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Okay. Good morning. My name is Jay Talk. I’m one of the elders at Red Village Church here, and I did not grow up going to church at all, so I knew nothing about anything. If my 20-year-old self heard somebody introduce themselves as an elder, I would think that I was talking to some sort of cult leader or something. So I’m glad I’m not my 20-year-old self any longer, but I am sympathetic to his plight.
Just so you’re unaware, the New Testament uses terms like elder, pastor, or overseer indiscriminately to describe church leaders. But I also say I’m not the real pastor because he’s down in Tennessee with the kids. So it’s amateur hour at Red Village this morning.
My wife, Katie, and I were out of town a couple of weeks ago, and we went to a little church. I love being at Red Village Church; I always miss it when I’m gone. But I also love going to church when we’re out of town. It’s kind of nice because, especially if it’s a decent church, you realize we’re part of something bigger than just being here. You can rip off good ideas, and you don’t have any responsibilities except, you know, the normal responsibilities that worshiping Christians have in a service.
So, unfortunately for me, it’s also a time to indulge in crabby cynicism, which I like to do—although I shouldn’t like to do it, but I do. That kind of happened to me at the service because the preacher, who was also not the normal preaching guy, started his sermon using an illustration out of the musical Les Mis. Now, I took a survey around here, and actually, I didn’t hear a lot of people say they’ve ever heard that used as an illustration, but I feel like I’ve heard it 400 times.
I sat there for about ten minutes, thinking, you know what? I’m good on the Les Mis illustrations. I’ve been a Christian for like 25 years. Praise God, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sat through emotional retellings of the Les Mis story. And I’m sorry; I know I’m irritating some of you right now who love Les Mis.
In my crabbiness, I came up with an observation: The chances of hearing a Les Mis sermon illustration increase greatly when a layperson is preaching. We’ve got a little stretch of summer here where a lot of laypeople and not normal preachers are preaching. We’ll see how many times Les Mis pops up during the course of the summer, and we’ll see if my adage catches on.
One of my favorite adages is actually Parkinson’s Law. Does anybody know what that is? Kelson? Actually, you, Mark, I would have my money on Mark. No one? But it’s the idea that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. I always feel that when I get an opportunity to preach because I’ve learned over the years that, no matter how much time I have leading up to the sermon, I am always going to be working on it late at night the night before.
But now I’m kind of used to that, so it’s not quite as stressful. Last night, I was mostly done, it was a nice day out, and I decided, all right, we’ve got to get out of here. Let’s go out for dinner. I knew I had a few more hours of work to do. So I got home, a little sluggish from too much burrito and rice and beans, and I thought, you know what? I better take a little nap before I finish this sermon off. It’s like about 7:00; this is not good. So I thought I’ll get up in a couple of hours, finish things off; it’ll be great.
Then I woke up, and I didn’t know what time it was, but it was about midnight. I was like, oh no. But also, this could have been much worse. Can you imagine if I’d woken up at 8:00 a.m.? The sheer panic! It would have been a great story, but could have been a disaster. So I had the sheer panic that would have hit if I’d woken up at 8:00 in the morning. This little mistake I made not setting an alarm almost led to a huge disaster.
So, a little mistake can lead to a huge problem, which sort of relates to… I’m bad at introductions for sermons. It sort of relates to the text we’re talking about today: James chapter two. After that long and barely relevant introduction, we’re going to get into that. We’re preaching through James this summer. Wes preached last week through chapter one, or actually over the past couple of weeks. So we’re going to move on to James chapter two, verses one through 13.
If you’re looking for that, I’d say it’s kind of sort of in the middle of the last half of the New Testament. I did not make slides because I want you guys to pay attention. This would be a good sermon to have the Bibles open, like usual, but especially today.
So I’ll read it: James chapter two, verses one through 13.
“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you are called?
If you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
So let’s pray.
Father in heaven, thank you for your good word. Thank you for your mercy to Red Village Church, for giving us another day, another opportunity to worship you. Father, we pray for the help of your Holy Spirit, guaranteed as an inheritance of our faith, purchased by Christ out of your love. We pray that, towards that end, you would glorify the name of the Son in the preached word, in the sung word, in the prayers and the fellowship of the saints this morning. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
All right, so we’ll start with those first four verses.
