Latest / Reformed Thinking / Acceptable Religion (James 1:26-27) | R. Kent Hughes

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Acceptable Religion (James 1:26-27) | R. Kent Hughes · Reformed Thinking

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  Usually when we talk about a counterfeit, there is a physical
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  object you can inspect. Picture a fake $100 bill.
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  Right, like something tangible. Yeah, exactly.
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  Wait, I mean spot on. It might look passable at first
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  glance. You know, the color seems
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  correct, the portrait looks accurate, the paper even has a
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  bit of texture to it. Sure it fools you at 1st.
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  But the second you hold it up to the light to look for the
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  security thread or run one of those special iodine markers
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  across it, the entire illusion falls apart.
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  Oh yeah, the marker leaves that dark, glaring stain.
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  Right. Suddenly you realize you are
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  holding a worthless piece of paper.
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  The forgery is exposed by an external standard.
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  The physical outward appearance is completely convincing to the
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  naked eye until it faces a legitimate objective test.
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  But then you step into the world of human spirituality and
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  personal belief, and the counterfeit becomes infinitely
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  harder to spot. Oh, for sure.
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  We're looking at a landscape where the fake version doesn't
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  just fool the people around you in the pews.
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  The truly terrifying part is that the counterfeit can fool
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  the person holding it. That is the zenith of self
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  deception, when the spiritual forgery is so well crafted, so
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  comfortable, that you bet your entire life on it without ever
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  realizing it is completely hollow inside.
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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. For today's Deep Dive, we are
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  taking a magnifying glass to excerpts from our Kent Hughes's
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  commentary on the Book of James, specifically zeroing in on
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  chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. Which is a heavy tax.
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  It really is. We are looking at the concept of
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  acceptable religion. The goal is to bypass the
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  surface level religious performance and get to the core
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  of what genuine faith looks like when real pressure is applied.
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  James issues a stark, uncompromising warning here.
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  Yeah, he doesn't pull any punches.
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  He really doesn't. The indica warning is that
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  hearing the word without doing it is a delusion.
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  But he goes further, and this is where the text gets incredibly
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  uncomfortable. Uncomfortable how?
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  Like specifically. Well, engaging an outward
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  religious acts, checking all the correct visible boxes of piety
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  without any actual inner reality is equally deceptive.
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  Doing the right outward things can trap believers in a false
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  sense of security that is almost impossible to break out of.
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  OK, let's unpack this. The text introduces A
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  fascinating historical concept to explain this specific brand
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  of delusion. Right, it goes back to the Old
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  Testament. Yeah, it brings up the idea of
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  passwords, drawing from a brutal story in Judges chapter 12, the
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  historical account of the Gileadites and the Ephremites.
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  It is a dark but highly illustrative piece of ancient
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  warfare. During a better conflict, the
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  Gileadites seize the crucial shallow crossings of the Jordan
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  River. So they basically controlled the
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  choke point. Exactly.
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  They needed a foolproof way to identify Ephraimite soldiers who
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  were trying to sneak past their checkpoints to get back home.
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  Because the Ephraimites naturally were pretending to be
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  Gileadites to escape capture and death.
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  Right, so the Gileadites set up a brilliant, albeit lethal,
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  linguistic test. They asked anyone trying to
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  cross the river to say a specific, seemingly random word.
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  The word was shibboleth. Yes, shibboleth, which meant a
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  stream or an ear of grain. And the tactical genius of this
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  test relied on a regional dialect difference, right?
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  It did. The Ephramites had a linguistic
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  quirk that made it physically impossible for them to pronounce
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  the shift sound. Oh wow.
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  Yeah, so when commanded to say shibboleth, they would
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  inevitably say sibboleth. That tiny slip of the tongue, a
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  single missed consonant, revealed their true identity.
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  That is wild if. You said Sibile F You were
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  immediately identified as the enemy and executed on the spot.
