Hearing, speaking and anger in a Christian life

We're beginning again today in the official of James, and I trust everybody can hear me okay. Is that right? Yeah, sounds good, Roy. Okay, the reason I ask is I put the mic in front of me here on the table. It's a little bit different today in that I'm not going to do it my normal way. I've put my study of the scriptures at the end for your benefit, and I'm leaving it there because I'd like to get into the text and just spend time together looking at it.

This is lesson 9 in the study of James. It covers verses 19 through 21. Roger gave it this heading, Hearing, Speaking and Anger in the Christian Mind. Last week Bob taught in lesson 8, Every perfect gift is from above. And I'm going to read the verses here just to give us an overview and to do a little review.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren, every good thing bestowed, every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth. by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among his creatures.

Today, hearing, speaking, and anger in a Christian life, verses 19 through 21, this you know, my beloved brethren, but let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, For the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls.

Next week, Roger takes on the doers of the Word. But prove yourselves doers of the Word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For as anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror, and once he has looked at himself and gone away, he immediately has forgotten what kind of person he was. Andrew picks up lesson 11, Looking to God's Word and Religion. I've only covered one verse out of this section. but one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does."

That's an overview to stir up our minds and give us a perspective. I want to point out that there are some repeated phrases here The first, do not be deceived, is repeated down in verse 22, who delude themselves. And notice, beloved brethren, is repeated in verse 16 and 19 and in effect 22 as well.

We're talking about what kind of people here. James, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, is addressing us. the beloved ones, members of God's family. Notice that every good gift, every good thing is from above. It's interesting, isn't it, that it is by God's will and by His word of truth that we are born, we are brought forth. Notice that that perfection, that gift from above is carried over Then to verse 25, the perfect law. In addition, the perfect gift and his will and the word are the agency of which we have been brought forth or birthed by. And how repetitive that is, how important that is in the mind of the Holy Spirit here. that the agency of God through His will is the Word of God.

We need to pay attention to that. And just as an overview, I thought I'd leave this with you for you to look through maybe later, because there's a lot of parallels here, aren't there? Verse 19 that we cover today contains commands, hear, speak, anger and receive. Next week Roger carries this forward by being a doer of the word. Those are the emphasis of commands here. Now let's get into verse 19.

My literal translation here is, my brother's beloved, let each person be eager to hear, be eager towards wrath, not eager to speak and not eager towards wrath. It's in contrast to the eagerness to hear or listen under. I've made some observations and I'd like to just sort of share it with you and you can comment as we go through this. There's not very many people present there. I think a lot of people slept in today. Or haven't woken up yet? Maybe yes. I'm not sure. Anyway, it's good to be together, isn't it? These commands are to be obeyed based on our being God's loved ones, aren't they? He has made us to be God's perfect gift by God the Son. Boy, I'll tell you, that's powerful.

God the Son paid the penalty of death for our sins on the cross and God has crucified us with Christ. He's buried us with Christ. He's raised us with Him to be now new in kind. That is that we are His kind of spirit-controlled people. What a blessing! We are each His creation and God has freed us from the absolute rule of this old kind of humanity that The reason that he did it was so that we might know him. So he gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, to render offline our sin nature, so that he could reveal the things of Christ to us.

I know that this is reviewed to a lot of you. That's so impersonal, that's so personal and intense, isn't it? That right now, in each of us, God himself is dwelling. What a great liberty this gives as well, looking at it from our perspective. From being dominated by our old kind of humanity, to being free, to willingly be dominated by God's Spirit, moment by moment, walking under His direction, instruments of God's good, to show Himself to us and to those around us, so that we all may be drawn to trust and to love Him. Because we're new and kind, destined to be a perfect gift for God the Father, from God the Son, All of it is in the previous verses that we've studied and has that kind of teaching in it. And it is based upon that. So then, that little word, so, means knowing all these things, okay?

