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Guest Corner
Joyce Stevens
PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY
by Joyce Stevens
James 1:23-25
For if you listen to the word and don't obey, it is like glancing at your face
in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.
But, if you look
carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says
and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.
New Living
Translation
Look: to
stoop down near by anything, to bend forward near something, so as to look at
anything more closely.
Perfect:
means goal or purpose. The perfect man is one who has attained the goal for
which he was intended, namely a man obedient in Christ, it is true though having
reached this attainment other higher goals will be set.
Law: means a
custom or a statute. A custom is unwritten and statute is written.
Liberty:
freedom
To bend over and
look in something show’s diligent intent, not just a casual glance. When we
diligently look into God’s word it will reveal the truth about ourselves. I
have a make-up mirror that shows 5 times magnification. WOW! What a shock the
first time I diligently looked in, I could see every pore, line, spot and
blemish. That what God’s word does when we diligently look into it, it reveals
to us the spots and blemish’s in our lives that need to be remedied and washed
in the blood. It shows us our sins not to condemn us but so we can repent of
them and be forgiven. It shows us attitudes that need to be corrected and
brought into line with the word of God. It exposes.
When I look into
the natural mirror and see a blemish I have a cover-up stick that I can use to
hide the blemish. God’s word doesn’t cover up; it exposes those blemishes and
spots so they can be dwelt with.
Now we can choose
to ignore what we see, we can just walk away. This is what the person who hears
the word of God but does not do it does.
The gospel of Jesus
Christ is a law of liberty of liberation, not one of bondage. It gives
deliverance from the Jewish laws that never could make one perfect; and sets us
free from sin, guilt, wrath and death, free from any sin that would keep us in
bondage.
It is a perfect
law; nothing else can be or has to be added to it. It is complete.
As we look into
this perfect law of liberty, the gospel of Jesus Christ we receive
counsel and
direction for our lives. As we become doers of the word and not
hearers only and
study it until it is such an engrafted part of every portion of our lives that
it becomes the constant rule of our conversations and behaviors.
Our lives will be
blessed in the very act of keeping the perfect law of liberty.
Blessed: to
be fortunate, supremely blessed, happy or fully satisfied. One who the Lord
makes fully satisfied not because of favorable conditions but because He
indwells the believer through Christ. His satisfaction comes from God not from
favorable circumstances.
As we choose to look
diligently into the perfect law of liberation we will be free from the law of
sin and death and experience the peace and joy of being blessed by God.
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