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  So the author uses this ancient deadly war tactic to shed light
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  on something very modern. The argument is that we have our
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  own modern shibile F. So they are far less deadly to
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  acquire, thankfully. Yeah, much less deadly and much
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  easier to fake. But I have a question about
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  this. Are we saying that reading the
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  Bible? Attending Sunday service and
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  participating in church life are inherently bad things.
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  Not at all. Because to me, it feels a bit
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  like wearing a team's jersey. How do you mean?
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  Well, if I put on a professional baseball jersey, it makes me
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  look like a player to anyone walking by on the street.
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  I fit the visual profile, but putting on the shirt doesn't
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  mean I actually know how to hit a fastball.
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  That analogy highlights the core issue perfectly.
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  The outward actions, the jersey in your example, are fine in and
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  of themselves. Reading scripture, attending
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  worship, participating in the sacraments, those are good,
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  commanded things, right? The trap snaps shut when the
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  actions themselves become the entirety of the religion.
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  The author points to modern evangelical shibboleths.
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  Like the specific words people use.
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  Yes, believers learn to use specific terminology to blend
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  in. They adopt words like
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  fellowship, brother, or born again.
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  And the source material specifically mentions the
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  inflection, which I thought was super interesting.
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  It is not just the vocabulary, it is the tone voice.
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  You learn the vocabulary. You adopt the right cadence, the
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  solemn nod, the correct phrasing for a prayer request.
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  Yeah, you hit the right notes. If you use these passwords
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  correctly, you pass the cultural test.
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  You are accepted as part of the in Group.
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  The community assumes you possess genuine faith because
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  you sound like you possess genuine faith.
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  But it moves beyond just vocabulary into full social
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  conventions, doesn't it? It does like showing the correct
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  socio religious attitudes toward alcohol or tobacco or general
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  modesty and political alignments.
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  If you align with the group's accepted behavioral morays,
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  people assume you have high piety.
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  The author connects this outward conformity to a broader, more
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  insidious cultural shift. The argument is that this
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  outward alignment is incredibly easy today because many
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  Christians have gradually aligned themselves with the
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  materialism and hedonism of secular culture.
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  They just dress it up in religious language precisely so
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  the behavioral requirements have been shifted to run parallel
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  with a comfortable materialistic lifestyle.
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  You can maintain all the outward social conventions of being
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  religious while your actual day-to-day desires, your
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  spending habits, your ambitions are indistinguishable from the
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  secular world around you. You look pious to your
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  community, but you're indulging in the same self-centered
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  pursuits as everyone else. This creates a comfortable,
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  deadly religious delusion. Because you think you are fine.
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  You think you are safely inside the fold because everyone around
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  you validates your outward behavior.
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  The forgery is complete and the person holding it is the most
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  deceived of all. It is a terrifying thought.
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  You can carry the right book, sing the right songs, tithe your
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  income and be completely hollow. Yeah, but James cuts right
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  through the fog. He doesn't leave his readers
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  guessing about what actually validates genuine faith.
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  He gives us a standard. He breaks down acceptable
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  religion into three specific dimensions.
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  The first dimension focuses on something incredibly small yet
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  entirely chaotic, the human tongue.
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  Jing starts with a visceral physical metaphor.
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  He compares the tongue to a horse.
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  And not just a horse in a pasture.
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  The text describes it as a rearing 1500 LB restless horse.
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  Anyone who has spent time around draft horses or large equines
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  knows the sheer kinetic energy involved.
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  We are talking about massive muscles, instinctual reactions
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  and overwhelming physical force. Sitting on top of 1500 lbs of
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  restless bone and muscle requires absolute control.
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  Oh, absolutely. If the reins are not kept taut,
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  if the bit in the mouth is ignored, you are going for a
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  wild, destructive ride. The text argues that there are
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  people who consider themselves highly religious, very proper in
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  their public worship, but they possess these galloping,
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  unbridled tongues. Because of that galloping
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  tongue, James concludes, their religion is completely
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  worthless. It just zeroes it out.
