Studies in the Epistle of James

by A. T. Robertson

Hearers Only (1:22-24)

James keeps the balance well. He has shown the wisdom of good listening. Now he proves the futility of mere listening with no effort to put into practice what one hears. There is life in the Word of God if it is lived. It is quick with life-giving energy for those who put it to the test of life. One may hear and not heed. The Greek used the same word for both ideas. One is reminded of the parable of the sower again, for only one of the four classes of hearers brought forth fruit. That is the test. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The reception of the Word will only bring final salvation in case the fruit is borne.

James knew only too well the empty ceremonialism of the Jews who said and did not. Jesus (see Matt. 23) arraigned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in the most scathing denunciation of all time. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.” Show yourselves “word-doers” (Hort). By “word” it is not clear whether is meant the Torah (Oesterley) or any word of authority (Hort), or the rooted word just mentioned (Plummer). The latter is most likely, though the partial personification of “word” here reminds one of the opening verses of the Fourth Gospel and of Philo and the Targums.

The “hearers only” did nothing else but listen. They were true “sermon tasters” who fed upon the ministry of the Word or the written word, only to fatten into sloth and spiritual inertia. They got the hookworm disease in religion and belonged to the shirkers, not the workers. Rabbi Chananiah used to say: “Whosesoever works are in excess of his wisdom, his wisdom stands; and whosesoever wisdom is in excess of his works, his wisdom stands not.”[64] The rabbis said there were two crowns, one for doing and one for hearing, based on Exodus 24:7: “we will do, and we will be obedient” (“hear”). The word for hearers appears nowhere else in the New Testament and was used for attendants at the lectures of philosophers and other public speakers rather than learners or disciples. One thinks of the public reading of the Word in the synagogues. But even so, “Act on the Word,” Moffatt has it. Else it is like pouring water into a sieve. It is in one ear and out of the other.

Some people have a sort of religious dissipation in attending revival services and imagine that they have accomplished a great deal if they simply go. People easily acquire itching ears that love to be tickled with some sensation. The word takes no root in the hearts of such men. They run from church to church to get a new word, a sort of soda-water habit. They deceive themselves but nobody else. These spiritual “gadabouts” are shallow and skim the surface only. They make a sort of motion picture but accomplish nothing substantial in their own lives or in the work of the kingdom. They are guilty of a logical fallacy and are the victims of their own delusions (cf. Col. 2:4). One has thus a case of autointoxication. He has inoculated himself with the virus of his own error.

And now James draws a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle hearers, the hangers-on in revival meetings, like the scum that comes first to the surface, lighthearted, impulsive, nonchalant, without depth of purpose or seriousness in life. Such a frivolous listener glances at his face in a mirror, taking note to see that he looks natural and proper. A quick look suffices for that, for “his natural face,” the face of his birth, the only one that he has. If nothing is awry about his appearance reflected in the mirror, he is satisfied (or dissatisfied) with the momentary glance. The mirror was probably of metal, and the word is often used by the poets (Mayor). Here the mirror is the Word of God (spoken or written) by which one takes a look at himself, and the quick and superficial view brings satisfaction or a passing pang. See 1 Corinthians 13:12 for the use of “mirror” for the imperfect knowledge of Christ through reflection in the Word of God and in life contrasted with the blessed reality when face to face with him (Mayor). But here in James the man tarries by the mirror for a moment and soon moves off.

All that he saw in the Word of God is now out of sight and out of mind, like the wayside hearers in Christ’s parable. If it was a sermon that he heard, the impulses for good quickly die away. He is back at his business, at his club, or in his home. He straightway forgets what he was like, what sort of man he was in the mirror. In particular, any unpleasant features are forgotten. The momentary trembling of the conscience no longer bothers him. Alas, how easily the burning heat of the day withers the tender shoots in the stony ground; the weeds and thorns choke to death the pious aspirations of the better hours.

Real Students of the Word (1:25)

The image of the mirror is carried on into the picture of the doer of the word, the “doer that worketh,” a doer of work, “an active agent” (Moffatt). The phrase is tautological but very emphatic. He is not only a doer of word but a doer of deeds. He has put the word into practice and has brought practical results. He has transmuted word into deed. This is what counts, the practice of the Word of God, not mere glancing at the mirror nor chatter about what one saw or picked up, not a hearer of forgetfulness. It is astonishing what poor memories men have for what God says. The Doctrine of Addai gives as an uncanonical saying of Jesus: “That which we preach before the people by word we should practise by deed in the sight of all.”

The sincere listener pauses long enough to become interested in the real meaning of the Word of God, which is now law to him, for he wishes to obey this Word of the Master. These listeners are the joy of the preacher’s heart, those who turn to the Scriptures, like the Bereans, to see if these things are so (Acts 17:11). The word in James suggests curiosity and eagerness, as in Sirach 14:23, of the one who looks through the door of wisdom, and in 1 Peter 1:12, the desire of the angels to peer into the problems of the mission of Christ to earth. The law of God is attractive and perfect to the doer of work, as the psalmist has it: “The law of the Lord is perfect” (Psalm 19:7). But it is not a law of compulsion but of freedom. One is free to accept or to reject it. Certainly James does not have the view of the Judaizers, who made the law a yoke of bondage even for Gentiles, but rather that of Paul, who accented the freedom in Christ (Gal. 5:1). Jesus held out freedom as the great blessing of truth (John 8:32)—freedom to exercise one’s highest functions and faculties held in bondage by sin and mere legalism.