As he says, “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
Verse one, “My brothers.” So obviously he’s talking to men and women here. I always tell my kids; I think I’ve told you guys before. You know, sometimes in the Bible, when it talks about man, it’s talking about mankind, like everybody. Sometimes it’s talking about mankind as… Oh, sorry, excuse me. Sometimes it’s talking about man or males, as in all of us. I think the context is pretty obvious.
So he says, “So, my brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” Partiality is the quality of prejudice, bias, unfairness. It can be related to people’s outside characteristics; it could be related to rivalry or factions. The New American Standard Bible has this translated as “Do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.” That’s implied in this.
Then James gives this illustration about a man wearing a gold ring dressed finely coming into your assembly, and a man dressed more shoddily coming in, and one being treated better than the other. So here we’re admonished not to commit the sin of partiality, and he illustrates it with this comparison of the well-to-do guy compared to the downtrodden, especially in church.
This is an excellent illustration because this is almost a universal human experience. Proverbs 14:20 says, “The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends.” Everyone sees this sort of thing, but it still happens all the time, which tells me that we all might be a little self-deceived in how this affects us.
This doesn’t mean that you should dishonor somebody just because they seem wealthy. It’s that you shouldn’t dishonor the poor in your other honorings. We should be honoring one another. Paul says in Romans 12, “Outdo one another in showing honor.” So we’re supposed to be showing honor to each other.
This seems like an obvious thing not to do, an obvious way not to behave. But like I said, it seems to be this universal phenomenon. I have an illustration regarding this sort of partiality, or blindness to it, from church history. I enjoy dabbling in church history, like reading old theology books. Happily, we’ve got this absolute treasure trove of books in the English language—old books in constant publication. So I dabble in these things.
But you guys probably know we, as a church, cover just our operating expenses by the offerings that you all give. But it used to be that a lot of churches, especially in the English-speaking world, covered their expenses by renting pews. So you would, like, rent your pew. You probably notice around here that a lot of people kind of sit in the same spot every week.
Like, we’re always there—Martin’s always there. The Andersons usually there. The Schilderoths, I feel like, bounce back and forth. You know, the Josecs are here. Yeah, so that’s kind of a force of habit or whatever, but it used to be much more explicit.
These pew-renting churches raised their money this way, and it was kind of a status symbol to be right here where you guys are. So you guys are in the high-status position. These pews would be more expensive, and they would make a big display of the people that sat there. If you showed up and that spot was just empty, like, you didn’t go. So you had this display of distinction.
I always thought it was weird because these were a predominantly Bible-believing, God-loving group of people. These pastors knew the word; they certainly knew these verses, and yet this phenomenon still kind of crept in, which seems to be exactly the opposite of what he’s talking about here.
You kind of understand practically how this evolved. The church is trying to raise money; this is how they did it. But obeying God’s word does require overcoming practical difficulties, and renting pews was probably not the way to go. I was just curious how they kind of got around this, at least in their own minds, and I really couldn’t find all that much.
But then I did find one quote from Matthew Henry. Some of you guys might have his commentary; I think it’s from the mid-1700s. He commented on this verse: “We must be careful not to apply what is here said to the common assemblies for worship, where in these, certainly, there may be appointed different places of persons according to their rank and circumstances.”
And I was like, what? Matthew Henry is usually very good, so very weird, but it looks like a lot of folks make hay about the idea that this word “assembly” in the beginning of our verse here, “For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly,” that assembly word is translated from the term “synagogue,” the term that’s normally translated “synagogue,” rather than the normal “ecclesia,” as we see in most of the rest of the New Testament.
So the implication being that he’s talking about some other sort of meeting, like a business meeting or a meeting to hash through some personal conflict or something like that. But I mean, it seems like a real stretch. The word “synagogue” was used for normal church services. It’s used in Hebrews 10:25; it’s used in all the early church. So that didn’t make any sense either.
