“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” (James 1:25, ESV) 

When Christians ask, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” the answer will never be ourselves. It will always be fairest Lord Jesus. He alone is without blemish of sin. He is the image of the invisible God. The mirror simply shows us our need for Jesus as Savior and Lord. 

The mirror does something else. It holds the promise of blessing. When we act upon what our God shows us we are blessed. Psalm 1 gives us an idea of what this blessing is like. We will be “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:3). When we live as our God has designed us, we find contentment, joy, peace, and beauty. 

James calls the mirror “the law of liberty.” When we think of law, we tend to think of restriction not liberty. Often we hear that we are to be ourselves but the law reminds us that we are to be true what God wants us to be, true to who we are in Christ. We find our spiritual equilibrium and consonance when we live according to who we are in Christ. We might think of a train. When is a train most free? When it bounds derailed across the countryside or when it speeds along the tracks for which it is designed? 

In one sense, we are fully blessed. Our gracious Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing bound up in Jesus Christ that is ours through faith in Him. In another sense, however, we are blessed through walking by faith that looks to Christ and lives with and for Him. Jesus spoke of that when He said that by coming to Him we have life and have it abundantly. 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my inmost being. Expose my sin and lead me in the way everlasting.”