’t imagine it’s just your ordinary I wore this today kind of dirty clothes either.

 

One of the dirtiest jobs I had on the dairy was vaccinating, branding, and dehorning our heifers when they were about 4-6 months old. We had them in a pen that had locking stanchions that were so old and worn out that only about 1/3 of them worked right, if that.

 

So, me and a couple of the boys raised on our dairy had to hop in the pen with the heifers, grab them one by one, lead them into the stanchions and lock them in manually. Then began the branding, which I’ll never forget the smell of burnt hair. Finally, the dehorning process which typically had a bit of blood involved, and more burnt hair.

 

Needless to say, by the time we were done we were pretty filthy. I mean we were covered in manure, blood, dirt, and smelled like burnt hair and flesh. We were a sight to behold and smell. That’s the level of internal filth and wickedness James is telling believers to take off and put away.

 

There is a practical necessity of eliminating everything that is contrary to the word of truth. That those things that are contrary to the word of God must be tossed away like a filthy piece of clothing tells us something important about their nature.

 

The propensity to sin is inherent in every human from birth. But all immoral and moral behaviors are practices that are picked up and learned rather than people are just “made that way.” Being moral is necessary, but it always involves intentional action. Christian obedience is never fully a habit, it requires a daily “putting off the old self and putting on Christ.”

 

Even with the new life believers have in Christ, believers are always putting and putting off ways of living according to the will of God. What a person “wears” in the expression of their values is highly personal and they can be quite attached to it. But what God calls us to put off, however, we must put off.

 

But just cutting out what is bad, taking off the dirty habits of the old life, eliminating evil and its causes is not the final goal of Christian instruction. There is a positive flipside to this coin to do the will of God.

For James, this positive doing begins with humbly receiving the word of truth that has the power to save souls. That word is already alive within every believer in Jesus Christ, receiving it means embracing it and heeding it.

 

Meekness is the opposite of anger and is the result of the gift of wisdom from God. Being meek and humble is how believers can hear the word of God speaking to them when they read Scripture or listen to God’s Word preached. This is just the beginning though.

 

• Genuine faith is demonstrated by doing what the Word of God says.

 

It is absolutely imperative that believers do what the Word says. Disciples are to receive the Word of God by being believers who do what the Word requires of them. Disciples of Jesus Christ cannot just be hearers of the Word. And the problem of self-deception comes up here again.

 

Hearing, listening to the Word of God is right, but it can become wrong when it falls on deaf ears and doesn’t lead to Christian action. Dong what Scripture says isn’t a matter of acting quickly or slowly, it is a matter of acting at all. To be a hearer only and do nothing is self-deceiving.

 

Faith doesn’t stop when the pastor stops preaching. Faith doesn’t stop at the church door. Faith doesn’t stop when you close your Bible or Bible app. Don’t miss this, Faith must be demonstrated.

 

James illustrates this by using the analogy of a man looking into a mirror, and not in a good way. His analogy pictures those who only listen to the Word but are unresponsive to the Word, those who show no signs of acting on the Word of God.

 

Some believers merely glance into the mirror of truth without letting God’s wisdom do its work on them. That’s a real tragedy. God’s Word has the power to transform lives, to bring the spiritually dead back to life, to give hope to those who otherwise have no hope.

 

Believers make two mistakes when they don’t act upon the Word of God. The first is that they treat the Word like a vision, a “theory,” like a detached mental image with no real connection to the external world. Like God’s Word is just theoretical and not practical.

The Word of God both reflects reality, the natural face in the mirror, and it directs the believer to act in a certain way. The second mistake believers make regarding the Word is to ignore its message once they receive it.

 

Why do we look in mirrors anyway? Just to check ourselves out in our vanity? Not usually. Usually, we look in mirrors to check ourselves for flaws, for things in our appearance that need correcting. Our hair, our skin, etc. Just glancing at the Word of God without correcting our action is quite useless.

 

This quick glancing in the mirror and moving on is meant to show how terribly wrong this is. This is highlighted by the man looking at himself, going away, and forgetting what he was like. Clearly a mirror is useless for that kind of guy, and Scripture cannot have its intended effect if we treat it the same way.

