What Does the Mirror Reveal?

LOOK in a mirror. What do you see? At times, a glance in the mirror reveals in your appearance an embarrassing flaw that you are glad to correct before others notice it.

The Bible is much like a mirror. It can help us acquire an honest view of ourselves, which will prevent us from thinking too much​—or too little—​of our worth in God’s eyes. (Matthew 10:29-31; Romans 12:3) Additionally, the Bible can reveal flaws in our words, deeds, or attitudes that we need to correct. When this happens, will you ignore what the mirror reveals?

Says the Bible writer James: “If anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, this one is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, and off he goes and immediately forgets what sort of man he is.”​—James 1:23, 24.

In contrast, James describes another man, one “who peers into the perfect law that belongs to freedom and who persists in it.” (James 1:25) The Greek word translated “peers” means to stoop beside or to bend forward to look. “More than a fleeting glance is at issue,” says the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The word implies a careful search for a hidden object. “There is something important which the viewer desires to see, even though it may be difficult for him to see it and grasp its meaning all at once,” writes Bible commentator R. V. G. Tasker.

Will you thus scrutinize yourself in the mirror of God’s Word and then conform to what it requires? James continues: “This man, because he has become, not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, will be happy in his doing it.”​—James 1:25.