(James 1:19. — 2:9.)
Please read the passage indicated above before reading this article, and then keep your Bible open so that you may refer to it as may be necessary from time to time.
The writer takes it for granted that you will comply with this request, and hence he addresses you in the terms he would employ if giving a homely “Bible-talk.”
THE nineteenth verse begins with the word, “Wherefore” which indicates that we are now to be introduced to the results flowing from the truth of the previous verse. Because we are a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures, as begotten of Him by the Word of Truth, we are to be “swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”
Every intelligent unfallen creature is marked by obedience to the voice of the Creator. Fallen man, alas! shuts his ear to God’s voice and insists upon talking. He would like to legislate for himself and for everybody else, and hence come the anger and strife which fill the earth. We were always creatures, but now, born of God, we are a kind of first fruits of His creatures. What therefore should mark all creatures should be specially characteristic of us. Hearing God’s word should attract us. We should run eagerly to it as those who delight to listen to God.
We only speak aright as our thoughts are controlled by God. If we think God’s thoughts we shall be able to speak things that are right. But, even if we are swift to hear God’s thoughts, we shall only speak them when first we have assimilated them for ourselves and made them our own. We assimilate them but slowly and hence we should be slow to speak. A wholesome sense of how little we have as yet taken in God’s mind will deliver us from that self-confidence and shallow self-assertiveness which makes men ready to speak at once on any and every matter.
Further we should be slow to wrath. The self-assertive man, who can hardly stop to listen to anything but must at once speak his own opinion is apt to get very angry when he finds that others do not accept his opinion at his own high valuation of it! On the other hand, here may be a believer of godly life who pays great heed to God’s word and only speaks-with consideration and prayer, and yet his opinion is equally turned aside! Well, let him be slow to wrath for if it be merely man’s anger it accomplishes nothing that is right in God’s sight. Divine anger will be made to serve His righteous cause, but not man’s anger.
We must remember too that we are a first-fruit of God’s creatures as born of Him. Hence not only should we be pattern creatures but we should though creatures exhibit the likeness of the One who is our Father. All evil should be laid aside and the word received with meekness. We are
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