Hearing and Doing

Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed (James 1:21-25).

There is no real discrepancy between the teaching of St. James and the teaching of St. Paul, still less is there any contradiction. The writings of the one are needed to complement—that is to say, to fill up—what is, more or less, deficient in the writings of the other, and thus to present to us truth in its completeness. There is no antagonism between these two sacred authors, but they look at things from different standpoints. St. Paul regards things from the standpoint of causation; his work is to deal with those great spiritual and ethical motive forces which may be said to dominate human action for good or evil. His great object is to induce a proper condition of soul by the restoration of our true relations with God, and he is fully and rightly persuaded that if he can only bring this about, the fruits of good works are sure to be induced in their season.

St. James, on the other hand, regards things from the standpoint of effect. He was evidently a man of an intensely practical turn of mind, and was profoundly impressed with the conviction that the test of religious reality lies in its moral efficiency. Hence he insists with great force upon the practical claims of Christianity, and protests against those empty professions which leave the character and the life unchanged. Antinomianism¹ had, I suppose, even in these early days begun to show its hideous front. There were men then, as there are now, who prated of faith, but trifled with sin; or who were loud in their statements of the doctrine of justification, and yet led worldly, self-indulgent, useless lives. Against such St.

¹“Against Law” specifically those who hold the position that the Scriptures do not have laws that pertain to us. These are called “lawless” in Jude—PCAM