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  It is an exercise in futility. No matter how pristine their
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  Sunday morning routine appears, and out of control tongue
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  guarantees A bogus religious devotion.
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  The external worship is entirely negated by the internal chaos
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  leaking out of the mouth. The source material shares a
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  fantastic little anecdote to illustrate this mechanism, the
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  existential moment of truth. I love this story.
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  Yeah, so there is a preacher and he has a hammer in his hand.
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  He is doing some manual labor on a church work day, and he
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  realizes that one of the parishioners is following him
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  around, step for step, hovering right over his shoulder.
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  Watching every single swing of the hammer.
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  The preacher finally stops, annoyed, and asks.
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  Why are you following me? The man answers without missing
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  a beat. I'm just listening to hear what
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  you say when you hit your thumb. That parishioner understood
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  human nature and theology perfectly.
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  He knew that preaching from a pulpit behind a wooden desk is
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  one thing, but smashing your thumb with a metal hammer
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  bypasses all the carefully constructed DID filter.
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  Sudden pain changes things. Right.
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  Sudden physical pain, the domestic stresses of the home,
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  the unexpected financial blow, the frustrating commute.
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  That is when the mouth trumpets what is truly residing in the
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  heart. The author brings in a solid
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  theological foundation for this from Matthew chapter 12, verses
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  33 and 34. This is a moment where Jesus is
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  in a heated exchange with the Pharisees.
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  The ultimate professionals of outward religion.
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  Oh, they had it down to a science.
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  They had the robes, the prayers, the tithes, down to the mint and
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  cumin. Jesus calls them a brood of
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  Vipers and asks A rhetorical question.
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  He says how can you speak good when you are evil?
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  Jesus says, For out of the abundance of the heart, the
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  mouth speaks. The tree is known by its fruit.
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  The tongue is the ultimate indicator of the heart's true
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  condition. You can fake the outward
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  worship. You can fake the shibboleths,
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  but you cannot permanently fake your spontaneous reactions.
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  It always comes out eventually. What is inside will inevitably
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  come out, especially under the kind of sudden pressure that
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  Preacher with the Hammer was about to face.
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  The text points out that this unbridled tongue spews many
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  things, Filth, lying, gossip, angry outbursts.
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  But it highlights one specific sin above all others as the true
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  danger for the outwardly religious person, and that is
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  slander. Slander is insidious because it
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  often masquerades as something acceptable, even righteous.
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  Well, the outwardly religious person usually knows better than
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  to use filthy language or tell blatant, easily disprovable
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  lies. They avoid those obvious
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  pitfalls to maintain their status.
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  Yeah, but slander, Slander is where they fall.
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  What's fascinating here is John Calvin's perspective from the
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  text. Yes, Calvin was someone who
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  frequently dealt with vicious personal and theological attacks
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  in Geneva, so he knew this dynamic first hand.
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  He really did. Calvin argued that people will
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  enthusiastically shed the grosser sins.
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  They will steer completely clear of stealing, drunkenness or
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  blatant immorality. They will become a shining light
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  of outward religious observance. But underneath that shiny
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  exterior, Calvin notes, they will revel in destroying the
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  character of others. Right.
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  They do it under the pretext of zeal for the truth or concern
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  for the community. It is a lust for vilification
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  wrapped in a religious cloak. Calvin calls it a bloated,
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  pharisaical pride that feeds on a steady diet of smear and
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  censure. It is the religious sin.
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  You destroy someone's reputation but you whisper it as a prayer
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  request to the small group. Like we really need to pray for
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  so and so. I heard they're struggling with
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  whatever. Yeah, the classic gossip
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  disguised as concern. Or you infer A moral failing
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  with a concerned look and a vague comment.
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  It has a perverted religious space, which brings us to an
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  amazing historical story in the text about John Wesley.
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  I just love this. 1 Wesley's handling of this specific type
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  of critical spirit is legendary. So John Wesley is preaching and
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  he notices a lady in the audience.
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  She is well known in the community for having a
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  hypercritical attitude throughout the entire service.