So that when we come to these verses today, we're first reminded of our relationship of being ones loved or beloved by God. and we're given three commands which obeyed becomes our expression of love back towards Him. God's reminder here is personal. It includes us, but not just us here in this study, but James, the humanly half-brother of Jesus. We're each unqualified to be loved But as a group, we are each one of the unique loved ones by God.

Also, the expression of His love is given to us in a way to express His love to us through us being ready to hear, not ready to speak, and not ready towards wrath. You may wonder how I got those particular forms. Well, I encourage you to look at the end of the lesson later on, when you get the handout from the web, okay?

Jesus did not listen to God the Father. He submitted to God the Father, doing what the Father wanted him to do. And in fact, Jesus is the perfect man, still doing the perfect work of God. But now he's doing this work of God through you and me as his new and kind, spirit-led and loved ones.

Isn't that awesome? I think it is. So Roy, what's neat is here, the positive command is hearing, or to hear, which we're going to see next week too. It's kind of interesting. Being a good hearer is Paramount in the Christian life. It's interesting. Right.

And the hearing is the kind of hearing that I've got mentioned next. We express his kind of love by letting his life of love be expressed through us, because he dwells in us, doesn't he? And we do this by the hearing under submission. We don't just listen. But we take it in, in submission, as being reality.

God's will from the Bible, it is God, the Holy Spirit, who has given us the Scripture. He's the author. We should hear with submission what is revealed to us in the Scripture. All of the Scripture revealed God's will and His character. Do we hear him speak to us with submission in what he says, as he wants us to do? This done as he wants is the one response that he honors with the revelation of more of his infinite love in his word. Talk about intimacy. It's about as personal as you can get. To trust Him as our source of all that is real is the first command here. And Him giving us the ability to trust Him is that perfect gift from above. Isn't that something?

Through the Word and through His will He has done all of this. We're to hear God's will by not just reading or listening to God in these pages, but we submit to him by letting him express his love through us, by letting him use us to accomplish his will. And secondly, we express his kind of love by letting his life of love be expressed through us. We don't just take in But we let Him speak correctly through us in love.

We are the ones who consider the listeners present. Why? Because we have His thinking in the process. They're good, the ones listening, being the aim of all the information that we speak. I think we overlook that a great deal when we talk, don't we? Our sin nature is getting in the way. It's not the presentation of truth that's emphasized here, it's the correct way of reality being presented. That's the emphasis here. Preparation is a part of this.

So He first has mentioned we need to trust the reality that He has revealed to us about Himself. And based on what He has revealed, we may correctly reveal what can be received by our listeners, and that is what will benefit the listeners who are ready to hear and submission God's reality. Indeed, knowing God is of the first priority here, but equally knowing Him We come to know ourselves through his eyes and mind. Have you thought about this? He does that. So we can trust him to help us come to know our listeners through his eyes and mind which are alive now inside us. I know that that's sort of technical. I'm trying to be specific. He lives in us. He really does. We trust him to reveal not only his will through us, but also to reveal his will for those around us who are observing him in us. Sometimes I think that phrase, we are the only Bible that people see, is very true, isn't it?

God has chosen to tell us His ways of showing His perfect love and we're to hear in submission, speak in submission as He chooses, sometimes with a lot, sometimes with a little, but always with the right amount and always in the love that benefit the submissive hearers. It applies to us as well as to those that are listening to us. The third thing that we see here is we express his kind of love by letting his life of love be expressed through us by considering who is the one who is able to correctly administer wrath and when it should be expressed. Again, God has told us that we are his instruments of expression of his love. He is the one who knows us and those around us. And this is part of what the Holy Spirit is revealing to us in the first two commands here. His love is given to us correctly to allow us to love Him back in the same correct way.

So He tells us by command to not take his responsibility upon ourselves, not to allow human anger or wrath by thought or act be done by us. God tells us much more about this in the next verse, but here he's telling us to allow him in his time and in his way to deal with wrath. And there may be in our personal experience times when we are correctly angered by lies, slanders, false teaching, or anything contrary to what God's Word has revealed to us as real and beneficial. And there may be times that we are hurt, given by other loved ones by God, which can cause us to retaliate in kind, maybe, out of our sinful human nature from Adam. It's here expressed by God that we are not to allow the old man that we have from Adam to be in control.

