I know some of you have already read the title, and the jokes have already started coming to the tip of your tongue. I also know that like myself, many people have had family members who literally can no longer remember who they are, and that is no joking matter. However, I believe once we are past those things, we all can quickly understand what we are talking about. In James 1:23-24, we read that anyone who is a hearer of the Word but not a doer “is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.”
We all can recognize that it makes no sense to hear the Word of God and then to not use it to help change our lives. We also understand how dangerous those kinds of actions are for us and for our souls. In James, the illustration that is used is a man looking at his face in the mirror, and when he walks away, he immediately forgets what he looked like. Is that helpful, or is that dangerous?
When you look in the mirror, there are two things that you see: the good and the bad. If you walk away and forget what you looked like, that does not help you at all. In fact, it could be dangerous. If you walk away, knowing you have sin in your life, but you never do anything to change, your soul is in danger of Hell.
Yet, the opposite is also true. If you walk away and remember none of the good, then you will not be able to experience the blessings that God has put before you. In the world in which we live today, there are many people walking around in sin, and there are many people walking around who see no good in their lives. Both sets of people have truly forgotten who they are, that they are made in the image of God and that they are His special creation. When we turn our lives back to God and remember who He is, we can then, once again, remember who we are and what our purpose is here on the earth.
