Mirror, mirror on the wall... who's the Righteous of them All?
James 1:23-24
“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”
I know what you are thinking… they had mirrors in the time of Christ?! Actually they did use shiny metal as mirrors and James uses the idea of looking at yourself in a mirror to help understand the concept of being doers of the word.
James says the person who merely listens to the word and does not obey it is like a man looking at himself in a mirror. The original Greek language uses two words to describe the man looking at himself in the mirror. As shown in the KJV and ASV bibles the man sees his “natural face”, meaning the face he was born with, in the mirror. He is only interested in what the outside looks like and does not consider what the inside, his spiritual condition, looks like. He is not thinking of his integrity when looking in the mirror, therefore he looks at himself and goes away without any real thought to how his life for the Lord will be viewed by others that day.
Jesus spoke of this in Matthew 23:25 where he accuses the Pharisees of being hypocrites. They were not living out the word of God, but instead, were busy appearing religious to everyone around them. They had deceived themselves into thinking they were pleasing God, but Jesus accuses them of being filthy. He said this to them: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence… first clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”
The Pharisees considered themselves to be experts in understanding and teaching the word of God, but they deceived themselves because they never put the word of God into practice. They had no integrity among the people. They were
“hearers” only. Jesus said they did not practice what they taught (Matthew 23:3), they practiced religion while ignoring the more important elements of God’s word such as justice, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23:23), they even ignored the needs and caring of their own parents for the sake of religious practice (Matthew 15:3-6). If people could see what is inside of you... what your heart motives are. If your thoughts could be posted on a billboard for all to see... what would people think of you? How is your integrity? God wants to build your integrity and your faith.