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  She ignores the sermon and just sits there, staring at Wesley's
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  new bow tie. Staring the whole time.
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  As soon as the meeting ends, she marches right up to him.
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  She feels totally justified in delivering her critique.
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  She says very sharply. Mr. Wesley, the strings on your
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  bow tie are much too long. It's an offense to me, right?
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  But Wesley handles this with incredible composure.
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  He asks if anyone in the room happens to have a pair of
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  scissors. Someone hands him the shears and
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  he offers them directly to the critical lady.
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  He asks her to trim the streamers of his tie to her
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  liking. He allows her to physically
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  alter his clothing on the spot. She snips them off near the
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  collar. Wesley asks, Are you sure
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  they're all right now? She says yes, much better.
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  Then Wesley holds out his hand and says, then let me have those
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  shears a moment. I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I
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  also gave you a bit of correction.
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  I must tell you Madam, that your tongue is an offense to me.
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  It's too long, please stick it out.
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  I'd like to take some off. That is just brilliant.
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  The humor in the anecdote points to an incredibly sharp
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  underlying truth. Wesley recognized that her
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  eagerness to find a fence in minor outward details, her need
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  to criticize was a symptom of a massive internal failure.
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  I do want to push back on this concept for a second though.
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  OK, go ahead. We are talking about the tongue
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  being this absolute pass fail test of genuine faith.
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  But human genes are flawed. Everyone has a bad day, loses
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  their temper in traffic, snaps at their spouse, and says
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  something they immediately regret.
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  Does 1 angry comment mean your religion is entirely worthless?
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  It seems like an impossible standard that would condemn
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  every single person listening. That is a fair question, but
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  James is not talking about the occasional stumble.
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  OK, the broader context of scripture acknowledges that we
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  all fail in our speech. James himself says in chapter 3
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  that we all stumble. In many ways, the text is
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  targeting A habitually unbridled tongue.
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  So it's about a pattern. Yes, the person who lives in a
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  persistent, unrepentant state of gossip, slander, and critical
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  speech. The habit reveals the persistent
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  state of the heart. If your tongue is habitually out
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  of control and you feel no conviction or desire to rein it
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  in, your outward religion is worthless.
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  It really is a universal human problem.
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  The text lists off these amazing cultural proverbs from all over
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  the world to show that humanity, regardless of geography or
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  religion, universally recognizes the destructive capability of
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  the human mouth. The proverbs are quite striking.
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  The Greek proverb says the boneless tongue, so small and
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  weak, can crush and kill. The Turk proverb asserts the
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  tongue destroys a greater horde than does the sword.
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  The Persian proverb warns a lengthy tongue and early death.
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  Or don't let your tongue cut off your head.
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  The Chinese say the tongue can speak a word whose speed
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  outstrips the steed. The Arab sages noted The
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  tongue's great storehouse is the heart, and the Hebrew maxim
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  goes, Thy feet should slip, but narrow the tongue.
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  They all point to the identical reality.
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  Every single one. Across every culture, the tongue
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  is understood as the ultimate indicator of the soul's true
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  nature. That internal reality naturally
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  dictates external behavior, bringing us to the second
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  dimension of acceptable religion that James outlines.
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  If the first dimension deals with the restraint of our words,
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  the second deals with the activation of our hands.
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  Specifically hands on care for the afflicted.
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  James chapter one verse 27 says religion that is pure and
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  undefiled before God the Father is this to visit orphans and
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  widows in their affliction. To grasp the weight of this
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  command, we need to understand the historical and economic
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  context the author provides. Right, because it was a
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  different world back then. In ancient Jewish society,
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  orphans and widows were not just sad categories of people you
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  might feel sympathy for, they were the absolute most
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  vulnerable demographic in existence.
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  Without a husband or a father in a heavily patriarchal ancient
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  culture, you were entirely cut off from the economic safety
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  Nets. No safety Nets at all.
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  None. Women and children could not
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  easily own property or earn a living wage.