 

But the one who really looks into the Word of God, into the perfect law, the law that brings freedom, and he perseveres and does what it says, that person will be blessed says James.

 

This is an intense looking into Scripture for the goal of self-change, the goal of putting off the old self and putting on Christ and all that entails. It’s been said, “Apply yourself to the Word so you may be able to apply the Word to your life.” Only by remembering to do what Scripture says, as you continue hearing and reading it, can you apply it to life.

 

This is why daily reading of Scripture is such an important part of the Christian life. You can’t expect to grow spiritually by just reading the verse of the day on the Bible app. You must go deeper than that. And then you must do what it says!

 

• True religion is rooted in faith and is marked by a life lived in service to God.

 

Oh, there are those words, religious and religion. Believe me, as a former Catholic those words are almost triggering for me. And the use of those terms here by James highlights why so many have a problem with it.

 

 

The term religion is used as both the characterization of a way of life that embodies bad faith and also a way of life that embodies true faith. The problem for James is both the appearance and intent of religion. Both the self-deceiving brother and the faithful brother can appear religious.

 

One of the main characteristics of self-deception in the Christian life is that believers can make an empty show of religious devotion. I saw this so much growing up in the church I grew up in.

 

People appearing devout for the sake of appearances, yet they were anything but on the inside. Jesus saw it too; he called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside and full of death and decay on the inside.

 

But despite the issues people have with religion, we should try to get back to a healthy use of the word religion. Religion is the outward, visible qualities of the life of faith in Christ. In this sense, the religion of the Christian and Christian community is indispensable, but only if it is true to the faith.

 

Here, the tongue becomes the test case for true religion. The imagery used here of bridling a horse gives us some practical guidance about the tongue. The tongue is to be controlled, not silenced. Slow to speak doesn’t mean don’t speak at all.

 

But an unrestrained tongue is a truly destructive force, as we’ll see James talk about later in his letter, and a tool of deception. What is said of God and to God is always a statement about our relationship to God and the truth.

 

Our confession of faith, of sin, and of need before God and others means that the control of the tongue, of the words we speak, makes true religion self-evident. Control of the tongue stands for control of the whole self against temptation to given in to evil desire and to deceive ourselves against double mindedness.

 

Control of the tongue also stands for preserving under trial, for praying to God for wisdom, and using the tongue along with the entire body for the obedience of faith. The religion that goes with an uncontrolled tongue is worthless. Worthless religion is just external with no internal truth. It does not put its money where its mouth is.

But genuine religion, rooted in faith in Jesus Christ, pure and undefiled as James puts it, is religion that does the will of God, that prioritizes the things that God prioritizes. Genuine religion means that everything in the believer’s life bears the mark of service to God.

 

Just as God helps those in need, those who practice genuine religion look after orphans and widows, those in need. Orphans and widows were the most vulnerable members of church and society in James’ day.

 

But along with the outward action of true religion comes an inward action, that is to actively avoid whatever pollutes the soul. The language of keeping oneself follows with the idea of religious observance and spiritual devotion to God, like keep holy the Sabbath in the 10 commandments.

 

When we realize that all of life is lived before God, we begin to understand that the world must have no hold on the believer. Instead, believers hold themselves apart from the ways of the world. You must live out your faith in Jesus Christ before God by actively doing what the Word of God says by serving God according to His will.

 

Religion, however pure, puts you before God; but, having received the life-giving Word, life becomes truly and fully religious. As a Christian your life is set apart to serve God in everything. You are already before Him. The question of how faith responds determines the genuineness of that faith.

 

Genuine faith in God always turns outward, because God’s love is outward. Jesus summarized true religion and its commands in Matthew 22:37 – 40, love God and love your neighbor. James the half brother of Jesus is saying the same thing. Love for God is visibly seen in love for your neighbor, for the neediest among you.

 

Whenever you feel like you don’t know what God wants you to do, read His Word, study it deeply, and pray over it that the Holy Spirit will open it up for you and reveal God’s will to you, because it’s all there in Scripture. God’s Word doesn’t return empty. Don’t just sit here and listen to the Word, become doers of the Word.

 

Let’s pray.