The Mirror Principle
Let’s read James 1:21-25:
James 1:21–25 (NKJV)
21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty (namely the Gospel) and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
Most Christians read this passage and interpret the mirror as being the moral Law of God, in which you have to look continually to see your flaws and sins. In other words, you see what you need to change and then go try changing it, without forgetting the moral flaws that you saw in the mirror, until those issues are removed out of your life. Only THEN will you be blessed in what you do.
There are multiple problems with this interpretation. First, the mirror is the perfect law of liberty, and not the moral Law or the Ten Commandments. What is the perfect law of liberty? The perfect law of liberty is the Gospel or the Word of His grace. The perfect law of liberty is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2). That law stipulates that we are dead to sin (Romans 6:11) and no longer under sin’s dominion (Romans 6:14), that God loves us (John 16:27), that we are joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), that all possible blessings are already established and granted to us in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), that even when we sin we are not condemned anymore (Romans 8:1), that we have power to live in holiness (1 Corinthians 10:13, Philippians 4:13), that we have been healed (1 Peter 2:24), that we are a success (Psalm 1:3), that we are prosperous (2 Corinthians 8:9), victorious (Romans 8:37), above failure, and protected. This is the Gospel and the perfect law of liberty that we need to be doers of, meaning believing these things and walking in them.
In the New Testament, the act of doing the Word is believing the Word about you and acting accordingly. The act of doing the Word is not obeying a set of moral rules like in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, you will not be blessed BECAUSE you obey the moral Law. Obedience is no longer a condition for God to bless you, like in the Old Testament. You are blessed regardless of your level of obedience. The more you believe the Word of grace about the perfect being that you have become in your spirit, the more grace is released in your life, and the more blessings manifest themselves from the inside out into the material world. When you come to realize how blessed you are, then the blessing begins to flow in everything you do. You are blessed even before you believe it, once you have come in Christ. But when you believe that you have been blessed, that blessing starts manifesting in your life physically and emotionally.
Notice that verse 21 says that the Word is already implanted in you and able to save your soul. What does that mean? It means that your new spirit is the Word Itself, because it has been born of the incorruptible seed of the Word of God (1 Peter 1:23), and consequently, you have become the Word of God in your spirit. That Word is just locked inside of you and blocked by your mind. When you look in the mirror of the Word, you see yourself, the Word. When your mind receives the revelation of who you really are inside, and accepts it by believing it, that’s when you begin putting “flesh” to the Word inside, the same way Jesus was the incarnated Word. That is the moment when you bring the Word out and manifest it to make your soul immune to the works of darkness on this earth. The works of darkness are: sickness, depression, confusion, lack of peace and joy, failure, anger, lack of wisdom, etc. This is how your soul is saved by the implanted Word of God in you. The salvation of your soul in this context does not refer to the salvation from hell in the future life, but to the salvation of your whole being here in earth from sin and from all its effects that entered the world together with it.
Renewal of the mind is not refreshing your mind with the moral Law of God, or the Ten Commandments. The moral Law of God has already been written into your conscience since you were born on this earth. We know good and evil because of the Fall. We don’t need to refresh that knowledge because it’s already in us and in all people. That’s why you have moral people that have never been born again, and neither heard or tried to keep the Ten Commandments, yet behave at the highest moral standards and sometimes better than some born-again believers. That is why you have Greek Orthodox and Catholic people, that are mostly not born again, going regularly to confess their sins to the priests. The conscience is always working in everyone, either we like it or not, and it doesn’t need our help. Renewal of the mind means to renew your thinking about your new identity and nature, to focus and meditate on that, and be aware of that. The new identity is not something obvious to the eyes, but something that you need to behold with the eyes of the Spirit, and refresh your mind with it constantly. Your new nature is what you should not forget about and be a doer of. Then your soul (mind, will, conscience, and emotions) and body will be transformed into, and align to, the same image of Christ, in which your spirit has already been reborn.
In the mirror, you don’t see your old self, the sinner, or your sinful deeds. Instead, you see Christ, Who is glory, Who is the Word of God incarnated, and that’s who you are as well in Him. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 is also a passage about the mirror that goes along here and it says:
2 Corinthians 3:17–18 (NKJV)
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The way to be transformed into the image of the Lord is to behold the glory of the Lord, that is, to focus on who Christ is in you and who you are in Christ. You do this by reading and meditating on the Word of God and by listening to sermons and biblical teachings. This is how you look into the perfect law of liberty and see who you are and who you have become – the very glory of the Lord. The new creation is no longer fallen short of the glory of God as Romans 3:23 says. That is the state of unbelievers. The new creation in Christ is the fullness of the glory of God here on earth (John 1:16; John 17:22).
Most of the times, believers read the Bible with an Old Testament perspective, instead of reading it with a New Testament mindset. They read the New Testament in the light and through the lens of the Old Testament, rather than reading the Old Testament in the light and th...
