Copyright © 2007 Ron Schwartz
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Poets Of The Spirit

Being A Doer Of The Word

June 25, 2006

By Ron and Karen Schwartz

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James 1:22 KJV

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

The word “doers” comes from the Greek word poietes, which means a maker, author, performer, and from which our English word poet is derived.  The etymology of the word means “one who does” and can refer to any sort of doer.  However, during the time of Christ and His apostles, it came to have a special reference to literary poets.  This word is not the same word used for work, nor is it a reference to a laborer.  It carries with it the idea of performance or creation of something, and therefore suggests an artistic proficiency by doing something so often that it becomes a natural part of life.

Because this word is translated as both “doer” and “poet” in the scripture, we understand that it is describing something more than mere mechanical obedience.  James had something more in mind when he wrote this passage.  If he wanted to say that, he would have used a form of a word like obedient.  Instead of describing blind, mechanical obedience to the law, he was describing the artistic performance of God’s love in a way that draws all those around us.  Because when the Spirit works through us, it is poetic, not perfunctory as a slave obeying a taskmaster.  (God had mindless obedience through the Old Testament, but He has something different in mind with the New Testament.)

When poets performed on their outdoor stages, the public was drawn to watch and listen.  People would cease doing that with which they were involved and go to see the artists.  They would become drawn into their poetry and hang on every word.  That is what being a doer of the word is all about.   We are to show the majesty of serving God.  We are to attract people with our service.  We are to be living examples of God’s grace, to demonstrate His love to those around us.  We are to lift Jesus high, and in doing so all men will be drawn unto Him.

Experiential

Is the Christianity you see around you practiced as a vocation or is it just intellectual knowledge?  A common complaint many university students have is that their professors, though knowledgeable in their fields of study, are out of touch “with the real word.”  They may be experts in their academic knowledge, but they can sometimes lack the practical knowledge concerning how to apply it outside of their scholastic environment.  Yes, this describes most Christians.

Where are the Christians making a difference in their communities?  Where are the Christians whose public lives are drawing people like poets on center stage?  Where are the Christians who are actually practicing the Christianity they read about in the New Testament?  Western Christianity has become academic: they have become like those college professors who are extremely knowledgeable but lack practical experience.

This is part of the reason we stay away from Christian forums.  The doctors and para-professors of religion, doctrine, divinity, etc. love to frequent these sites.  They quote books, argue over the Greek, and twist in endless circles.  But where is the practical application for that which they discuss?  How many of them actually practice/perform Christianity in the real world the way the New Testament describes it?  If they are out there, we sure do not see them.

Christianity was never meant to be academic.  If Christianity were academic, then it would flourish in the Western societies.  But consider our societies.  There are an over abundance of churches from which to choose.  There are so many that average church size in the USA has been driven down to a mere 89.  Bible colleges and seminaries abound, as well as a plethora of Christian books, stores, and radio stations.  Add to this the Internet, television, libraries, and independent training seminars, and you will find a society of almost limitless Christian academia.  Yet for all the Christian teaching that proliferates our societies, Western Christianity is matched in apostasy only by the dark ages of Christian tyranny.

The dictionary describes the word “academic” as:

1. The theoretical or hypothetical; not practical, realistic, or directly useful: an academic question; an academic discussion of a matter already decided.

2. Learned or scholarly but lacking in worldliness, common sense, or practicality.

3. Conforming to set rules, standards, or traditions; conventional: academic painting.

4. Acquired by formal education, esp. at a college or university: academic preparation for the ministry.

There is no question that the word “academic” describes how Christianity is taught.

Now consider the way God said that Christianity is supposed to be taught:

Jeremiah 31:31-34 KJV

31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

When God foretold of the way He would establish and teach His New Testament people, it lacked any of the elements found in contemporary Christian institutions.  We find these same words echoed in the words of Jesus.

John 14:26, 16:13 KJV

14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

The Holy Spirit works in our lives, not through lectures and workbooks, but by leading us through the difficult times.  We learn faith by practicing it, and God will make sure that we get ample opportunities to practice it.  We learn patience, mercy, and forgiveness from people who hurt us. Every tangible element in our Christian lives is obtained from living/practicing our Christian faith.

Sometimes we don’t know what to do.  That is not the time to run to the Christian bookstore but to pray for the leading of the Holy Spirit.  When you allow God to handle the circumstances in your life, you will begin to see a poet emerge in you.  You will see people being drawn to the performance of your life.  When we allow God to write His law in our hearts (as opposed to drawing from academia and then trying to force it to work in our lives) we will see Christ lifted up and all men drawn to him.

Why is it that Christianity has become so intellectual?  Why is the practical application of the New Testament so ignored?

Improved Or Imperiled

Most people can see that much of who they are is a product of how they were raised.  Many of our values and traditions, our accents, our perspectives about life, and the way we raise our children has been largely predetermined by how we were raised.  It is no different with Christians.  They are also products of how they were raised.

In the beginning of the church, Christianity was almost totally experiential.  There were no books, and because Christianity was so new, sometimes not even the apostles knew the answers, and sometimes they got it wrong.  Contrast this to today.  Christianity is no longer practiced or taught as it was in the beginning.  Is it possible to find less than a hundred sources for answers to any question you have?  And almost everyone appears to be an expert.  But most of the source material, as well as the resident experts who surround you, lack the practical experience for the advice they give.  It is almost all academic.

Once again, we ask, why?  Why is it that Christianity has become so intellectual?  Why is the practical application of the New Testament so ignored?

To find the answer to this question, you need look no further than the institutional churches that Christians attend.  These churches are places of academia.  They are centers of teaching.  People leave their churches with intellectual knowledge but little practical experience.  This is not how Jesus taught His disciples.  He taught them by having them practice what they learned.

