Dirty Faces

James talks about the man who looks into a mirror, sees his face is dirty, but then goes away and forgets all about it—as a result, he still has a dirty face. What was he talking about? People who look into (study) the Bible, find out what is wrong with them, but go away and do nothing about it. Dirt is one thing; for neatniks, possibly everything. But suppose he sees signs of skin cancer, and still walks away? That could be deadly.

Yet, people do what James describes all of the time. They read, they hear a sermon, they remember a Scripture verse—any one of which facts demonstrates the need for change—but no, they go on, unperturbed, just as if they hadn’t seen the spiritual dirt or signs of cancer evident in their lives.

In some ways, it’s more dangerous to hear and neglect (or refuse to obey) than not to have heard at all. The responsibility for continuing in sin is greater. When your preacher holds the Bible mirror to your face in a powerful message, do you immediately go the Lord in repentance for His washing? Or do you go home, have a good meal, turn on your HD wall mounted TV, and forget all about it?

If we Christians were more conscientious about this matter, the impact of the truth upon our lives and our testimony to the community would be greatly extended. How about it? Am I right, or wrong?

Become doers of the Word and not only hearers, fooling yourselves; whoever is a hearer of the Word and not a doer is like a man who sees the face he was born with in a mirror—he sees himself, and goes away and immediately forgets what he looked like. But whoever looks in to the perfect law of freedom and continues to do so, becoming not a hearer who forgets but a doer of deeds, will be made happy in the doing.
James 1:22-25

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Institute for Nouthetic Studies Blog on 8 March 2012