The Mirror

James gives us a small and devastating picture. A man looks into a glass, sees his own face, turns away, and at once forgets what he saw. It is such an ordinary thing that we almost miss its point. We glance at our reflection a dozen times a day and carry away no lasting impression of it. And this, James says, is exactly what most of us do with the word of God. We hear it, we catch a true glimpse of ourselves in it, and then we go our way and straightway forget what manner of men we are. The word held up a mirror, and we looked, and we walked off unchanged.

For the word of God is a mirror, and this is the first thing to understand about it. It is not given merely to inform us but to show us to ourselves. When it is read honestly it reflects back our true condition, not the flattering image we prefer but the actual face, the pride we had not noticed, the coldness, the secret sin, the neglected duty. This is an uncomfortable service, and it is a merciful one, for a man cannot wash a smudge he has never seen. The word shows him the smudge. Whether it gets washed depends on what he does when he turns from the glass.

THE FORGETFUL HEARER

The tragedy James describes is not that the man refuses to look. He does look. He beholds himself. The tragedy is what happens next, that he goes his way and straightway forgets. The forgetting is almost immediate, straightway, before he has gone many steps. He heard the searching word on the Lord’s day, felt the prick of it, perhaps even resolved to change, and by the time the day’s noise had risen around him again the whole thing was gone, erased, as if he had never seen his face at all. This is the great peril of hearing, that it can feel like doing. To be moved by a word, to nod at its truth, to feel the momentary sting, can so resemble obedience that we mistake the one for the other and go away satisfied, having done nothing.

And James names this plainly for what it is. Be ye doers of the word, he says, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. Deceiving your own selves. The hearer who does not do is not merely incomplete. He is deceived, and self- deceived, which is the hardest deception to break because the deceiver and the deceived are the same man. He believes himself to be a person shaped by the word because he has heard so much of it, while his life goes on untouched by any of it. He has mistaken the glance for the washing.

LOOKING INTO THE PERFECT LAW

Over against the forgetful glancer James sets another man. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, he says, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. Notice the two differences, for everything hangs on them. The blessed man looks into the word, stoops down and gazes into it, not the passing glance of the first man but a fixed and searching look. And he continues therein, he abides, he does not turn and walk away but stays before the glass until it has done its work. The one who gazes and remains and then does what he has seen is the one who is blessed, and he is blessed not in his hearing, nor in his gazing, but in his deed.

There is a peculiar danger here for the one who lives much with the word, who reads and reflects and sits long in the quiet with Scripture, and it must be named because it hides so well. The cell can breed a subtle vanity of insight. A man may become a connoisseur of truths, collecting fine understandings, moved again and again by what he reads, mistaking the warmth of a stirred mind for the obedience of a changed life. Knowledge puffeth up. It is entirely possible to know a great deal about the word and be shaped by almost none of it, to be a scholar of the mirror who never once washed his face. The Lord had such hearers in Ezekiel’s day, and his verdict is sobering. They hear thy words, he said, but they do them not, and thou art unto them as a very lovely song. A lovely song, admired and unobeyed. God forbid that his word should be no more to us than that.

DOERS OF THE WORD

What, then, does the doer do? He asks of every word he hears the one question the forgetful hearer never asks. Not, is this true, for he grants that at once, nor even, is this moving, but, what am I now to do about it. And he does that thing before the image fades, while the face is still before him, because he knows how quickly straightway comes. The Lord was blunt about the emptiness of the other way. Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, he asked, and do not the things which I say. And he told of two men, one who heard his sayings and did them, building his house upon the rock, and one who heard and did them not, whose house fell in the flood. Both heard. The hearing was not the difference. The doing was.

THE WORD THAT JUDGES

We should not miss how searching this mirror is, for the word of God does not merely reflect the surface, as a glass reflects a face. It reads what lies beneath. The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, the Scripture says, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It shows not only what we do but why, not only the deed but the motive coiled beneath it, the pride hidden in the good work, the fear disguised as prudence, the self curled at the root of what looked generous. This is a mirror that sees through us, and to stand before it honestly is to be laid open.

Such exposure is not pleasant, which is a further reason we hurry from the glass. It is one thing to be shown a smudge on the cheek and quite another to be shown the rot at the root. The natural man flinches from a word that judges his heart and reaches at once for the noise that will let him forget it. But the flinching is the very thing to resist, for the word wounds only to heal, and the sight it gives us of ourselves, unbearable as it feels, is the first mercy, the diagnosis without which there is no cure. Do not run from the word that wounds. Stand still under it, and let it show you what is there.

HEARING THAT HARDENS

For a word heard and not done does not leave us where it found us. It hardens us. Every time we feel the prick of a truth and do nothing, we grow a little more able to feel it and do nothing the next time, until at last we can hear the most searching word entirely unmoved, our conscience gone callous through long disobedience to what we know. This is the terrible arithmetic of hearing without doing. It does not keep us at a safe standstill. It trains us in deafness. The most gospel-hardened hearts are not those who never heard, but those who heard often and obeyed nothing, and wore the edge off the word by handling it without ever once submitting to it.

This is why the Lord pronounced his woe not on the ignorant but on the enlightened who would not act, and why he said the servant who knew his lord’s will and did it not should be beaten with many stripes. To have the mirror and refuse its verdict is a graver thing than never to have looked. Knowledge unobeyed is not a neutral possession laid up harmlessly against some later use. It is a debt that accrues. Better to hear little and do it than to hear much and harden, for it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers.

So let the word do its whole work in you, both the wounding and the healing. Do not stand before it as a critic weighing a lovely song, but as a patient before the physician, willing to be shown the worst and willing to be cut where the cutting heals. And having been shown, do not harden by delay, for the word that judges the thoughts and intents of the heart means to change them, and it will, in the soul that receives its verdict and turns.

So when you rise from the reading of the Scriptures, do not go your way and straightway forget. Stay a moment before the glass. Ask what it showed you of yourself, and what one thing it now requires, and go and do that thing today, before the day’s noise erases it. If ye know these things, the Lord said, happy are ye if ye do them, and he set the whole of the blessing on the doing. The psalmist shows us the pattern in a single verse. I thought on my ways, he says, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. He thought, and then he turned his feet. That is the whole of it, to look long into the mirror of the word, and then to turn the feet, and to do, before we forget, what manner of men it showed us we are.