Close-up Mirrors

The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I once made the terrible mistake of looking at my face in a magnifying mirror. Our family was staying in a hotel room where I discovered a retractable face mirror bolted to the bathroom wall. A ring of bright light glowed around the edge to help tired eyes like mine see clearly when applying makeup.

On one side was an ordinary mirror, while the other was capable of magnifying every pore, hair, vein, and flaw on my skin. When I turned the mirror to the magnifying side, I was mortified. I couldn’t unsee my unkempt eyebrows (which looked fine to the naked eye) or gloss over my uneven complexion. I quickly flipped the mirror back to the other side and stared at the non-magnified version of my face, trying to forget the intimate details the close-up view had revealed.

James, an apostle and a half-brother of Jesus, explains in his letter that reading God’s Word is like looking at our hearts in a close-up mirror. He writes, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (James 1:22-24).

Prior to James’s admonition to be “doers of the word,” he implores believers to put away wickedness and receive God’s “implanted word” with meekness (verse 21). The person who commits to doing God’s Word is the person whose heart has been pricked and softened by the gospel. This person receives the conviction that sprouts from God’s Word and grows in grace through faithful obedience. The one who only hears God’s Word is like a resistant child who ignores their parents when asked to clean their room—the words go in one ear and out the other.

Once we’ve seen the raw state of our souls and heard God’s commands, we have a choice to make about how we will respond: with active obedience or with passive forgetting. Either we flip the mirror the other direction in a vain, self-gratifying attempt to forget our sins, or we walk away a new creation, clothed in righteousness, and ready to do good works in the name of Jesus.

Seeing ourselves accurately in light of God’s perfect law yields a harvest in both the Kingdom of God and in our souls. So receive his Word with joy, and then be a doer of his Word.

May our lives reflect the image of Christ to the watching world.

Word before World God’s Word reveals who we really are and invites us to be transformed into his image.

Grow in Grace Meditate on James 1:26-27. How is God calling you to be a doer of the Word?