I remember my mother telling me when I was a child, “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.” I’ve always been a talker, and more than once I’d had to take heed from the proverb that says where there are many words, sin isn’t far behind (Prov. 10:19). Multiplying words doesn’t solve problems; often it exacerbates them instead. What James is interested in, though, is not only the quantity of words but also their quality.

David in Psalm 32 speaks about remaining silent, as though that would be a solution to a problem, but he finds it’s not the solution at all. Instead his bones wasted away from groaning all the day long. There’s a time to speak, and a time to remain silent. Wisdom dictates which they are.

In James, we see some of the reasons for remaining silent. Anger, for one. Covetousness is another. They often go together. James apparently knows his audience quite well. They’re believers but are impatient, and about lots of things: money is one. Going through tough times is another. They complain and carp against others and against one another. Does this sound like a church you’d like to visit? It doesn’t sound like a very peaceable place. It doesn’t sound very different from what we encounter day to day in the world where there’s no thought given to Christ.

Salt and fresh water don’t come from the same spring, James writes. Blessing people from one side our mouth and cursing them to others behind their backs is obviously not Christian behavior. But James is not a mere moralist. He’s after something deeper, though he’s showing the importance of that something deeper by looking out on the outside. That’s where the inside has its effects; that’s where that something deeper arises to the surface.

Hearers and Doers

James distinguishes between hearers and doers of the Word. You’ll need to be a hearer in order to be a doer. You can’t be a doer without also being a hearer. But you can be a hearer of the Word without being a doer of it, James writes. And that’s dangerous. Which one are you? James is showing that a merely conceptual Christianity, an assent to certain facts about the faith, is not really the Christian faith. But doing may not necessarily be believing either. We have lots of doers out there trying to make the world a better place, often through mistaken philosophies and methods, who could care less about the Christ offered in the gospel. Their doings won’t in the end amount to much. In fact, it may cause more damage.

But if you are a doer of the Word, James is saying, you will be blessed in your doing, and the reverberation is there as well: you’ll be a blessing to others, too. There are many hearers, in church, with the radio on, or listening to messages online (Lately, that’s been all of us!). In fact, we all must be hearers. But how many of us are doers, going to God in repentance and faith after being convicted of irrational anger or behavior, carping against others or brethren, or having our love of money and covetousness exposed? And not only going to God, but being changed as a result.

James also explains how this happens: it has to do with reception of the Word that’s already there, that’s already been implanted, with meekness or humility, he writes. It’s not just about hearing, but hearing for change. Not listening to the message to judge the messenger, or to be able to say that you were there to hear it, but for God’s voice to resonate with your innermost being, taking the instruction, and asking God to change you—regardless of how others around you are acting— for you to conform to his Word. That’s what pleases him, and that’s what will bless you.

If we hear but don’t listen, James writes, we’re like someone who looks at himself in a mirror, and as soon as he leaves the bathroom, forgets what he looks like. If that’s the case, why bother looking into the mirror? In fact, we’d be more consistent, and not be hypocrites, if we avoided the mirror altogether because we don’t want to deal with what we see.

What’s the alternative? It’s looking into the mirror to see things as they are. Part of what that means is this enormously pregnant phrase: the perfect law of liberty. What’s that mean? Aren’t law and liberty polar opposites, never the twain shall meet? There’s someone, the prince of the power of the air, who wants very much for us to believe that.

Law of Liberty

A doer of the Word looks not only at his own reflection but also into what James calls the perfect law of liberty. This, he writes, enables the looker to persevere in what he does, that is, in doing the Word, and not only hearing it. And if this is the case, he will be blessed by God in his doing. What is it that the doer looks into when he looks at the perfect law of liberty? Law and liberty seem to be at odds for many in our contemporary times.

Doesn’t law, according to the apostle Paul, do nothing more than tell me I’m wrong? Isn’t it powerless in helping me live for God, since all it does is tell me that I’m not living for God? Paul also refers to the law in terms of rites and rituals and warns early Christians about thinking they have to keep these, as passed down from Old Testament ceremonies, to be considered righteous before God.

But the word law in the Bible, even in the New Testament alone, has many applications. Did you know that the apostle Paul refers to the gospel as law? In Romans 8:2 (English Standard Version), he writes, “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” David in Psalm 119:45 writes, “I shall walk in liberty because I have sought your precepts,” that is, he had sought God’s laws. This is just to say that when we encounter the word law in the Bible, we need to understand how it’s used where it’s used.

Apparently in Psalm 119, Romans 8, and here in James, it’s not something negative or limiting. It’s not something powerless, but life-changing. It’s not merely a habit or ritual by which to approach God as has been passed down to us, but is something God says he has written on our hearts, and thereby should be something to which we’re responsive.

Grace and Law

If we are responsive, we’ll persevere and be blessed in our doing. There is grace in law as there is law in grace. Law that convicts is a prelude to grace that saves. But grace that saves is also a prelude to the same law that once convicted but now takes on a different aspect for the Christian: it’s law not as a condemnatory instrument but as a way of life. It’s in that sense that Paul writes of the law of the Spirit and life, or that David does of God’s precepts that, as he sought them, led him, not into a narrow and constricted place, but into a wide space of liberty and freedom.

This is James’s prescription for his audience—and for us—to learn to weather trials, to deal with anger, to bridle our tongues, to not worry about money or influence, as he writes. The key to checking this kind of unhappy behavior is not exercising discipline as though it were lifting a stiff upper lip, but to consider where freedom from these behaviors can be found, in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. He’s the one, the only One, who kept the law perfectly, and for the express purpose of doing so on our behalf. That means we’re free from the law of sin and death and can now be subject to a new law, the law of the Spirit and of life. That’s where James is telling his readers to look. That’s where the power for change originates.

Do the words law and liberty taken together have a familiar ring to them in places other than here in James? Aren’t these a uniquely American pair of words? We are a nation of laws, and yet we’re also the freest nation in the world, with rights enshrined in our Constitution that ensure that freedom. That’s not a paradox; it’s cause and effect. There can be no liberty without law, only licentiousness and chaos, which don’t augur for liberty but for slavish fear of tyranny. Lawlessness has never led nor ever will lead to freedom, but to slavery. And the Bible makes clear, it’s slavery to sin, which seeks to destroy everything around it, even while it’s also destroying itself.

Law and liberty are not opposites. They’re complementary. Each is necessary for the other. And that’s true for you and me as it’s true everywhere else: the church, the workplace, how our government runs, society itself. A wise theologian once said, “If not God’s law, then whose?” Good question. The choices aren’t God’s law and no law, but God’s law or someone else’s. Only the first one leads to liberty.

Mr. Gerry Wisz is a writer, college instructor, and semi-retired public relations professional who, with his family, is a member of Preakness Valley URC in Wayne, NJ.