Instead, we're to allow God the Holy Spirit to be in control and he will, through our new man, reveal Christ as he chooses. As is new of his kind of perfect man, We are to submissively hear His command and not take this responsibility, His responsibility, to be our own. Further, we are to let Him reveal His love through us by allowing Him to reveal His wrath in His time and in His way.

Notice that this was exemplified by Jesus in all of his earthly time. He is revealed to have only expressed his wrath that were in ways beneficial to those around him, both leaders and followers, by speaking and doing things that would benefit the submissive observers and listeners. Many were not submissive, were they? He, doing God's will for the time, gave them the opportunity to hear and see His wrath towards error and toward those who wanted others to copy them in doing sinful things.

The word evil is a word we don't use quite correctly nowadays. We sort of give it a characteristic. But really evil is not only doing evil, but enjoying and leading others to do evil. And this was the correct expression of God's love through Christ for them at that time, even though they did not benefit from his correct expression of his great love. He continued unto death to provide a way for them and us to be not just corrected, but saved from the consequences of our sins, and given the privilege of being born from above into his family as his children.

So now let's go on to verse 20. That's a bunch of information. So Roy, could you say that hearing is in a way an act of faith? Absolutely. Yeah, go ahead. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, that's what I thought too. It's really an act of faith, which is kind of different. You know, the Bible presents concepts that are different than what man thinks. Hearing sounds like, well, I just listen. Well, no, there's so much more to it that the world would have us do. You got it. You got it right on. I've inserted one little word by here in the verse 20 to clarify the meaning.

For by wrath from man, righteousness from God is not being produced. And I've added this little bit of a commentary. In the Greek mind, the source of God's correctness is not out of man's incorrectness. So this text could be rendered in English, right from God is not being produced out of wrong from man.

What a truth. There are a few observers in this verse. There are five perspectives of God's good taught here. Remember the previous verse, every good gift from God comes from above? Well, man's wrath does not produce God's good. God produces his good only out of his own goodness. The way God shows us his goodness is by his providing us the ability to correctly believe in him, exercising the faith that he's given every human being and what he has done for us.

Christians may have wrong wrath as well as non-Christians. That's a thought. Christians can have correct wrath only. when God is its source. Emphasis here is when. God will determine the when, not us as His children. I went off a lot in that verse too, but I've got to move on to the next verse, verse 21.

I wanted to spend time here because there's so much here. Therefore you all, having taken off the command facts. Every filthiness and remaining evil of depravity and humility, you all receive the implanted word, receive as a command, the power to save the souls of you all. I know that's a little redundant, you all, but if you're from Texas, it fits, right? God. Plural.

Here's a few observations of the text to actually bring it out here. Therefore, for this reason or purpose, so or also. And Feifer says it's inferential. In other words, based on everything that's gone before. Based on that. And then he gives us something that is unique.

Not a command. Eris middle nominative, masculine plural. you all having taken off. It's a Middle Voice, Aorist tense, fact, plural. This describes the purpose of God's gifts of goodness, that his goal is that we be free, free for our own benefit, Middle Voice. Yes, there's action in God. But the action is His.

We are now the free ones. We are not bound to continually sin because we have already taken off all things that are offensive to Him. What is the part of us that is now taken off? It's the old man that we inherited from Adam. The man remains. that he no longer reigns. I like that. God's taken him off the position of master of us and put instead on that position of master of us his son Jesus Christ our promised one. He is our Lord now.

We participated in this transaction only by the non-meritorious work of obedience of faith, like you said, Roger, trusting His work on the cross for us. And our trust is now in Him and His work for us, no longer in ourselves or our culture or family. Sometimes we forget that. We are now free to submit and trust in His work for us, both transforming and conforming us as His children in His family with the character of Christ or into the character of Christ. Both in birth and in life in His family, our faith is not a work that saves. His work is what saves us. It is the object of our faith, not the act of faith. It is her work that saves us from the consequences of being naturally born sinners.

