How the Word Transforms (3-7-2021)

How the Word Transforms 3-7-21 Opening Scripture: James 1:21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. Chapter one of the letter of James is so full of good stuff it was hard for me to focus on one or two things for this devotional. After reading the chapter again and again and reading two or three commentaries, I kept coming back to verse 21, my opening verse of Scripture. I was intrigued by the different translations of the latter part of that verse. The King James version says “… receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls” but most translations, speaking of the process of the word getting inside of us, use the words planted or implanted. I like both translations. One commentary I read points out that the Old Testament says the law comes from outside the human person, for example to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of stone tablets. And the law then admonishes the receivers to do their duty. But the New Testament treats the word differently. The Gospel word is to be grafted inwardly into fruitful believers to become one with them. Think of it like a kidney being transplanted from one person into another then becoming a living part of the new host. In the case of the believer the word – like the kidney – is to become livingly incorporated into them. For the Christian believer the Holy Spirit accompanies that transplanted word and makes it real within our being. Since it is planted with the Holy Spirit’s life blood, so to speak, coursing within it, the Gospel is a lot less likely to be rejected like a transplanted organ might possibly be rejected in a human body. I had a friend who had a double lung transplant and it gave her several more months of life on Earth. But eventually her body rejected the transplanted organs and she died. She was a poet friend of mine with immense talent who was also a very dedicated Christian woman. We get another description of this process of the inward transformation of the word in the parable of the sower as described in Matthew 13:1-23. (Logos commentary, Alford) I can see a concrete example of this engrafting, transforming-the-word process in a friend of ours who is a lifelong Christian who seems to almost breathe the Bible within herself. It has become part of her to the extent that in many different situations she is able to come up with a very appropriate and telling quote from the Psalms or the Gospels that apply and often inspire. She is not showing off or even trying to convince someone to be a Christian or anything, she is just being herself. The word is part of her personality. Now, this woman has told me of the moment in church at the age of six when she marched up the center isle after the altar call, committed herself to Jesus, and was later baptized. I would say that the Holy Spirit was there with and in her and has stayed there for 80 years. She is not holier than thou but an ordinary person with a great sense of humor and hundreds of stories. But it occurs to me that the Holy Spirit is coursing in her spiritual veins – as it were. This verse 21 is so rich. One commentary (Logos) explains that this verse is saying to lay aside the filthy garments of excess and to throw off an intemperate spirit arising from malice and our natural evil disposition towards one another. We are encouraged to humbly accept the salvation message we have received (“the word implanted in you”), because it can save us. So it is vital to listen to God’s message to us. But then James, as he does throughout his letter strikes one of his most important themes. He says it is equally as important or even more crucial to obey and do what the message tells us to do. I am reminded of a wonderful song by the gifted Christian singer Keith Green who sings his version of the parable of the sheep and the goats. He passionately describes how the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and, speaking to the sheep, he says: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25:32-35) Green concludes this tear-jerking song dramatically singing and playing in a minor chord: “The only difference between the sheep and the goats is what they did and did not do!” I remember the first time I really attentively read this book of James several years ago in a men’s Bible study group. I recall that James nailed me on some of my long-lived bad habits, especially my intemperate language. I remember how uncomfortable I felt with those men discussing these faults. I did not particularly like James, in fact, I actively disliked him because he made me face in to engrained patterns of behavior - behavior that made me think I deserved to be on the left with those goats and not on the right with the virtuous sheep. Now, however, I love this book and ironically God has put no fewer than four righteous men in my life who regularly show me what it means to be on that right side. As if to give me a persistent reminder of the message of this outstanding book of the Bible, God placed these four men in prominent places around me and all four of them are named James. Questions and Challenges • • • • Who do you know or who do you know of - who has the Word of the Gospel implanted or engrafted into them? How does their behavior show you that they have become transformed by that word? Describe ways that you are growing like a limb that has become grafted to a healthy plant and how you are changing to become a stronger believer. In what ways to you see yourself as a goat and in what ways do you see yourself as one of the sheep? Prayer Dear holy and loving Father, thank you for the men named James whom you have sent into my life, including James the brother of Jesus. Guide me and us as a community to act like people who are imbued and transformed by the word. Give us greater dedication to the word by studying our Sunday school lessons, discussing them, and making them a practical part of our behavior and our lives. We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our precious Lord and Savior. Amen. Sources: Life Application Bible, p. 2246 Logos Bible software and commentary on James 1:21