This passage grows out of the sentence before it. God has brought us forth by the word of truth, and now James spells out what a person born by that word owes it. He calls them my beloved brothers, and the affection matters, since the commands that follow are hard to hear. 19"quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." The advice was old, and James adds the reason. 20"the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."
21"receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." Whatever keeps a person from hearing has to go first. The word is "implanted," already planted like a seed and at work.
Then the pivot is to be doers of the word, and not hearers only. The verb James chooses carries the sense of "keep becoming," a direction a whole life keeps moving in or fails to. The self-deception he names sits near the center of what sin is. It is convincing yourself that hearing the truth is the same as living it.
Then the mirror. 23"a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror" 24"goes away and at once forgets what he was like." The plain reading is that the hearer and the doer look with the same attention, and the whole difference lies in what happens next. One walks away and forgets, and the other walks away and acts. The face in the mirror is the face a person was born with, made in God's image, so forgetting what the mirror showed is forgetting something close to who you are.
25"the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres" will be blessed in his doing. James binds the passage into one thought running from the word of truth to the implanted word to the perfect law. Whoever wants the gospel's gift of new birth has to receive its instruction too, and the law brings liberty because grace has already written it into the heart it governs.
James closes with the tongue and with compassion. 26"If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless." He is running a test on the one who has convinced himself his worship counts while his mouth runs free. Then the positive picture. 27"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction." Orphans and widows appear together across the Old Testament as those with no one to defend them, and Yahweh names himself their protector. Caring for them is one concrete way of imitating his character. Care for the weak and separation from the world's corruption together make the single, whole devotion he is after.
What is one thing you have heard from God that you have not yet done? Do it today.
Prayer
Father, you have implanted your word in us, able to save our souls, and still we walk away from the mirror and forget what we saw. Make us quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, doers and not hearers only. Teach us the religion you call pure, caring for the orphan and the widow and keeping ourselves unstained by the world. In Jesus' name, amen.