~ No Partiality ~
James 2.1-8
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
James is telling Christians, "Don't treat one sort of person better than other sorts of people." To do so is to show favoritism or partiality. James isn't, however, claiming that everyone is the same. It's ridiculous to say such a thing, when there are obvious distinctions between people.
There are black people and there are white people.
There are smart people and there are dumb people.
There are beautiful people and there are ugly people.
There are poor people and there are rich people.
There are men and there are women.
The Bible never tells us that there are no distinctions, only that all people in every distinction have the same worth and value before God. In Galatians 3.26-28, Paul says, "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In all the examples Paul gives, one of each pair is (in Paul's day and age, if not mirrored in ours) esteemed (and treated) as better than the other. Paul isn't saying that there's no such thing as Jew or Greek, or slave or free, or male or female; just look around and you'll see these distinctions everywhere. What Paul's saying is that in Christ, we are all equal. In Christ, our primary identity is that of brothers and sisters in the family of God. In every pair Paul presents, despite what society says, both are to be treated with equal value and worth.
Men are not to be favored over women (though, in our day and age, the inverse may need to be emphasized); Greeks are not to be favored over Jews; free people are not to be favored over slaves. This is because as Christians, regardless of our station in life, we are all 100% children of God. We are all brothers and sisters on equal footing, with equal worth and value. None is better than the other, and it's important THAT WE LIVE LIKE IT. It's in our nature to treat some people better than others, but this part of our nature is sinful. God doesn't show partiality, and neither should we. We will come into contact with all sorts of people in the world and in the church, and we are called as Christians to
love them regardless of their station in life (or even, dare we say it, their likability). None of us are likable all the time, but God loves us (and even likes us!) all of the time; and we need to reflect that love outwards to the world and especially to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
When we show partiality by treating some people as more worthy of our attention and love than others, we are sinning. James is quite clear about that. Instead of showing partiality, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. This command comes straight from Jesus; it's not just a cute, pithy statement. But what does it mean to love people? Christian love is rooted in
self-sacrifice. It's about giving yourself to others, treating others as if they are more important than you. Christian love is about looking out for other peoples' interests over our own. Worldly love is based on feelings and infatuation, and it ultimately revolves around the self; this kind of love is about getting, not getting: "What does this person do for me?" When the person we love stops fulfilling us the way we want, the world says to walk away; but Christian love doesn't walk away, it just keeps on loving, it keeps on giving. What this means is that we're to treat others with kindness, respect, and value. We're to give of ourselves - our time, our energy, our money, even our own selves - to promote the wholeness of others. We're to love others the way God loves us, forgiving them and looking out for their best interests. And we're to do this even to those people in our lives who aren't likable; even more, we're to do this
to our enemies. If we treat people according to how they love us, or how they benefit us, or according to what they bring to the table, our love is worldly in nature, and by definition it shows favoritism and partiality. Such a worldly love goes against what God demands of His people.
~ Sin, Transgression, and the Law of Liberty ~
James 2.9-12
For whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point only has become guilty of all of it. For the one who said 'Do not commit adultery' also said 'Do not murder.' Now if you do not commit adultery but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. Thus speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law of liberty.
James says that those who break one point of God's law become guilty of breaking all of it. Though he quotes the Mosaic laws against adultery and murder, he has in mind here the showing of partiality. Those who show partiality or favoritism are as guilty before God as if they'd committed adultery or murdered! 'Transgression' means breaking the law, but it's not the same thing as sin. All transgression of God's law is sin, but not all sin is transgression. To 'sin' is to 'miss the mark' of living - in thought and deed - as is fitting for God's image-bearing creature. This involves both things we do wrong and things we don't do that are right. Breaking even one of God's laws renders us guilty before God, the ultimate Judge. While God detests some sins more than others - He has a particular loathing, for example, of divorce, homosexual activities, and the abuse of children - ALL sin puts us in a guilty standing before God. The seriousness of showing partiality is emphasized by putting it on the same level as murder and adultery.
James says that we are to speak and act (i.e. live) according to the 'law of liberty.' This law of liberty is elsewhere called the law of freedom or the law of Christ, and this law is, simply, the way of living that God expects of His image-bearing creatures. Thus James is saying, "Be watchful of the things you say and do, because you will be judged according to the standard that God has set." But why does James choose to call it the 'law of liberty'? Perhaps he wishes to distance it from the Mosaic Law; the Mosaic Law was given to the Israelites, and much of it has been abolished by Christ, since much of it was tailored towards keeping the Jewish people intact so that they would be ready when Messiah came. The 'law of liberty,' in contrast to the Mosaic Law, is all about ethics (the Mosaic Law, while containing a lot of ethics, also contained a lot of laws made redundant by Christ's sacrifice and the establishment of the New Covenant). The rules and regulations that Christians are to follow aren't meant to constrain us; they're designed to enable us to flourish. God designed us to operate in certain ways; there's a particular manner of life that is appropriate for human beings, and when we operate in contrary ways (by sin and transgression), we're dysfunctional and sabotaging our attempts at a fully-flourishing and abundant life.
