Be Doers.
What does it mean to be “doers of the word”? For starters, it means we do more than just hear and read this text. Reading and hearing are necessary, but insufficient. These words, if they’re truly understood, must be lived. They must enter our hearts and imaginations, re-forming us into the likeness of God’s Son, and exit our bodies in acts of love—in through eyes and ears, out through hands and feet.
This, of course, isn’t a call to legalism, as if we could somehow earn God’s favor through right behavior. No, it’s a call to life—an exuberant living nourished by “every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Peter pictures the doer of the word as an infant, longing for her mother’s milk, desperate for the nutrients needed to grow. This business of “doing the word” is about life, not legalism; living, not earning.
Those who hear but don’t do are the ones who open their Bibles but not themselves, resistant to this “living and active” word “discerning the thoughts and intentions” of their hearts. ‘Quiet time’ becomes dangerous, threatening even, for the person without faith, their wants and desires made vulnerable to the will of Another, something wholly undesirable for the faith-less. But the faith-filled, the one who “receives with meekness the implanted word,” enters the text with expectancy, not dread, yearning for the word’s work in their lives.
When we open our Bibles, then, we must also open ourselves, letting God’s Word inside us so it can work its way out of us in deeds of faith, hope, and love. We “act out” this word as it acts in us, formed by God’s Spirit into a people who look like God’s Son. Jesus. Word made flesh.
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