Now, that is probably more talk about pew rental than any of you guys have heard in your entire life, but it’s not really a modern phenomenon. I just thought it was a useful illustration for people that I admire theologically, having blind spots—people who were otherwise faithful and trying to live according to God’s word, having these blind spots.
We might not have problems with pew renting. What’s very common in churches, especially churches that have been around for a while, is for the families that have been wealthier to donate more money over time to kind of throw their weight around and get deferred to just out of consideration for the donations, which is actually also not good. More common than pew renting, for sure.
So this distinction between the rich and the poor is based on how they dress, how they’re just looking in here. Fine clothing or goodly apparel, as the KJV has it, is contrasted with the shabby clothing of the poor. We shouldn’t take this as an indication that there’s something particularly virtuous about shabby clothing—like, I’m showing my virtue by how shabby I’m dressing—or that there’s anything sinful about dressing nicely. Our clothing is part of how we communicate.
I wear a suit usually when I’m preaching; I’m trying to communicate something that I’m taking it seriously. You guys are having to sit through this; I want you to know that I’m taking it seriously since I’m torturing you with my sermon. So kind of out of respect for you. But, you know, if I dressed more casually, I’d say, well, I’m trying to make you comfortable. I’m showing that I’m comfortable around you. I’m not trying to impress you.
So, clothing is a very interesting topic theologically, which we probably don’t have time for here, but there’s a podcast called True Magic, which is really good. They must have done ten episodes on clothing. Very interesting, and I would recommend that to you.
So, partiality is this quality of prejudice, bias, unfairness. Again, James illustrates it with this distinction, the rich and poor in our assemblies. But I also want to mention what partiality is not.
It’s not always wrong to make distinctions, whether of attention or of honor. There’s nothing wrong with some pomp and circumstance that comes with a state dinner. There’s nothing wrong with letting an aged relative have the most comfortable seat in the living room. “No, Grandma, you can’t sit in the recliner. We don’t want to make distinctions.” You know, nothing wrong with a soldier saluting an officer. There’s nothing wrong with a mother paying more attention to her baby rather than somebody else’s baby. That’s normal; it’s normal and good.
But in the context of a worship service, wealth is not something that bestows a particular honor. So we do respect persons, as the KJV has it, as we do show partiality righteously in appropriate contexts. Again, employees should respect their employers. Children should respect their parents. Athletes should respect their coaches. Paul says in Romans 13, “Pay to all what is owed to them, including respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.”
It’s also not the sin of partiality to avoid being dumb. So you can lock your cars when you’re driving through a sketchy neighborhood. It’s okay. I have to say that because I hear people complaining about it a lot, like, “You’re sinning against the people who hear the click.” I think that’s why newer cars lock automatically; I think it was just to save embarrassment for people. I literally think that’s true.
I heard a young man complaining a few years ago that he felt like if he was walking down the street at night and there’s a woman walking the other way, he felt like he should go to the other side of the street so as not to scare her, but he sounded kind of irritated that that’s the case. Like, she’s showing an unrighteous partiality against him. I was like, dude, I do that. Do I look intimidating? I mean, I used to.
I work sometimes at night at the hospital, and sometimes there will be not much going on. So I’ll do loops around the parking lot, walking around. You know, it’s the middle of the night, it’s dark, big parking lot, kind of not great lighting. Occasionally, I’ve scared the snot out of one of the nurses because this creepy guy is walking around while I’m going out to my car or whatever, so they’ll yell. But now my eccentricities have been kind of built into the system. They all kind of know it’s me out there. Once you stay around long enough, that happens.
You can be at a party, and you kind of don’t like the vibe of what’s going on. It’s fine; you slap your legs and say, “Well, nothing good happens after midnight. I’m out of here.” Even if nothing bad has happened yet, you’re not sinning against the people for leaving. You may feel like trying not to be dumb is offensive, but, I mean, think about it. If the people you’re worried about offending are righteous, they’ll kind of get it. They’ll understand. Just like I get it. I don’t walk behind women at night when it’s dark out. I know that’s gonna scare them. I wouldn’t be offended if they picked up their pace a little bit or peeked over their shoulder a couple of times. And if they do take offense, tough beans.
