The question of authority concerned, of course, not the formal legal side, but the spiritual one. The people listening to Jesus, deeply religious people, ask it because they want to know where He gets the power by which He performs His miracles and healings...
The question of authority concerned, of course, not the formal legal side, but the spiritual one. The people listening to Jesus, deeply religious people, ask it because they want to know where He gets the power by which He performs His miracles and healings. Jesus asks them a counterquestion that would seem unrelated to the topic: a question about the washings ("baptisms") that John performed. In reality, however, there is a connection, and it concerns the meaning of the question asked of Jesus, above all its spiritual meaning. Those listening to Jesus, representatives of religious authority and teachers of the Torah, called here "scribes," want to know from whom Jesus received the authorization that allows Him to do what He does.
It might seem strange to speak of authorization in the work of God, but religious consciousness always remains true to itself, and for a religious person even the action of God's power is genuine only when it fits within the framework of certain religious criteria. God can act only "correctly," and if there is a manifestation of power acting "incorrectly," then that power cannot be God's. The question asked of Jesus was precisely a question about criteria; they wanted Him to justify the "correctness" of the power by which He healed and worked miracles.
In such a context the counterquestion about John's washings was entirely appropriate. The point is not only that the power there and here was one and that its Source was one. The point is also the ability to see and recognize. The one who could not or would not see the spiritual authenticity and purity of what John was doing would not see the spiritual authenticity and purity of what the Savior was doing. Meanwhile, those listening to Jesus did not want to see the obvious. They were more concerned with what people would think of them than with the truth. In such a spiritual state one will not see what is real, and this is what Jesus points out to the priests and teachers of the Torah who are listening to Him.
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1:19 Let every man be swift to hear - This is treated of from Jam 1:21 to the end of the next chapter. Slow to speak - Which is treated of in he third chapter.Slow to wrath - Neither murmuring at God, nor angry at his neighbour. This is treated of in the third, and throughout the fourth and fifth chapters.
1:20 The righteousness of God here includes all duties prescribed by him, and pleasing to him.
1:21 Therefore laying aside - As a dirty garment. All the filthiness and superfluity of wickedness - For however specious or necessary it may appear to worldly wisdom, all wickedness is both vile, hateful, contemptible, and really superfluous.Every reasonable end may be effectually answered without any kind or degree of it. Lay this, every known sin, aside, or all your hearing is vain. With meekness - Constant evenness and serenity of mind. Receive - Into your ears, your heart, your life. The word - Of the gospel. Ingrafted - In believers, by regeneration, Jam 1:18 and by habit, Heb 5:14.Which is able to save your souls - The hope of salvation nourishes meekness.
1:23 Beholding his face in a glass - How exactly does the scripture glass show a man the face of his soul!
1:24 He beheld himself, and went away - To other business.And forgot - But such forgetting does not excuse.
1:25 But he that looketh diligently - Not with a transient glance, but bending down, fixing his eyes, and searching all to the bottom. Into the perfect law - Of love as established by faith. St. James here guards us against misunderstanding what St. Paul says concerning the "yoke and bondage of the law." He who keeps the law of love is free, Joh 8:31, etc He that does not, is not free, but a slave to sin, and a criminal before God, Jam 2:10.And continueth therein - Not like him who forgot it, and went away. This man - There is a peculiar force in the repetition of the word. Shall be happy - Not barely in hearing, but doing the will of God.
1:26 If any one be ever so religious - Exact in the outward offices of religion. And bridleth not his tongue - From backbiting, talebearing, evilspeaking, he only deceiveth his own heart, if he fancies he has any true religion at all.
1:27 The only true religion in the sight of God, is this, to visit - With counsel, comfort, and relief. The fatherless and widows - Those who need it most. In their affliction - In their most helpless and hopeless state. And to keep himself unspotted from the world - From the maxims, tempers, and customs of it. But this cannot be done, till we have given our hearts to God, and love our neighbour as ourselves.