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  They were desperate for basic survival necessities, their
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  daily food, shelter, clothing. Furthermore, they represent the
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  ultimate test of pure compassion because they had absolutely
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  nothing to offer in return. You couldn't get a networking
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  connection out of. It exactly you could not gain
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  social status, political favors, or financial return by helping a
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  destitute widow. The author zeroes in on the
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  specific Greek word used for affliction here.
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  The literal translation of the word flipsis in the Greek text
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  is pressure. Think about the physical
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  sensation of that. Like being squeezed.
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  Yes. It is not just a vague sense of
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  sadness or a temporary set back. It is the crushing, suffocating
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  weight of circumstances. This pressure squeezes people.
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  It happens through severe illness, fractured
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  relationships, sudden unemployment or extreme family
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  tension. It makes me evaluate how we
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  handle charity in our modern era.
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  If I look at something like a robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba,
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  yeah, like a Roomba, you buy it, you program it, it runs around
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  your house picking up dust, and it returns to its charging base.
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  It gets the floor clean, which is great, but you never actually
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  have to touch the dirt yourself. You outsource the cleaning
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  process. That is a great analogy.
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  With modern social programs, government welfare and automated
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  online church giving, is writing a check enough?
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  Are we setting up a system of robotic charity where we never
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  actually interact with the pressure these people are
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  facing? Outsourcing compassion
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  fundamentally misses the point of James's command.
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  The author states that our care must not be limited to
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  supporting social programs from a safe, sterile distance.
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  Acceptable religion demands personal hands on involvement.
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  We are called to step into the pressure with them, to feel the
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  weight of their filipsis, to get our hands dirty in the messy
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  reality of their suffering. What?
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  Happens if you refuse. What if we just stick to the
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  singing, the Sunday services and the safe, automated giving?
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  The commentary references a chilling passage from the
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  prophet Isaiah chapter 1 to answer that exact question.
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  Oh, the Isaiah passage is intense.
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  God is speaking to a nation of people who are rigorously
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  keeping up all the outward religious festivals.
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  They're making the animal sacrifices, bringing the grain
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  offering, saying the long public prayers, and God tells them he
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  has had enough. He says their incense is an
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  abomination to him. He actually says, when you
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  spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you.
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  Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.
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  Why? Because their hands are full of
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  blood. They ignore justice.
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  They completely ignore the fatherless and the widow.
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  The theological point is inescapable.
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  God utterly rejects worship, no matter how beautiful, reverent,
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  or doctrinally precise it appears, if the worshippers are
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  actively ignoring the crushed and vulnerable people right
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  outside their doors. It just invalidates it.
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  The worship becomes ashes on the altar.
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  The failure to care for the afflicted invalidates the
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  religious performance. The source material gives a
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  couple of striking historical examples of what it looks like
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  when genuine faith activates in a society. 1 revolves around a
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  very famous statue in London in Piccadilly Circus.
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  I've actually seen that one. Most people know it as the
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  statue of arrows, taking the form of the Greek God of love
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  with a bow and arrow. It is a massive tourist
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  attraction. Millions of people walk past it
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  and almost everyone assumes it is a monument dedicated to
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  romantic or erotic love. But the text reveals A
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  surprising historical fact. It is.
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  It's not about romantic love at all.
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  It is actually a memorial monument honoring Lord
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  Shaftesbury, a major Christian social reformer in the 19th
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  century. Really.
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  Yeah. The statue represents his
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  Christian agape love for mankind.
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  He looked at the horrific conditions of child labor,
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  insane asylums and slums in industrial England.
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  He saw the affliction, the crushing pressure, and he
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  physically stepped into it to bring about massive legislative
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  and social reform. His faith mandated grueling,
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  unpopular action. The author also includes a
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  fantastic story about DL Moody that drives this point home from
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  a slightly different angle. Oh, I like the Moody stories.
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  Rudy encountered a man who wanted to boast about his
• 20:03
  elevated spiritual experiences. The man claimed to Moody.
