James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction… I. The virtue of BENEVOLENCE is here described by one of its most interesting and incumbent exercises. There is no description of persons who have a stronger claim on the tender compassions of our nature than those here specified — the widow and the orphan. It is deserving of special remark how frequently and how strongly God represents them as engaging His sympathies — how explicit and peremptory His charges are in their behalf, and how full of pointed force and heavy severity His denunciations against their oppressors (Psalm 68:5; Deuteronomy 10:18; Proverbs 23:10, 11; Exodus 22:22-24). If we fancy ourselves, or any dear to us, placed by Divine providence in the conditions referred to, we are powerfully sensible how much we should value the soothing sympathy and the kind attentions of friends and fellow Christians, and how deeply we should be wounded were these to be withheld. The more strongly we are sensible of this, the more imperative does the obligation that rests upon us become in behalf of those whom the Lord has afflicted. That He afflicted them is no reason why we should. Instead of its being a time when we are to keep aloof, and to affliction to the afflicted, it is a time when we are to hear the voice of Him whose very nature is love, enjoining by His providence and by His word the exercise of sympathy and kindness. The terms of the text suggest the lesson that our benevolence must not be mere emotion — no, nor mere words, or mere regrets, and sighs, and tears. Benevolence must be evinced by beneficence. Well-wishing must manifest its sincerity by well-doing. It is not in word only, but in deed. "It visits the fatherless and widows in their affliction." I need not say that to "visit" is to visit for the purpose of consolation and relief. It is quite obvious that under the term "visiting" there ought to be included all that we have it in our power to do for them: all for which visiting is of any real service. And surely there is no visitation of the fatherless and the widow more truly benevolent than that of which the object is to impart to them the consolations, the joys, the hopes of the very religion itself, by whose principles we are ourselves actuated in paying the visits. II. The second part of practical religion, "pure and undefiled," contained in the text, is "to keep himself unspotted from the world." To this we give the general designation of SELF-GOVERNMENT. The style in which it is expressed is quite peculiar to the Scriptures. In this sacred book God and the world are invariably set in opposition to each other; as masters of opposite characters and opposite requirements, whose services can never be reconciled. The expression may be interpreted as including the whole of Christian purity of character. God is holy. All the precepts of God are holy; and all His truths, containing the manifestations of Himself and the motives to this purity, are holy. Purity is the first and most essential attribute of whatever comes from Him who "is Light, and in whom there is no darkness at all." But the world — the fallen, apostate, alien world — is in its maxims, and principles, and ways, opposed to the purity of God. It is polluting; it is infectious. It is hard to keep white robes clean in passing through the midst of all that is defiling. It is hard to shun contagion amidst crowds infected with the plague. Such, however, in a moral and spiritual sense, must be the Christian's daily and hourly endeavour. With such circumspection, jealous and incessant, is he called to walk. He must "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness." He must "cleanse himself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." He must, in every department of his walk and conversation, seek to make it to all apparent that, although in the world, he is not of the world. III. Let me now guard against prevailing and injurious MISCONCEPTIONS by one or two general observations. 1. Let not the two parts of pure and undefiled religion be separated. They too often are. There are men many a time to be found who are very humane, but who are by no means patterns of personal purity or separation from the world. They found their confidence before God on their charity as the means of pacifying His anger and conciliating His good-will, and rendering Him, if not blind altogether to their vices and their self-indulgent worldliness, at least very indulgent to them, and very gentle in His verdict against them. Men of humanity, without religion, may, no doubt, do good by the direct influence of their liberality on the temporal comfort and well-being of others. But they contribute as directly to an opposite result, in regard to interests of a higher order — the spiritual and eternal interests of men. And what is the body to the soul? — what is time to eternity? — "what is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." And even where there is not open licentiousness, where there is only a mind that seeks its happiness in the world, the character is, in one view, the more dangerous from there being the less in it that does violence to the moral principles, whilst yet there is in all so lamentable a deficiency, the destitution of the hallowing and consecrating influence of piety. The mind is almost unconsciously deceived into the impression that religion is not essential to a good character. Everything appears to go on so amiably and usefully, and, on the whole, well and happily, without it. Oh that I could impress you all, deeply, permanently, influentially, with the conviction of the radical defectiveness of all principles that do not begin with God. 2. That neither the benevolence nor the purity enjoined by the text should be separated from those Christian principles of faith by which they are produced and maintained. Scriptural faith is faith that produces practice; scriptural practice is practice that springs from faith. It is with the extreme that talks of faith, to the overlooking of practice, that James has here to do. This is clear from vers. 21-26, It will not do to divorce morality from religion. The principles of religion are the only principles of true morality. They form, indeed, themselves the first and highest branch of morals; the obligation that arises from our relation to God Himself being, in the strictest sense and strongest degree, of a moral character. And as all Bible morality is founded in religion, let it not be forgotten that the Bible is a revelation of God to sinners; and that the religion of a sinner must necessarily regard God as so revealed. And this is the same thing with saying that the religion of a sinner must begin with the humble acceptance of mercy, as it is made known and offered by the gospel. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. |
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