This has been a hard post to write. After writing about sharpening your sword in my last post, I realized how easy it is to get cut by that very sword. As it says in Hebrews 4:12, For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
To provide more context regarding the verse from James, here are verses 22 through 25, But become doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he looked at himself and has gone away, he immediately forgot what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
What made this post difficult to write is the fact that I have heard, read, and studied the word for most of my life, yet, when it comes to doing what it says, I too often find myself struggling like Paul as he wrote in Romans 7:15-25, For what I am working out, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I agree with the Law, that it is good. So now, no longer am I the one working it out, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the working out of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one working it out, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that in me evil is present—in me who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a captive to the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
Wretched indeed! The mirror of the word reveals the ugliness of sin, but once I walk away that image fades from memory and is replaced by one of my own imagination that doesn't look so bad to me. As James wrote, that's delusional. The key is to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, as Paul wrote in Romans 12:2. Elsewhere, Paul again references a mirror, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. [2 Cor. 3:18] So the key is found in submission to the Holy Spirit, granting Him control of our lives. That's where transformation that leads to sanctification begins.