• 20:06
  I have been on the Mount of Transfiguration for five years.
• 20:09
  Wow, five years. He is using theological jargon
• 20:12
  to say he has been in a state of constant, unbroken spiritual
• 20:16
  bliss and mystical connection with God, right?
• 20:19
  But Moody was an incredibly practical evangelist.
• 20:22
  He immediately shot back and asked the man a devastatingly
• 20:26
  simple question. He asked, How many souls have
• 20:29
  you led to Christ? And what did the man say?
• 20:31
  The man, completely flustered, admitted he did not know if he
• 20:35
  had LED any. Moody's response was blunt.
• 20:38
  He told the man to sit down, saying the church did not want
• 20:41
  that kind of mountaintop experience, Moody said.
• 20:44
  When a man gets so high that he can't reach down and save
• 20:46
  others, there's something wrong. That is the perfect summary of
• 20:50
  the second dimension. You cannot fly so high in your
• 20:52
  theological knowledge or your worship experiences that your
• 20:56
  hands never touch the dirt of human suffering.
• 20:58
  If your religion doesn't push you outward toward the
• 21:00
  vulnerable, it isn't the religion of James Chapter 1.
• 21:03
  This outward action of the hands is intrinsically tied to the
• 21:06
  inward state of the heart, which brings us to the third
• 21:09
  dimension. James connects the restraint of
• 21:11
  the tongue and the care for the afflicted directly to personal
• 21:14
  holiness. The third dimension is keeping
• 21:16
  oneself unstained from the world.
• 21:19
  The text describes our modern world as an increasingly
• 21:22
  polluted environment. Staying unstained requires
• 21:25
  recognizing how the surrounding culture constantly attempts to
• 21:27
  redefine morality, often through the subtle manipulation of
• 21:30
  language. Now we need to clarify
• 21:32
  something. Here, the author gives specific
• 21:34
  examples of how contemporary thought empties words of their
• 21:37
  moral meaning. As we look at this, we are
• 21:40
  simply reporting the author's analysis of linguistic shift to
• 21:44
  understand the argument he is building in the text.
• 21:47
  We aren't endorsing or condemning these specific views,
• 21:50
  just laying out his perspective. Right, just looking at his
• 21:52
  examples. He argues that society alters
• 21:55
  definitions to make the unacceptable seem acceptable.
• 21:58
  He lists examples saying society calls perversion gay, refers to
• 22:02
  the murder of unborn children as reproductive choice and relabels
• 22:06
  Marxism in the church as liberation theology.
• 22:09
  The author connects this modern linguistic drift back to the Old
• 22:12
  Testament, specifically Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20.
• 22:15
  Isaiah lamented a society that called evil good and good evil,
• 22:19
  that substituted darkness for light and light for darkness.
• 22:22
  So he sees a parallel there. The author sees these modern
• 22:26
  vocabulary shifts as a continuation of that ancient
• 22:28
  pattern. The world attempts to stain the
• 22:31
  believer by changing the definitions of what is pure and
• 22:34
  what is polluted, making it easier to slowly compromise.
• 22:39
  To illustrate how a believer should respond to this polluted
• 22:42
  environment, the text shares a story about a surgeon, Doctor
• 22:45
  Maltby Babcock. He was a distinguished, hard
• 22:49
  working pastor in New York. A physician in his congregation
• 22:52
  noticed the pastor was exhausted and clearly needed a night off,
• 22:56
  so the physician handed Doctor Babcock some theater tickets for
• 22:59
  a night of recreation. Just a nice gesture.
• 23:01
  Yeah, but Doctor Babcock looked at the tickets, recognized the
• 23:05
  specific play being performed, and realized it contained
• 23:07
  content he could not conscientiously consume.
• 23:11
  He politely refused the gift. The physician was completely
• 23:14
  confused and asked why, pointing out that the pastor obviously
• 23:17
  neared the rest and recreation. Doctor Babcock's response forms
• 23:21
  the core of this third dimension, he said to the
• 23:23
  physician. You are a surgeon.