But why, again, does he call it liberty? Why is Christ's law - the law of the New Covenant - a law of liberty? Here, perhaps, our modern connotations with the word 'liberty' do us a disservice. Nowadays liberty or freedom are taken to mean a license to do as we please. This isn't what these words mean in the biblical sense. Look at it this way: in the days of great sailing ships, a ship was said to be 'at liberty' on the sea when it's sails were unfurled and it was running with the wind rather than against the wind. By running with the wind, the ship was able to reach its full potential; it was doing precisely that which it was designed to do. In the same way, human beings are 'at liberty' when they are reaching their full potential and living in the way that they were created to live. The 'law of liberty,' when embraced, leads to a fully-flourishing human existence; when we run against the wind of God's directives and design, we're failing to experience the life God wishes us to have.
James 2.13
For judgment is merciless to the one who has not practiced mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
In Matthew 5.7 Jesus says that the merciful will be shown mercy. This is a thoroughly biblical idea: when the Final Judgment takes place, and we are judged for the things we did during our lives, the way we treated others will be taken into account. God will be merciful towards those who showed mercy to others, but he will strictly judge 'by the book' those who did not. This isn't to say, of course, that the merciful will be saved by their mercy (for salvation comes only through Jesus), but that the merciful outside Christ will be judged less severely than if they hadn't shown mercy (though their judgment will remain, unquestionably, a negative experience). Mercy carries a certain currency with God. He esteems mercy. Mercy is a reflection of God's own heart, and those who have not been severely dehumanized are able to show mercy. Christians, despite their state before conversion, are filled with the Spirit and enabled to show mercy - and God expects us to show mercy, because He has shown mercy to us. Our mercy towards others doesn't justify us, but it will certainly garnish us some rewards in the new heavens and new earth.
"What, though,
is mercy?" If we are to show mercy to others, it'd be helpful if we knew precisely what 'mercy' is all about. Mercy is
compassion or forgiveness towards someone whom you would be justified in punishing or causing harm to. Grace is different than mercy; it is 'mercy on steroids.' Mercy is sparing someone from something bad; grace is giving something good to someone who deserves the opposite. Mercy is the removal of a negative consequence; grace is both the removal of the negative consequence and the addition of a positive blessing. We can see how mercy and grace work differently by analogy. Say a man stands trial for grand theft auto, and his due penalty is five years in the state penitentiary. If the judge pardons him so that he doesn't have to serve jail time, the judge is practicing mercy towards the thief; but if the judge not only pardons him but also gives him a Mercedes free-of-charge,
that's grace.
God shows us mercy by pardoning us our sin so that we don't have to pay for it - but then he goes a step beyond and shows us grace by adopting us as his children and gifting us with all sorts of spiritual blessings and making room for us in his new heavens and new earth. We as Christians have received mercy, so we need to show mercy. Remember how Jesus said that if we don't forgive others, then we ourselves won't be forgiven? The point he's making is that those who have been forgiven by God, and who know the depth of that forgiveness, have a natural (or should we say supernatural?) bent towards forgiving others, even when it hurts. In like manner, those who have been shown mercy by Jesus will be predisposed towards showing mercy to others. They will speak and act in a way that is consistent with what they claim to believe; those who trust in God, who are in Christ, will show mercy to others. Of course, they won't be perfect in showing mercy. Christians still sin, in this and other ways. But trust in the God of mercy drives us to show mercy, at least as a matter of principle. One who never shows mercy, or rarely shows it, is not one who trusts in Christ, and God will not judge that person with mercy.
James 2.14-26
What is the benefit, my brothers, if someone says that he has faith but does not have works? That faith is not able to save him, is it? If a brother or a sister is poorly clothed and lacking food for the day, and one of you should say to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,” but does not give them what is necessary for the body, what is the benefit? Thus also faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe, and shudder! But do you want to know, O foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was working together with his works, and by the works the faith was perfected. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And likewise was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
James 2.14-26 is the natural conclusion to what James started writing about in this chapter:
partiality. Some Jewish Christians were treating other Christians in varying degrees depending upon their social status; James told them, "This is not the Christ-like thing to do!" He went so far as to say that showing partiality was a transgression of God's law, putting them in the same camp as adulterers and murderers. He implored them to show mercy to one another: instead of treating others according to social stratification, they should treat others with love and mercy, regardless of their social standing or likableness. Now James goes on to point out that true Christian faith can't help but produce a lifestyle of obedience to Jesus; specifically, genuine Christian faith will result in striving to treat others the way that God has treated us. There's a lot to this passage of scripture, and we will devote some time to fleshing it out, but it's easy to miss the forest for the trees. James' argument from the beginning of James 2 till now is a coherent and logical whole: "If you're a Christian, you must show love and mercy to your fellow believers. If you treat them with partiality, you're disavowing the name of the one to whom you profess loyalty; but if you treat your brethren with love and mercy, then you are showing that your faith in Christ is genuine and made of the 'right stuff.'"
