James 1:19-27

Notes

1. Looking only occasionally into the great mirror of God's law, to note how our course of conduct varies from its holy requirements, is not enough. For, like the man who turns away from the mirror, and soon loses from his mind a sense of the defects which it revealed, so we, when we fail to keep the law before us, soon lose a sense of our duty. But we should "continue therein," that is, continue looking into the perfect law of liberty, and then as fast as we thereby discover defects in our characters, take hold, by the grace of Christ, to remedy them. There are many who do not like the law, because it exposes their sins; and so they try to persuade themselves that it has been abolished, as if that would remove their defects of character. This is as wise as it would be for a man to dash a mirror into fragments because it revealed defects in person or clothing, and then imagine that that removed the defects.

2. "Religion" is from religare, which signifies "to bind anew or back, to bind fast."—Webster. It denotes that bond by which a man is attached to the service of the deity he worships. Hence there may be false religions as well as true, vile and degrading religions as well as pure and undefiled. One may seem to be very religious, and yet his religion be vain, or worthless. But he who has true religion will bridle the tongue that he speak no evil, visit the fatherless and widows in the performance of deeds of sympathy and charity, and keep himself free from the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21) and the follies of the world.