So you don’t have to be stupid. Not showing partiality doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. But in this context, in the worship of Christ, in a public worship service, wealth should clearly not be a distinguishing mark that necessitates some particular honor.
Ephesians chapter four, Paul says, “There’s one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who’s overall and through all and in all.” Here’s John Gill. He’s a relatively well-known Baptist pastor from a few hundred years ago. He says, “As the apostle is about to dissuade from the evil of having respect to persons, this is a very fit introduction to it and carries in it an argument why it should not obtain, since saints are all brethren. They are all children of the same Father, belong to the same family, and are all one in Christ Jesus, whether high or low, rich or poor.”
So the sin of partiality is not done when you just honor those whom you should honor. It’s not being dumb to avoid basic pattern recognition. So, partiality is a prejudice that leads to unfairness.
Let’s talk about further reasons to avoid this partiality. I’m going to take five reasons to avoid partiality if you’re keeping notes.
First, partiality is unbecoming of those who hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, or literally, who hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the glory. Here’s Calvin: “For so great is the brightness of Christ that it easily extinguishes all the glories of the world if it indeed irradiates our eyes. It hence follows that Christ is little esteemed by us when the admiration of worldly glory lays hold on us.”
Or Augustine: “Far from me is the notion that in your tabernacle, Lord, the rich should be more highly regarded than the poor, or the noble than the less well-born. You have chosen the weak things of this world to put the strong to shame, and you have chosen things which are dishonorable, despised, and of no account in order to bring to nothing the things which are.”
If you hold to partiality, you’re probably not holding to the faith in the Lord of glory.
The second reason to avoid partiality is undue or unjust dishonoring. Verse six says, “But you’ve dishonored the poor man.” The sin lies not so much in honoring the rich man as in the dishonoring of the poor man. Calvin again: “If then you should read thus, if you read it like he sins who respects the rich, and then it just stopped right there, he sins who respects the rich, the sentence would be absurd. But if, as follows, he sins who honors the rich alone and despises the poor and treats them with contempt, that would be the true doctrine. And that is what James said.”
So he doesn’t… It’s not just that it’s not the honoring of the rich; it’s the honoring of the rich at the expense of the poor. It’s the dishonor that’s the result of the initial honoring. That’s the problem.
The third reason to avoid partiality: You’re making evil distinctions. Verse four says, “Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” If you’re judging with evil thoughts, you’re an evil judge. Something I found helpful is to think of your mind as a courtroom. So evaluate what you think of people. Evaluate why you think that. Evaluate if your thoughts are justified by what you know. Is the courtroom of your mind acting righteously, or is the courtroom of your mind run by an evil, oppressive judge with hard thoughts holding others to standards that you wouldn’t hold yourself to?
The fourth reason to avoid partiality: In this manner, the rich often are not righteous. We should avoid the sin of partiality because it’s out of step with God’s view of the world. It often seems that acquisition of honor and wealth by the world’s standards is a stumbling block to the acquisition of honors and wealth by God’s standard. God’s people are often those who are poor in the world. You don’t hear a lot of testimonies that start off with, “Well, I just got this huge bonus at work, and I figured it was time to start serving the Lord.” You hear the opposite quite a bit, though: “I was down. I was down something—health, finances, relationships, whatever. And that was the thing that got me to finally think, am I doing things right around here? Is there something more?”
Looking further at verse five: “Listen, my beloved brothers,” or as the KJV has it, “hearken, my beloved brethren.” I kind of like that word, “hearken.” I think we should bring it back. That and “hark.” If we changed Christmas carols to more modern language, it wouldn’t always improve. Like, “Listen, the herald angels sing.” It doesn’t have the same ring to it.
So again, “Listen, my beloved brothers. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you have been called?”
The wealthy have the means to abuse the justice system, and they have the louder voice to platform and thunder blasphemies. Again, it’s not absolute. In fact, if you’ve absorbed most of the stories that we all get in our culture, whether it’s movies or books or sermon illustrations, you might make the opposite error of completely absolutizing this truism.