In 2 Corinthians 13.5, Paul tells the Corinthians, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves!" How do we follow Paul's injunction? By looking at our lives! It is possible to delude ourselves; indeed, we do it all the time! In our day and age, it is quite possible to be raised in the church and to profess belief in Christianity without ever truly committing oneself to Jesus. In many swathes of the United States, identifying as Christian is a cultural rather than religious undertaking; we identify as Christians because that's what the people around us do and expect, and we follow suit because we are, at heart, social creatures yearning to conform to the expectations of our heroes. But true faith is more than mental assent; it requires a mental belief in the truth of the gospel message, to be sure, but it goes well beyond mere knowledge. Biblical 'faith in Jesus' is
loyalty to Jesus or
trusting submission to Jesus. This sort of faith - this 'saving faith' - can do no other than produce obedience to Jesus. This is why Jesus tells us that those who truly love him will obey him; it's why Paul speaks of 'the obedience of faith'; and it's why genuine faith will prove itself in the way we live our lives.
If we are truly committed to Jesus, our obedience to Jesus and the ways of God will be fleshed out in our daily lives. Our 'works' don't save us, but they testify to what is true about us. If we examine ourselves and see a lack of obedience, or even a lack of desire to obey or a lack of effort put towards obedience, then we would do well to question whether our faith in Jesus is genuine or a self-imposed delusion. A faith that doesn't 'work' is a 'dead' faith, and it is the sort of 'faith' that even demons have! The German reformer Martin Luther put it this way: 'If works and love do not blossom forth, it is not genuine faith, the gospel has not yet gained a foothold, and Christ is not yet rightly known.'
I'm reminded of the old adage that 'what we do is who we are.' Jesus says that our actions stem from our hearts. One of the peculiarities of drunkenness is that it reveals who we really are: when people get drunk and do things that are 'out of character,' their actions aren't really out of character; rather, drunkenness removes our self-imposed inhibitions, those self-erected barriers that keep us from 'acting out' what goes on in our hearts. In this sense, drunkenness is great at revealing who we are. Jesus says that a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit; the things we do and say spring forth from our hearts. When we become Christians, we are given new hearts and new spirits; God implants within us a desire to obey him, and he gives us the ability to do so by breaking our enslavement to sin and empowering us with the Holy Spirit. A Christian who does not desire to obey Jesus, who makes no effort to really obey him, is a Christian in name only; the metaphysical (or ultimate) reality for him or her has not changed - he or she remains dead in sin because their faith is not the sort of faith God requires and accepts.
James links one's faith with actions in life. He says, 'Do you see that faith was working together with [Abraham's] works, and by works [his] faith was made perfect?' James is saying that Abraham's faith was brought to its end, or its fullness, by his actions. Just as a fruit tree has not arrived at its goal until it bears fruit, faith has not reached its fullness until it demonstrates itself in a righteous life. Putting it another way, James says that we are justified by works and not faith alone. We must grant that this is confusing, because the testimony of scripture is that we are justified by faith and not works. Where does James get off, contradicting scripture?! We must grant that James' wordage is awkward, and we
cannot say that we must perform works to be saved. This goes against the entire scope of scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments. When something sticks out oddly, our rule is 'let scripture interpret scripture'; by doing this, we know that James absolutely
cannot mean that our obedience saves us. What, then, is he saying? Ultimately he's saying the same thing that he said about Abraham's faith, that genuine faith will show itself true - reach its fullness - in our actions. The Greek word he uses for 'justify' has two general meanings; the first meaning pertains to acquittal, to declaring and treating a person as righteous; the second meaning pertains to vindication, or proof of righteousness. James has the second meaning in mind: he's saying that our faith is vindicated, shown true, by our works. This is a thoroughly biblical idea and not at all at odds with salvation by grace through faith apart from works.
We are justified - declared innocent by God - by faith.
Our faith is vindicated - shown true - by our works.
If our works do
not vindicate our faith, something is wrong.
It's really that simple.
On a closing note, the verb tenses James uses indicate
a continued lack of works. He isn't saying that if you struggle to obey or screw up a lot, your faith is in jeopardy. He says in the beginning of the next chapter that we all stumble in many ways. The Christian's obedience to Jesus isn't perfect, and it's usually not a linear progression of sanctification; in other words, our obedience to Jesus, though increasing gradually as we 'grow into Christ' and mature in our faith, will often be marked by highs and lows. This shouldn't discourage us or make us doubt - but if our lives are consistently marked by a refusal to obey, then we should take James' words to heart and examine ourselves. If lacking in faith, we need to remedy the situation.
