James 1:21-22 Why lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word… 1. Before we come to the Word, there must be preparation. Many come to hear, but they do not consider the weight and importance of the duty. Christ saith (Luke 8:18). (1) By way of caution. (a) Do not exclude God out of your preparations. Usually men mistake in this matter, and hope by their own care to work themselves into a fitness of spirit. (b) Though you cannot get your hearts into such a frame as you do desire, trust God, and that help which is absent to sense and feeling may be present to faith. (2) By way of direction. I cannot go out into all the severals of preparations, how the heart must be purged, faith exercised, repentance renewed, wants and weaknesses reviewed, God's glory considered, the nature, grounds, and ends of the ordinances weighed in our thoughts. Only, in the general, so much preparation there must be as will make the heart reverent. God will be served with a joy mixed with trembling (Genesis 28:17). And again, such preparation as will settle the bent of the spirit heavenward. It is said somewhere, "They set themselves to seek the Lord" (Psalm 57:7). 2. Christian preparation consists most in laying aside and dispossessing evil frames. Weeds must be rooted out before the ground is fit to receive the seed (Jeremiah 4:3). There is an unsuitableness between a filthy spirit and the pure holy Word. 3. Put it off, as a rotten and filthy garment. Sin must be left with an utter detestation (Isaiah 30:22). 4. We must not lay aside sin in part only, but all sin (1 Peter 2:1; Psalm 119:104). The least sins may undo you. 5. Sin is filthiness; it sullies the glory and beauty of the soul, defaces the image of God (2 Corinthians 7:1; Job 14:4; Job 15:14). 6. From that "superfluity of wickedness." That there is abundance of wickedness to be purged out of the heart of man. "All the imaginations of the heart are evil, only evil, and that continually"; it runneth out into every thought, into every desire, into every purpose. As there is saltness in every drop of the sea, and bitterness in every branch of wormwood, so sin in everything that is framed within the soul. Whatever an unclean person touched, though it were holy flesh, it was unclean; so all our actions are poisoned with it. 7. Our duty in hearing the Word is to receive it. In receiving there is an act of the understanding, in apprehending the truth and musing upon it (Luke 9:44). And there is an act of faith, the crediting and believing faculty is stirred up to entertain it (Hebrews 4:2). And there is an act of the will and affections to embrace and lodge it in the soul, which is called "a receiving the truth in love," when we make room for it, that carnal affections and prejudices may not vomit and throw it up again. 8. The Word must be received with all meekness. First, this excludes — (1) A wrathful fierceness, by which men rise in a rage against the Word (Jeremiah 6:10). (2) A proud stubbornness, when men are resolved to hold their own (Jeremiah 2:25). (3) A contentions wrangling, which is found in men of an unsober wit, that scorn to captivate the pride of reason, and therefore stick to every shift (Psalm 25:8, 9).Secondly, it includes — (1) Humility and brokenness of spirit. There must be insection before insition, meek ness before ingrafting. (2) Teachableness and tractableness of spirit (James 3:17). The servants of God come with a mind to obey; they do but wait for the discovery of their duty (Acts 10:33). Disputing against the Word, it is a judging yourselves; it is as if, in effect, you should say, "I care not for God, nor all the tenders of grace and glory that He maketh to me." 9. The Word must not only be apprehended by us, but planted in us. It is God's promise (Jeremiah 31:33). 10. The Word in God's hand is an instrument to save our souls. 11. That the main care of Christian should be to save his soul. This is propounded as an argument why we should hear the Word; it will save your souls. Usually our greatest care is to gratify the body. (T. Manton.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. |
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