And it is his work that gives us deliverance from our old slave master that we have from Adam. How good is this for us? But it's also good for God. It reveals that when we submit and trust to God's loving rule over us, we personally benefit. And this is His loving will for us. So, He rejoices with us as we harmonize now with Him. Isn't that something? When we think of that, that our joy is really His joy too.

Roy, do you mind if I ask a question? Not at all. My version, New King James says, Therefore lay aside all filthiness and the overflow of wickedness. And I'm reading up there, it says you have taken off every filthiness. Quite a difference. Quite a difference, isn't it? Yeah, hugely different, isn't it? And so that's coming out of the direct Greek, I guess. Right, it's coming out of what did God say, not what do we want it to say. Instead of it being a command, it's more of what's already been completed. You got it. It's exactly a fact here.

Yeah, unfortunately, and this is not the only case, there are many cases sometimes the translators won't bring across the original tense, and this is one of the cases where they didn't, which is unfortunate. It's like they were afraid to reveal the truth. How can that be? It's what we call positional truth, right? So if you don't understand position and condition, it makes it challenging.

Right. Exactly. And if we didn't listen carefully to what God has to say in faith and believe it, we could go off on that tangent or sin nature once. Just tell me what to do. I'll do that. This is not an imperative to do. It's a participle describing factually what is done by each of us. And this happens when he birthed us again from above into his new and kind family. There's a mutual action here. Yes, we're involved for our benefit, but who's the one that can do this? Can we remove this in nature? No. Okay. But we have taken it off, haven't we? Right. I think that's really something. Only he could have done this, giving us this new nature like himself in character. This opens up heaven for us, revealing the grace that God has shared with us. Well, I tell you, it's hard to put into words sometimes what you see in the text.

The next part of the verse, every filthiness and remaining evil of depravity, the text there is very clear. Immorality, impurity, vulgarity is the filthiness. It's the idea of dirty, unclean, immoral, harmful to man things. And there's an and here. Remaining evil. It carries the meaning, the idea of the overflow, the abundance of evil that remains in us. And not only sins, but has pleasure in leading others to sin with us. Oh, I tell you, the older I get, the more the filth that our sin nature from Adam manifests as made known to me. Tremendously evil. We've taken it off. Being in control, evidently. Why?

And the depravity, the hateful disharmony, and it's a subjective genesis here, telling us the source of our sin and depravity. It's out of the depravity, the very character of our nature from Adam. For O man, Adam's kind is the source of this remaining sin and evil. As Adam's birthed ones, we only sin.

Remember in 1 John 1.8, if we say that we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves. The truth is not in us. And notice in contrast, the new man, the Christ's kind, which we now are, it's not the source of any sin. Christ is without sin. We now share his purity and cannot be the source of sin.

1 John 5.18 says this explicitly, no one who is born of God sins. This is reality. And don't let the translators put in their practice of sins, no. doesn't say that. It says sins. There's an infinity of difference between our old man and our new man. Both things coexist in us by God's design to teach us his ways of love. We've been given this good gift from God.

We have the privilege to be alive as his children, to be Presenters of our body to Him, not as old men crucified with Him, but as new men, risen, seated with Him. We are alive now with His life. What a privilege this is to be in His family now, to let Him express His love to and through us, even in the presence of our still living, but no longer our slave master, old man from Adam. Now we're free to experience Christ's life being lived out through us.

What a privilege. It's God's Spirit now dwelling inside us who's telling us these things in these verses. He alone controls our old man's character of sin. He alone reveals our new man's character of purity. We have become partakers of Christ's character. We are living letters of his love. We are the fragrance of his love. In Corinthians we learn that.

Or is it Colossians? I'm sorry. My mind is... I mix them sometimes. But we are his orchestra, aren't we? Playing his music. And we radiate his glory in the process. In that process he draws us and all that are near us to himself. Is that your experience? Observations here in 21 continued. There's a preposition in, located in the sphere of.