The fact that the wealthy are prone to abuse their wealth and have it act as a barrier to faith doesn’t mean that poverty and struggle are automatically going to lead to righteousness. It’s not true that every wealthy, good-looking, accomplished person is actually a jerk. It’s not true that every frog is secretly a prince. That’s not true. So don’t make the opposite error.
Leviticus 19:15 says, “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor, or defer to the great. But in righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor.”
I’m extremely grateful for the elites or the wealthy who are righteous. You see a smattering of the faithful in high places. In the New Testament, Nicodemus is a high-level Pharisee. Paul mentions members of Caesar’s household being among the faithful. He’s got a few encounters in the book of Acts where somebody with almost ultimate local political authority is teetering on the edge of becoming a Christian.
The pursuit of wealth can be dangerous. The Lord himself said, “The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches make people unfruitful.” But part of discipleship is bringing that pursuit of wealth and what you do with it under Christ’s lordship.
Again, from verse six: “Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, the ones who drag you into court?” When these rich are a problem, when they’re a problem, they’re a big problem.
I’m sure many of you have heard the term “lawfare,” right? So think warfare, but lawfare. If you haven’t heard of it, to me, it’s one of the most irritating things about the modern justice system. Our system, among its many, many, many other faults, is also bureaucratic, inefficient, and incompetent. From what I can tell, this makes the process of being in a courtroom more painful than it’s got to be. Because the process itself is so painful, there are those who will initiate lawsuits not because they’re trying to get justice, not because they’re trying to get somebody to admit fault, but because they know the pain of dragging this person into court is going to be punishment in and of itself, especially if the one filing the lawsuit has more money for lawyers.
My brother said the first day of law school, they told him, “America has the best justice system in the world to prove who has the best lawyer.” Apparently, this is not a new phenomenon because James is talking about it here. I’m annoyed that it’s not a new phenomenon because that means it’s probably not going away anytime soon.
So some of you young people, we need a couple of you to go to law school. Not a lot, but you need to be righteous lawyers.
So, verse seven: “Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?” He draws special attention to the rich blaspheming the name of Christ. Again, we shouldn’t absolutize this. Obviously, you can be poor and be a blasphemer, but the rich blaspheme with a bigger megaphone or a bigger microphone. Sometimes it’s because people are paying more attention to them because they’re standing. Sometimes it’s pushed out through all manner of media.
I was trying to come up with some counterexamples of when somebody got amplified or promoted, or everyone was listening to them because they were so righteous, they were so faithful to Christ, and I couldn’t really think. I mean, you want to say Kanye or Tim Tebow; it’s my annual Tim Tebow reverence. But generally speaking, these types of Christians are not threats to the system, so they’re kind of tolerated and not amplified.
But the opposite is true. If you’re a relatively unknown pastor or some relatively unknown New Testament scholar, and you’re sitting there faithfully writing papers about how the apostles use the term “synagogue” versus “ecclesia,” and when they’re talking about assemblies, nobody’s reading your books except the students if you make them buy their book for their class.
But if you come out, come out of the closet, as it were, with a book saying, “The New Testament is fake,” “Why Jesus didn’t actually exist,” you might end up on the cover of Newsweek. For you kids that don’t know, Newsweek was what’s called a magazine. It’s kind of like a website, but it’s printed on paper, and it would get mailed to people every week. It used to be a big deal to end up on the cover of Newsweek.
The power, though, is an illusion. Chrysostom says, “Bear their greed as patiently as you can. Those people destroy themselves, not you. For while they rob you of your money, they strip themselves of God’s favor and help. For the one who bases his life on greed and gathers all the wealth of the world around him is, in fact, the poorest of all.”
And the fifth and last reason I have for avoiding partiality is that it’s roundly condemned in all of the scriptures. I’m just going to rattle off a few Old Testament examples, then back to our text.
Like Leviticus 19, like I already cited: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor.”
Deuteronomy 1:17: “You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.”
