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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - James 1:27 - 1:27
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Pure ... and undefiled - “Pure” is that love which has in it no foreign admixture, as self-deceit and hypocrisy. “Undefiled” is the means of its being “pure” [Tittmann]. “Pure” expresses the positive, “undefiled” the negative side of religious service; just as visiting the fatherless and widow is the active, keeping himself unspotted from the world, the passive side of religious duty. This is the nobler shape that our religious exercises take, instead of the ceremonial offices of the law.
before God and the Father - literally, “before Him who is (our) God and Father.” God is so called to imply that if we would be like our Father, it is not by fasting, etc., for He does none of these things, but in being “merciful as our Father is merciful” [Chrysostom].
visit - in sympathy and kind offices to alleviate their distresses.
the fatherless - whose “Father” is God (Psa 68:5); peculiarly helpless.
and - not in the Greek; so close is the connection between active works of mercy to others, and the maintenance of personal unworldliness of spirit, word, and deed; no copula therefore is needed. Religion in its rise interests us about ourselves in its progress, about our fellow creatures: in its highest stage, about the honor of God.
keep himself - with jealous watchfulness, at the same time praying and depending on God as alone able to keep us (Joh 17:15; Jud 1:24).