• 23:26
  When you operate, you scrub your hands meticulously until you are
• 23:29
  antiseptically clean. You wouldn't dare operate with
• 23:32
  dirty hands. And he applied that to himself.
• 23:34
  He then applied that stringent medical standard to his own
• 23:37
  spiritual life. He stated that as a servant
• 23:40
  dealing with the eternal state of human souls, he would not
• 23:44
  dare do his work with a dirty life.
• 23:47
  I have to play devil's advocate here, because this is where
• 23:49
  modern readers often check out To our ears today, turning down
• 23:53
  theater tickets just because the play might have some
• 23:56
  questionable content sounds wildly puritanical.
• 23:59
  It does sound extreme to many. It sounds like living in a
• 24:02
  sterile, isolated bubble, completely cut off from the
• 24:05
  culture we were supposed to be engaging with.
• 24:07
  How do you reconcile being the salt of the earth if you refuse
• 24:11
  to even touch the earth? The tension you are highlighting
• 24:14
  is real, and the author acknowledges that this level of
• 24:17
  separation seems overly fastidious to a modern
• 24:20
  perspective. However, the defense of
• 24:22
  Babcock's reasoning lies in understanding the stakes of the
• 24:25
  work. OK, go on.
• 24:27
  The surgeon analogy holds up because we all demand absolute
• 24:29
  purity in a physical operating room.
• 24:32
  A single microscopic contaminant invisible to the naked eye can
• 24:35
  cause an infection that kills the patient.
• 24:38
  Babcock viewed the spiritual realm with the same level of
• 24:40
  lethal seriousness. So he saw the entertainment as a
• 24:43
  literal contaminant. Yes, allowing his mind to be
• 24:47
  stained by the casual entertainment of the world was,
• 24:50
  to him, the moral equivalent of a surgeon dipping his hands in
• 24:54
  mud before picking up the scalpel to operate on a heart.
• 24:58
  He wasn't advocating for physical isolation.
• 25:01
  He was advocating for spiritual insulation.
• 25:04
  The commentary takes this principle of insulation and
• 25:06
  applies it with intense radical action.
• 25:08
  For the reader today, it suggests that keeping unstained
• 25:11
  might require drastic lifestyle changes.
• 25:14
  The author states that believers might need to completely alter
• 25:17
  their reading habits, curate their social media ruthlessly,
• 25:20
  or literally throw their television in the trash if it
• 25:23
  becomes a constant source of pollution.
• 25:25
  It is a demand for a ruthless, honest evaluation of the media,
• 25:29
  the entertainment and the culture we willingly consume.
• 25:32
  Are these inputs helping us care for the afflicted and bridal are
• 25:34
  tons, or are they subtly staining our minds?
• 25:37
  When you stack all of this, upbridling the wild kinetic
• 25:40
  energy of the tongue, physically stepping into the crushing
• 25:43
  pressure of the vulnerable, and maintaining a pure life and a
• 25:46
  constantly polluted world, it sounds incredibly heavy.
• 25:49
  It really does. It sounds like an impossible
• 25:51
  standard of rule keeping. It feels like the Pharisees
• 25:53
  heavy burden all over again. That feeling of impossibility
• 25:57
  brings us to a vital theological clarification provided in the
• 26:00
  commentary notes by Douglas J MU.
• 26:03
  He addresses the concept of the perfect law of liberty mentioned
• 26:06
  by James Right. If we connect this to the bigger
• 26:08
  picture, this law is closely associated with the Gospel.
• 26:13
  This law is not a return to the crushing weight of Old Testament
• 26:17
  legalism, where you are trying to earn your standing through
• 26:20
  flawless performance. But I am struggling to
• 26:22
  understand how a law that demands such intense,
• 26:26
  all-encompassing obedience can be called liberty Law usually
• 26:29
  restricts liberty freeze. How do these two concepts
• 26:33
  combine here? They combine because of the
• 26:35
  internal mechanism behind the obedience.