Deuteronomy 16:19: “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.”
Or from Proverbs 24: “These also are the sayings of the wise. Partiality in judging is not good. Whoever says to the wicked, ‘You are in the right,’ will be cursed, and people will abhorred by nations. But those who rebuke the wicked will have delight, and a good blessing will come upon them.”
And then back to our passage in verses eight and nine: “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
This makes it apparent that it’s a violation of loving your neighbor if you’re acting with partiality.
So those are the five reasons to avoid partiality. It’s unbecoming of those who hold to faith in Christ. It unjustly dishonors those who don’t deserve dishonor, in this case, the poor among us. It makes you an evil judge making evil distinctions, which is already enough of a problem in our world. It can honor those who don’t deserve honor. And lastly, it’s roundly condemned by the scriptures.
Now, I think James is then moving on from this particular example to a more general point. As you can imagine, partiality might not be an obvious sin. It might not be obvious even to the offender. It can seem like a little sin, maybe not worth addressing. However, the tendency we have to tolerate little sins is a problem. He compares more dramatic, more obvious acts like adultery and murder to the sin of partiality, seemingly an absurd comparison that illustrates the nature of sin.
It doesn’t start out with murder, or should I say murder doesn’t start out with murder. It starts with something beforehand. People destroying their marriages through adultery usually doesn’t happen all of a sudden. Usually, there’s a foundation of disobedience being laid ahead of time.
Again, verse nine: “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you’ve become a transgressor of the law.”
So sins of the mind or sins of disposition are the seed of the more dramatic and obvious destructive sins. Look back at our text from last week, from chapter one, verses 14 and 15. James says, “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.”
Or look at the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder,’ and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to hellfire.”
Murder starts with unwarranted anger. “You’ve heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
So adultery starts with the glance. Sin in its seed form isn’t obvious to us; that’s obvious to God. That’s why James can list this sin of partiality with seemingly more serious sins. Partial obedience is disobedience, verses ten through eleven: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ I mean, sure, I murdered somebody, but I was always faithful to my wife. Congratulations.”
Here’s Gregory, a 6th-century bishop of Rome. He says, “For if someone is righteous in some of the things he does and unrighteous in others, it’s rather as if he is covering one side of his body but leaving the other side naked. It’s just as ridiculous.”
Sin is sin because it opposes the nature and will of God. To murder, to commit adultery, to show partiality—they’re all fruits of a disposition against the Holy One.
Another observation: Unlike some moderns, James is not allergic to talking about things like the law in a positive sense, seemingly without any sort of qualification. “Love your neighbor” is a law. When Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself, he’s getting that latter commandment from the middle of Leviticus. So it’s part of Old Testament law.
Yet it still applies. In fact, the general moral principles of the Old Testament law are descriptions of how we love our neighbor, including how we administer justice. A lot of people try to pit “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” against the rest of the law. The law shows us how to love people; it instructs us on how to love our neighbor.
The reason moderns seem uncomfortable with advocating for God’s law is that we don’t want to imply that that’s how somebody gets right with God, that is, by keeping the law. In other words, we don’t obtain God’s favor by keeping the law. We don’t earn our righteousness through our own good works. No, God saves sinners. God saves the unrighteous. When you trust in Christ, you’re united with him. God counts your sin against him and punishes it on the cross. God counts his righteousness to you, and you’re adopted as his child.
So despite your sin, despite your inward corruption, despite your ill thoughts of God, despite your partialities, he turns these rebels into children and receives them into his family.
So what’s the law for? If we’re not justified by keeping the law, then what is the point? I mean, does this law, or does any commandment in the Bible apply to the Christian life? It’s pretty obvious it must apply because there are a lot of commandments in the New Testament. I mean, “Show no partiality,” like he’s not making a suggestion; he’s telling you to show no partiality.
There’s a pretty simple way to think about the law that comes from a lot of the older confessions of faith. I just want to point out one scheme to you because I think it helps untie a lot of knots in people’s thinking. The reformers would think about the three uses of the law.
