Looking into the Perfect Law of Freedom
James 1:12, Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
We are probably familiar with “Beatitudes” from the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest Preacher to ever live: Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5:1 – 12). It is interesting to note that James uses the term “blessed” (makarios) three times in this practical epistle on living out the faith. God inspires him to use it at the beginning of his letter (our text) and toward the end of his letter as he writes in 5:11, “Indeed we count them blessed who endure.”
It is an amazing thing that we, in our human frailty, can be called “blessed” as this was attributed by the secular society of that time as an attribute of the gods. In biblical Christianity, God calls His self-crucified disciple “blessed.”
James “bookends” this letter with the pronouncement of who is “blessed.” Yet, sandwiched between these two pronouncements is the key to living in this freedom of Christ:
James 1:25, But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
The key to living out the Christian faith, the foundation to enduring temptation, the ability to persevere until we receive the crown of life, the stride of the walk in freedom is found in this passage that stresses the look, hear, and do of the crucified life. It is the reading, memorization, and meditation on God’s Word, the perfect law of liberty, that allows us to, “…be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord” (5:7). Be mindful that the “…the inward man is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). We desperately need that systematic, serious, and sincere daily time in the Word of God in order to live out true freedom in Christ! – Dr. Joe Olachea is the Senior Pastor of Lakes Community Chapel, Medford, NJ, a n instructor for the Keswick Institute of Biblical Studies, and a member of the America’s Keswick Board of Trustees.
Compass Pointers: He doth not bid us take a taste of all sins and vanities, as Solomon did, to try them: for they are tried already; but that we should set the Word of God always before us like a rule, and believe nothing but that which it teacheth, love nothing but that which it prescribeth, hate nothing but that which it forbideth, do nothing but that which is commandeth, and then we try all things by the Word. – Puritan Henry Smith
Navigation Rules: Level 1: Proverbs 3:1-2; Level 2: Proverbs 3:1-11
Anchored to the Rock: I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to Him. - C.H. Spurgeon
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