In this sphere, humility, properly, courteously, It's an expression of the correct submissiveness in God's loving beneficial way. Wisdom is the proper use of knowledge. Humility is the proper use of knowledge, isn't it? Humility is designed by God an attitude of our new essence toward all things that are real toward all things that are not real. This originates from our new man's character.

This is the quality of God. This is God's humility. We now are able as God's children to receive blessings properly, without pride, but with thankfulness and in the harmony of His joy. The way Jesus received and shared from God the Father's will We now are to receive and share from God his will. God is our Father now.

He, the implanted word, uses, doesn't he? Boy, I tell you, there's an awful lot here. The next phrase, you all receive the implanted word, is a command. It's imperative. There's middle second-person plural, you all receive or accept. We're commanded to receive in a factual way all the reality of God and his ways that he's implanted in us as his loved and blessed ones, by him his children. The implanted.

Notice the definite article here. It's specific It's not every word that is coming to us in life. This is only the specifically inclined by God words that are real. And this is important to realize that God puts these absolute true things about himself and his ways literally into our minds for us to believe what is real. And part of his words and this view of us is correction, refining out the errors that we may have believed and Those were implanted in our thinking, in our culture, and even in our human family. We've got a lot of those things, don't we? The word, okay? No definite article here talking about the object implanted. The emphasis is on the character of the word here.

How careful the Holy Spirit is, isn't he? The kind or quality of the word implanted is illumination of pure reality. He gives us insight into himself and his ways that are reality that is not imaginary. What he wants us to see is pure and right, not what is wanted by us or imagined by us, but what is reality. And only God can do this. In fact, there is so much to be given by him that he can only give us a little bit and then he purifies what he takes in, what we take in. And he leaves us only what is real. He purifies it. He tests it. There's an important principle here.

We live now in time. We live now with a sin nature as well as his nature in us. We live surrounded by the chaotic world system, our culture, our family. So God is very patient. He gives us a little bit of time to expand or to multiply his grace in our understanding. He is conforming and transforming our thinking. and our expressions of himself to be his thinking, his expressions of himself. This takes time, lots of time. But in eternity with him no longer tested in the conditions that we're in right now, he'll come to reveal himself fully in the eternal awe. We will then have his understanding as he shows us every facet of himself. What a blessing that's going to be. And notice the power, the specific power is here.

The Word of God is the power of God to save the souls of you all. How careful is God's Spirit here to tell us that the implanted word is the power of God to deliver, to save our very souls that are so in need of saving. And this is the same focus of His power that God used when He raised Jesus from death to life. It's only possible by Him having this kind of power that extends beyond the environment we live on in the earth. I gotta rush here because the time is running out. The emphasis here is on both the source, His implanted Word, and the quality of power of His implanted Word.

We need the implanted Word of God's power to be unleashed in us and through us. We do need that, don't we? to save, and here is a very important concept, there is no conditional foundation here, but honestly, correctly, wisely hearing with ears that can hear now, with respect and loving gratitude, God's message of love and correcting guidance as it is now and always needed. What salvation is in view here?

The context is deliverance from the remaining sins that we commit after believing. This is the purification of our set of beliefs that we had when we were slaves to our Edenic nature. Our souls relate to the world system, our family, our self, our thinking. We are now given deliverance by the spiritual life of fellowship, given to us when we are made alive to God and now abide in an intimate relationship with Him. The soul that we have has learned to behave in the ways of our thinking, our culture, and even our family, to just survive or to prosper or to be praised.

These old learned ways are opposite to God's Word, which is revealing all human good to be evil, along with the obvious evil that we can detect. It is His light, His essence of purity, His absolute rightness that is shared with us when we're born again from above into His family as new and kind people. The Word of God is the power of God and God uses it to purify us from the pollution of these remaining conscious standards of trust that we think are real because we inherited them in our culture and our family. How does God do this?

We know it is by revealing Christ to us, His ways with us as members now of His family What a joy it is to know Him, to be in His family. Now we are uniquely loved ones and able to love one another in harmony with Him because we share His nature as His newly created ones.