First, God gives his law to show us our need of Christ. When you look at the righteous law and you’re like, “I do not measure up to that. I do not measure up to the Sermon on the Mount. I do not measure up to never showing partiality,” then you recognize this is a problem. I need a savior. I need a savior for my sin.
The second use for God’s law is to restrain evil. So the threat and the promise of the law do help, even if it’s nothing salvific. I was just reading an article about Portland, Oregon, and they decided to legalize all drugs a while back. Now they’re like, “Whoops, let’s try to scale that back.” Are they better off using more drugs? No. Would they be using the same amount of drugs if there was no law or if there was a law? No.
Would you guys be driving under 55 on this beautiful, wide, two-lane boulevard out here if there weren’t signs everywhere saying 25? Occasionally a police officer at the corner? The law does restrain sin, and we’re better off for it if the laws are righteous.
The third use of the law is just to show us how we ought to live. If you’re a Christian, you want to serve God; you want to know how to best live. You follow God’s law as a rule of life. So James is not allergic to using God’s law in his teaching because God’s law is good.
Speaking of law, we’ll move to the last two verses here, twelve and thirteen. “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty, for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. So what is this law of liberty? Wes had to preach on it last week, so I just asked him because he uses the same phrase in chapter one. No, I’m just kidding; I went through some things, but I did want to make sure I wasn’t contradicting him.
So what is it? The law of liberty must be something we’re supposed to be doing because he mentions back in chapter one, verse 25, “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.” So it’s something we’re supposed to be doing; it’s something that must be good for us because, he says, we will be blessed in its doing.
The context of this verse or this text seems to be that the one pursuing the law of liberty is one who seeks to love their neighbor as themselves. I say that because of verse eight: “All right, we’re supposed to be doing it. We’re going to be blessed in it, and we’re supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves.”
And then also because of the context, it seems like showing partiality would be violating this law of liberty, along with murder and adultery. We also know that the law of liberty is not just about law-keeping because to obey the law of liberty is also to show mercy.
Verse thirteen: “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.” So if you’re not obeying this law of liberty, you’re one of these people that’s going to be judged without mercy. It says, “Because you’ve shown no mercy.” You don’t want judgment without mercy; none of us want that.
When we look at the depths of our sin in the mirror of God’s law, whether it’s murder or adultery or partiality or the seeds of them, we ought to know that we need mercy. If we’re living with a recognition of how much mercy we receive from God, it should be easier for us to give mercy to others.
Here’s Calvin again. “And doubtless the whole passage thus reads well,” so this is his paraphrase: “Since none of us can stand before God except we be delivered and freed from the strict rigor of the law, we ought so to act that we may not, through too much severity, exclude the indulgence or mercy of God, of which we all have need to the last.”
So this law of liberty is something we’re supposed to be doing; it includes loving our neighbor as ourselves, seeking to obey God’s will in our relationships. It can only be obeyed in the context of receiving God’s mercy in Christ and being happy to give mercy to others.
Being merciful for Christ’s sake triumphs over judgment because it is a manifestation of our faith. It’s a manifestation that we belong to Christ. Mercy triumphs over judgment—or the King James, “Mercy rejoiceth against judgment.”
I have one last quote from Chrysostom. He says, “Mercy is the highest art and the shield of those who practice it. It is the friend of God, standing always next to him and freely blessing whatever he wishes. It must not be despised by us, for in its purity it grants great liberty to those who respond to it in kind. It must be shown to those who have quarreled with us as well as those who have sinned against us. So great is its power; it breaks chains, dispels darkness, extinguishes fire, kills worms, and takes away the gnashing of teeth. By it, the gates of heaven open with the greatest of ease.”
So don’t be partial. Seek to kill sin at its root, and don’t ignore so-called little sins, and be merciful. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, thank you for the mercy you’ve shown us in Christ. I pray that you would help us live in the light of that. I pray that you would help us govern our relationships in the light of that. I pray that through that, you would display your love through the love that we have for one another. I pray that you would protect us from the sin of partiality. I pray that you would help us be faithful servants seeking to serve you under the law of liberty in Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.