Consider the following:

Matthew 14:19 KJV

And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

Matthew 10:1-5 KJV

1 And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

5 These twelve Jesus sent forth…

Most churches are little more than institutions of academia.  They exist to exist.  They do not practice the Christianity found in the New Testament.  They do not send their people into their communities as Jesus did, and they do not teach the kind of discipleship Jesus taught and practiced.  They are simply institutions of higher learning.  After spending two hours of their day waiting for the meeting to end, people leave their churches having done nothing.  They are told what songs to sing and then are led through them.  They listen to entertaining performers and speakers.  People are lead to believe that with this type of church structure they will grow spiritually, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Many pastors are offended when they read notes like this because they feel that they have done due diligence by preaching “hell fire and brimstone.”  They believe that they do teach discipleship and speak often of their duty to the community.  What more could they do?

Yes, what more?

People learn to be ineffective when they are treated that way.  When people are taught that they are not qualified to preach, to speak, or to use their spiritual gifts while in the safety of the church, they come to believe it.  They see themselves as unqualified, and therefore they don’t do anything inside or outside the church.  Remember this: when people are shown that they are irrelevant they tend to act that way.  That is why the contemporary western church is just that: irrelevant.

In some smaller churches, a particular man (or woman) just assumes the leadership role.  He may feel that he has the most to offer, so he assumes the traditional role of a pastor.  He may not call himself by the title per se, but that is still the role he has taken upon himself.  When anyone operates in what is today considered “the traditional role of a pastor,” he takes away from God’s people their ability to practice or perform what the Spirit is doing in their lives.

This is so important that it must be repeated:  If people are made to feel inadequate and unqualified to operate in their spiritual gifts while in the safety of a community of believers in a church, they will feel ten times more inadequate outside of it.  For churches to be effective like the first generation of Christians were, they must cease to be intellectual institutions and begin to provide “on-the-job-training.”  They must encourage people to “step up” and operate freely in their gifts and callings.  They must encourage people to feel fully qualified in their spiritual gifts.  They must dismantle the layers of clergy bureaucracy that punishes those who step out in faith while rewarding the incompetent.

Hearers Only…

James 1:22 KJV

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

James write that those who are “hearers only” deceive themselves.  How?

“Hearers” deceive themselves into believing that:

1.      People who are made to feel unqualified to minister in church will feel qualified to minister outside the church. 

TRUTH: People who feel unqualified in their churches will feel unqualified everywhere they go.

2.      People who are learn the intellectual knowledge found in books and sermons will cause them to grow spiritually. 

TRUTH: The only way to grow spiritually is by becoming a “doer” of the Holy Spirit’s leading in your life.  This means you must become a performer rather than just a listener.  You must practice true Spirit-led Christianity both inside and outside the church meetings.

3.      Living in Christian academia is the same as being a genuine Christian. 

TRUTH: The Christian academia you experience in traditional institutional churches is not genuine Christianity any more than reading a manual on how to fly a Space Shuttle makes you a genuine Space Shuttle pilot.  You can spend your entire life going to church every day of the week and never experience true Christianity.  Christianity is stepping out on center stage as a poet of the Lord.  It is in being a spectacle of God’s nature.

4.      Going to church as a spectator is the same as being part of the Body of Christ. 

TRUTH: The scripture tells us that “the whole body [of Christ is] fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16).”  How many parts of the Body of Christ are at work in a typical institutional church?  It is surprising to learn how many people are foolish enough to believe that their part is to sit in a pew and pay their tithes.  Such people are not functioning as parts of the Body of Christ.

Summary

Most Christian leaders consider the changes to the church and the way of having church over the past two millennia to have improved and enriched our Christian experience.  But have these changes improved the church or imperiled it?  Most people feel that the answer to having a good church is in hiring strong charismatic pastors who will draw people and grow church membership/attendance (numbers).  Is this a fair assumption?  If it is true that the answer is found in strong leaders, then the Catholic Church with its copious layers of leaders would be the model for all churches to follow.

Historically, you will find that the more strong leaders a church denomination has, the more the spiritual growth of the church is obstructed and stunted.  Consider the Dark Ages.  Each layer of men added does not cause deeper spiritual growth but another degree of separation between God and His people.  The answer to having a good church (spiritually as opposed to numerically) is found in having no one who takes control over others, allowing all people to become “doers” of the word.

What about the fact that Paul commanded Titus to “ordain elders in every city (Titus 1:5)?”  If the answer lies in having no controlling leaders, why did Paul want men set in place?  That verse actually begins, “For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting (Titus 1:5).”  These were young churches.  There needed to be men to provide examples for young Christians until they had grown out of that which was “wanting.”  Since the need for elders was only to address that which was wanting, then we understand that these men would no longer need to function in that capacity once the needs of their immature church were met.  But that is no longer the case today.  Men, once given positions of power, prestige, and influence, will not readily give it up.  So the bureaucracy remains and grows even after Christians mature.  This bureaucracy prevents the maturing Christians from ever becoming “doers” of the word.  What was designed merely to support what was “wanting,” eventually becomes their undoing.

Being a “doer” of the word is not describing someone who knows and observes Old Testament law.  Once again, this is simply venturing into academia.  God is looking for people to serve Him “in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).”  God is looking for those who will allow His Spirit to operate within them, teaching them His ways.  You will know these people when you meet them.  They are poets of the Spirit.  Through the work of the Holy Spirit, they spin God’s law of love into poetry.  As artists, they stand on the stage of this world and draw the lost to Christ

.

Amen.