Our focus is now on our Lord, our Savior. What He loves, we love. What He hates, we hate. We have a new kind, His kind of thinking, acting, and enjoyment. We enjoy being his harmonious instruments in his orchestra that he uses to reveal through the music he produces his glory.

The souls, the part of us that is aware and has relation to others of the same kind. We call this our society, our socialness with others like us. And now as members of his body of believing humans, We have a society of a new shameness as God has birthed us into his family. This is a really big for us thing. I'm very generous of him. It defines by the definite article that this is specific. It is God's power, the power.

It is our souls, the souls of us. How thorough this is, encompassing both God's power and our souls, placed into His family positionally and delivered by His power experientially. Of you all, His power is focused toward us personally, intimately. Out of the power of His Word implanted in us by His Spirit, We are personally blessed to be purified by Him. We are personally blessed to live in the harmony of His joy.

Well, there's two things in overview here. This is factually taking off the remaining evil that we have from Adam, submitting under his implanted to us revelation of himself. And it's exactly parallel with Ephesians 4, 22 through 24, and Colossians 3, 9-10. The teaching from Christ is that now He is our life, that we've taken off the old man, that we are being renewed by the Spirit in our minds, that we have put on the new man.

Oh, the depth of this love and the riches of His love for us. Father has spoken to us about His ways with us through both James and Paul. Notice how different these men are. One grew to manhood in unbelief that his half-brother was God, the promised one. The other, he grew up to manhood under the finest teaching of Jewish traditions, hating Jesus enough to condemn his followers to death. But God used them both to share with us his ways with them and with us. They are exactly the same methods. In these three verses we saw God's perspective about hearing God's Word, receiving God's Word. The next four verses tell us about being obedient to God's Word. And now a closing thought.

Will this portion of God's implanted Word that he's given us today consider What's our attitude in this warfare of God? Are we outside the armory, struggling and tweeting for surprise? Or are we confidently in harmony with God, fully armed, singing His songs, eagerly listening to Him as He reveals His perfection both to us and through us? May this be our thought, and may we share from these verses that it is out of the power of His Word implanted in us by His Spirit. We are personally blessed to be purified by Him. We are personally blessed to live in the harmony of His joy.

Now I have four other slides. They're part of this lesson that you can download. And all they are is the actual exegesis of the morphology, okay? I'm going to now show them to you one at a time. Notice I end with the Uist translation, you know my beloved ones.

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow with respect to anger. For a man's wrath does not bring about that which is righteous in God's sight, Wherefore, having put away every moral inflameness and vulgarity and wickedness which is abounding, in meekness receive the implanted Word which is able to save your souls. Heavenly Father, thank you for this chance to review in a very fast fashion the great depths of your love. May this be implanted in us in such a way that you can reveal yourself Not just to us now in these moments, but also every moment of every day. Reveal yourself, we pray. In Christ's name, amen. Yeah, thanks, Roy. That was a lot to take in. Thank you. It was a lot to try to cram into 40 minutes, I'll tell you. Roy, quick question.

The verses you gave us in Ephesians and Colossians clearly say for us to put off the old man and to put on the new man. But is it not the Spirit that's really doing that and we're observing and believing and confessing? Jim, let me be explicit with you. In both of those texts, in particular in Ephesians, there is a previous phase.

You have not learned Christ this way. Then he gives us by indirect discourse what we have learned. It's a rare use of the infinitive, but that's what he says in the text. What we learned from Christ is specifically stated that we have taken off the old man, that we are being renewed in the spirit of our minds, and that we have put on the new man. That's Ephesians. And when you get to Colossians, it is informed the same way.

The Holy Spirit says, we have taken off the old and put on the new. He states it as a fact, not a command. Isn't that something? I was amazed, and I called Roger up, and I said, look at this. This is not a command. This is authorship of a fact. Isn't that something? Well, it's important to remember the Ephesians and Colossians passage are facts also. So actually, Paul and James agreeing. What a concept. How weird that the Holy Spirit only says the same thing, right?