The Posture and Practice of True Religion

1. The Posture of a Believer (James 1:21)

A. Repentance.

By first calling us to lay aside, or remove from ourselves, the practice of sinful practices, James is teaching us that the richness of the Word does not lodge comfortably in the hearts of unrepentant people. It is important to remember that this is not calling us to practice repentance once at the beginning of our Christian faith, but it calling us to regularly display a heart of repentance over our sin.

This is important for a few reasons. First, this shows us that James knows that we will always wrestle with sin, but that doesn’t mean we can give up the fight. Second, it shows us that sin will distort your hearing. As we will see later, sin will lure you into reading your Bible without really hearing what is says. So, by living a life marked by repentance, we will prepare the soil of our hearts to receive God’s word.

B. Receiving the Word.

The word “implanted” here is interesting and it teaches us two things. First, James is talking to Christians, not unbelievers. Second, he’s telling us to stop resisting the word. By using the word “implanted,” James is probably referencing Jeremiah 31:33

Jeremiah 31:33 NKJV

33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

In essence, James is reminding us that God has fulfilled His promise in us. By that, I meant that God has saved us and given us His Spirit to truly hear and understand His word. So, since God has done this for us, our posture should be one of meekness. Why? Because this is the word that is able to save your soul. Now, you may be thinking, “Wait, I thought you said he was talking to believers that were already saved?” You’re right, I am.

What we need to remember is that the word “saved” doesn’t always mean justification like we use it today. Rather, when we say the word is able to save your souls, we mean that God will use His word in your life to deliver you from sin in this life. That’s a process that we call sanctification.

So, since God has done this in us, and since His word is able to do such a great work to us, we need to accept it with meekness. A meek posture is one that is submitted and trusting. It’s the opposite of suspicious and critical. We see that Adam and Eve rejected this meek posture in the Garden when they decided to become critical and rejected God’s word to them. What James wants us to do is to come to God’s word and say, “Lord, I’m coming to you with an open heart. I’m trying to kill this sin, I’m trying to honor you, I know your word is true, and I need it for my life. I need it to give me wisdom to win this fight I’m in. So, God I trust you, and your word.”

Now, James is going to address a major problem. As a matter of fact, if I were going to write an article on this, I’d title it, “What’s wrong with Reformed Worship today?” Because James is about to deal with the problem of saying you like the word, but living like it has no relevance in your life. This is what James calls self-deception.

2. The Problem of Self-Deception (James 1:22-24)

A. An Appetite for Reception without Reflection.

What James wants us to get here is that hearing the word without acting isn’t just a neutral act where you decide to chill out. He’s saying that you’re actively choosing to reject the word and to deceive yourself. This looks like having an appetite for sermons, books, and podcasts about the Lord without a willingness to really change.

So, we need to remember that reflecting on God’s word is going to require that I linger with God’s word and ask God to use it to expose and conform me to His will. If we don’t do that, we fall in danger of Being Deceived About Our Religious Condition.

Since the Word reveals who we truly are before God; walking away unchanged is a refusal to reckon with reality. James says that if we look at God’s word and forget to apply it to our lives, we’re like a man looking at himself in a mirror and immediately forgetting what he saw. But what do we see in the Bible? Well, I talk about this all the time, but we see a circuit of lessons sat before us. First, we see that we are called to obey, but fail. Second, because we have failed, we are condemned and should see ourselves as helpless sinners. Third, because we are helpless sinners, we need a Savior. Fourth, because we need a Savior, Jesus came to do what we could not and died for sinners. Fifth, because we have been saved by Jesus, we should seek to be doers of His word by His grace. This is what James calls us to do when he tells us about the man who looks into the law of liberty which leads us to our last point today:

3. The Practice of Pure Religion (James 1:25-27)

A. Look to Liberty in Christ.

A good question for us to ask is, “What is the law of liberty?” Well, like I just showed you, as sinners the law of God is still good, but it’s not good news for us because we can’t keep it. So, when we talk about the law of liberty, we’re talking about the freedom that we have through the obedient life that Jesus lived for us and our salvation. In essence, James is telling us that when we hear the word, the first thing we need to do is to remember the gospel and stay anchored in it. Paul uses this same kind of language in Romans 3:27

Romans 3:27 NKJV

27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.

B. Look to Kill Sin.

In verse 26 and 27, James calls us to kill sin as those who follow the Lord. And if we don’t, he wants us to know that we’re still deceiving ourselves. His use of the word “deceive” here is also used by Paul when he warned about false teachers coming to hurt your soul. So, by using it in James, James is telling us that a religion that is anchored in intellect only and no actions, is a religion that should be carefully inspected as it may be deceiving you about the true condition of your soul.

One way that James is afraid that we might deceive ourselves is by living with an uncontrolled tongue that speaks sinfully all while telling ourselves that we’re holier than thou because we’re religious people. With false, or fruitless religion in mind, James wraps this up by telling us what the real deal looks like practically and there he tells us that it looks like two things: First, it looks to perform good works and second, it looks to purify oneself from sin.

C. Look to Perform Good Works.

Now, the Lord is very concerned about widows and orphans in His word. In Ex. 22:22, Israel is told that they are not to take advantage of these people. In Deuteronomy 14:29, God says that they are to go out of their way to help widows and orphans. In Isaiah 1, God says He will no longer hear the worship of Israel unless they repent and defend the cause of the widowed and orphaned among them. In Psalm 68:5, God Himself says that He will be a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows.

In Ancient Israel, women had virtually no societal power. This is why God took divorce so seriously. If you were to divorce your wife, she would become homeless and destitute over night. So, seeing how helpless these women and little children were, God commands His people to care for them. Now, James isn’t teaching us that those are to be the only people we’re to help. He’s simply using these two horrible situations to tell us that one test of pure religion is whether or not we care for the helpless around us.