• 26:37
  The gospel brings an unavoidable demand for complete obedience.
• 26:40
  Yes, it searches the deepest parts of the heart, demanding
• 26:44
  purity and word, action and thought, but it is liberating
• 26:47
  because it fulfills the radical prophecy found in Jeremiah
• 26:50
  chapter 31. Remind us what that prophecy is.
• 26:52
  Under the Old Covenant, the law was written on stone tablets and
• 26:56
  external pressure, trying to force an internal change.
• 27:00
  But under the New Covenant, the law is written on the heart.
• 27:03
  The desire to obey is planted inside the person.
• 27:06
  God provides the enabling grace right alongside his radical
• 27:10
  demands. He does not just give the
• 27:11
  terrifying command to be pure in a polluted world.
• 27:14
  Through the internal working of His Spirit, He provides the
• 27:17
  actual desire and ability to pursue that purity.
• 27:20
  That makes sense. It echoes Jesus's promise that
• 27:23
  his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
• 27:26
  The demand is total, but the grace supplied to meet that
• 27:29
  demand is sufficient. It is liberty because you are
• 27:32
  finally free to become what you were created to be, rather than
• 27:35
  being enslaved by the shibboleths of a counterfeit
• 27:38
  religion. We have covered massive
• 27:40
  theological and practical ground today.
• 27:42
  We started by looking at the delusion of outward religion,
• 27:45
  the subtle danger of knowing the passwords, wearing the jersey
• 27:48
  and looking the part while the heart remains entirely unchanged
• 27:51
  and captivated by the world. And James cuts through that
• 27:54
  comfortable delusion by establishing 3 piercing
• 27:56
  dimensions of acceptable religion. 1st the bridled
• 28:00
  tongue. A faith that cannot control its
• 28:02
  words, especially regarding the destructive habit of slander, is
• 28:05
  worthless. Second, hands on care for the
• 28:09
  pressured. A faith that ignores the
• 28:12
  crushing reality of the vulnerable is rejected by God.
• 28:15
  And 3rd, a life unsoiled by the world, a faith that happily
• 28:21
  swims in the moral pollution of its surrounding culture, is
• 28:24
  entirely compromised. True religion requires a total,
• 28:27
  unbroken alignment. It involves the restraint of the
• 28:30
  mouth, the compassion of the hands, and the purity of the
• 28:33
  heart. You cannot compartmentalize it.
• 28:35
  You cannot put on a performance just for Sunday morning and live
• 28:38
  like the rest of the world on Monday.
• 28:39
  It has to saturate every square inch of your existence.
• 28:43
  It forces an honest, ongoing assessment of whether our
• 28:46
  outward religious actions actually match an inward spirit
• 28:49
  wrought reality or if we're just participating in a comfortable,
• 28:52
  self deceiving social club. We want to leave you with the
• 28:55
  final thought to Mull over as you go about your day, build on
• 28:58
  everything we have discussed and imagine this highly
• 29:00
  uncomfortable scenario. This is a tough one.
• 29:02
  Imagine if someone were to secretly record you for an
• 29:05
  entire month, but they only captured footage from 2 very
• 29:09
  specific types of situations. First, your moments of absolute
• 29:13
  highest stress, when the hammer hits the thumb, when the bank
• 29:16
  account is overdrawn, when the kids are screaming and the
• 29:19
  traffic is completely gridlocked.
• 29:21
  And 2nd, your moments entirely alone, when no one is watching
• 29:25
  your screen, the doors are locked, and you are choosing
• 29:27
  your own entertainment. If that secret footage was the
• 29:30
  absolute only evidence submitted to a jury, what specific
• 29:34
  religion would that video prove you actually practice?
• 29:37
  That is a question that strips away all the outward shibboleths
• 29:40
  and cuts right to the marrow. It really does.
• 29:43
  Thank you for joining us on Reformed Thinking.
• 29:45
  Keep examining the evidence of your own life and we will see
• 29:48
  you next time.