NOTES for Jam 1:19-27
19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: |
20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. |
21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. |
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. |
23 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: |
24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. |
25 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. |
26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. |
27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. |
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In today's passage from his general epistle, the apostle James gives us an amazingly strong and categorical formulation. Human anger does not produce God's righteousness. These are simple words, but how frightening it is to look at our own life from this point of view. How often we allow ourselves what we shyly call righteous anger. Who does not become its target, from our own charming children to our own unattractive government... But if human anger does not produce God's righteousness, then what does it produce? Obviously, something opposite: sin. It is an astonishingly practical recommendation. If you are angry, stop yourself, because at that moment you are not producing God's righteousness. Driven by anger, you will do nothing good.
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