The Blessed One

"But whosoever looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one shall be blessed in his deed."  James 1:25

What is normative in the Scriptures may not be normative in practice.  The Scriptures never attempt to chase the subterfuge embedded in human words, on the contrary, the Scriptures weigh human action. Human speech is also human action. Great good or great damage can come from human speech.  The Bible is never dismissive of our actions.  Our actions, including our speech actions are forensic.  

James speaks to the community in a manner that some may not find to their liking.  He is not being purposely abrasive  but he is speaking the truth in love.  I love the language of calling the Word of God the 'perfect law of liberty.'

In our text the word 'liberty' means complete or mature with nothing lacking.  James tells the community the one who has a relentless commitment to expose himself to the perfect law of liberty as a prescriptive measure for himself will find that he will experience a powerful destiny.

First of all, he will not be a forgetful hearer.  That is, he will not be guilty of spiritual negligence.  This is the cause of much turmoil in the lives of the members of the community.  But the fact is, spiritual negligence may  be difficult to measure or detect, and it is not our duty to go around looking for it in the lives of others.  We do well to attend to our own spiritual welfare.

The one who continues in the perfect law of liberty will find that his life is being transformed thereby, and that he has stepped out from the clinging muck of spiritual mediocrity.  He finds that he has indeed laid hold of eternal life as a quality to be ever cultivate.  The one who steps over into the realm of being a doer of the work of faith understands the immediate interpenetration of heaven and time.  There is no more desire to live as though this world is all that there is.

The enemy of the faithful ones knows this and he therefore wants to snatch away the Word whenever one attempts to grow in Grace.  He will steal the prayer time, he will mock the study time with fake phone calls, he will contend the time of meditation with bewildering problems that demand attention-now!  He will introduce urgency where there is no urgency.  He will harass and hinder as much as he can because he knows the power that we claim for ourselves when we spend time in the perfect law of liberty.

Beloved, when we spend time in the Word of God we gather nourishment for our walk of faith.  We must continuously feed ourselves with the Word of God.. We have at our disposal the greatest documents ever written, and there is a mountain of evidence for their veracity and integrity.  Great textual scholars, and biblical scholars have labored throughout the centuries to look into the perfect law of liberty and have not found it lacking.

We must come back to the sobering insight of James.  He wants the members of the community to prosper in Iesous, and he knows that this can only happen if there is a radical commitment to look into the law of liberty.  Life is filled with purpose and power when the Iesous is in control.  He gives the uniquely blessed life.  He has come that we may have life in superabundance.

For more information about Dr. Rich and his teaching ministry, please follow his blog and visit his website.