James 2:1-13

this morning and we want to continue to lift He in His family and His season of loss. So it's good to see you back with this this morning and we pray God's mercies upon you in your season of sorrow. Our scripture again is taken from James chapter 2 and will read verses 1 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 the 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 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 got 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 and are not the rich 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 were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbors as yourself. You are doing well but if you show partiality you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors or whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for it all or he who said do not commit adultery also said do not murder. If you do not commit adultery but do murder you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. May God richly bless both the reading and the hearing of his holy word. As we move forward into chapter two of James it becomes increasingly or James himself becomes increasingly confrontational both in tone and in language. He builds on the challenge that he sets forth that we looked at last week in chapter one, verse 22. He sets forth that challenge for those of his readers to be doers of the word and not hearers only. And as we summarized it last week and let me just give I should say a summary of our explanation of that phrase from last week what it means to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. It means that God's word of law and his word of grace first off provides the lens through which we are to see ourselves and others. God's word of law and God's word of grace provides the lens through which we are to see ourselves as well as others. And secondarily it means that God's word of law and his word of grace also provide us the motive for doing for all of the doing that we do in the world in both to our neighbors and to God. So his word of grace or his word of law and his word of grace is the motive and it's the engine that drives all of our doing. So God's word of law, his word of grace provides the lens through which we are to see ourselves and the lens through which we are to see others. And it also provides the motive and the engine for all of our doing. So when James says be doers of the word and not hearers only what he is challenging us to do is to live and act like we are the recipients of both God's word of command and the recipients of his word of pardon and his word of grace. Now with that being with that in mind beginning in chapter 2 what James does is he is vigilant and he is adamant in calling out his readers for patterns of both individual and corporate behavior that is inconsistent with both God's word of command or law and inconsistent with God's word of grace. So what he does and he does it here in the section that we're looking at in verses 1 through 13 and he does it elsewhere from really all the way until the middle of chapter 4 what James does is he calls out his readers because of the way in which they have received the word but the inconsistency of their ordered lives individually and corporately how inconsistent it is with what God has commanded law and it's also inconsistent with what he has given which is gospel. Now in that in that we want to single out in this passage the one particular area that he does address in our text and that is the issue of showing partiality that's the first issue that he takes on as he ramps up his charge for his readers to be doers of the word and not hearers only. He takes up the issue of partiality in verse 1 brothers show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Lord of glory. There are four things that we'll look at in particular in looking at James' challenge here and the first thing that I think is helpful for us to do is to look at partiality. What is partiality and two areas that we'll consider what partiality is and where it comes from what partiality is and what it comes from. Now the word that's translated your translations that have that use the word partiality the word that's translated as partiality is actually derived from another Greek word which means discriminate. And so what James is talking about here is discrimination. Now broadly speaking there are two types of discrimination. There is healthy discrimination and unhealthy discrimination. So let's begin by talking about healthy discrimination because the word discriminates simply means to recognize differences and distinctions. Healthy discrimination is simply recognizing the differences and distinctions that actually exist and it can be neutral. So for instance roses and tulips are both flowers but the fact that we call roses roses is to make a distinction. So they are a rose is a flower like a tulip but they are different in terms of how they look and how they smell and you can say the same thing with sunflowers. It would be an insult for you to call. It would not be an insult to say to look at a bunch of roses and a bunch of sunflowers and say they're all flowers. That's that's not an insult. It would be an insult to say they're all roses the sunflowers and hey no wait a minute and I say that because sometimes people think they're being brought in their thinking when they say I don't see color. No we are supposed to see color because God gave us these colors so that we can distinguish them and there is a healthy way in which we can distinguish in the same way that when we look at snakes there is both a garter snake and a rattlesnake are both snakes but it kind of it's very healthy to understand and distinguish between the two because a garter snake is harmless but a rattlesnake will kill you. So healthy discrimination is simply recognizing the differences and the distinctions of a particular person or a particular thing for what it is. And so a part in fact healthy discrimination is itself part of our being created in the image of God. Healthy discrimination is a faculty of our reflecting God's moral ability to recognize between right and wrong. So healthy discrimination is simply recognizing the distinctions that actually exist as part of our being created in the image of God. Healthy discrimination is when the Lord told Adam you can eat from every tree in the garden except that one. In which case Adam was supposed to recognize all of the trees are created by God. All of the trees and by the way when the serpent goes to Eve and she says look at and he says look at it it's good and and it's all of this. That's listen God created it all so all of it was good and therefore God made a distinction and at that point both the image bears of God Adam and Eve were supposed to discriminate against the tree in the midst of the garden that God said don't eat from. Recognize that it's different. It's not not good. It's not not pleasant to the eyes but God said don't eat. So therefore healthy discrimination comes from God and it is part of our reflecting the image of God and also part of our carrying out the mandate of God. Unhealthy discrimination is to make an unjust distinction based on prejudging of a thing or a person. So healthy discrimination is to recognize distinctions and differences that actually exist. Unhealthy discrimination looks at those distinctions and makes a judgment based on the distinction. In other words it's what we call prejudging and prejudging is what we call prejudice. Unhealthy discrimination is to make a judgment based on an artificial judgment based on the outward appearance of things. So for instance we can say that flowers are distinct so we can say that a rose is different from a sunflower because they are both flowers but their characteristics are different but we cannot look at or all of the roses can't say to the sun flowers that you are inferior or that you you're not pretty. All we can do is say that it is different. We can't say that it's inferior. Unhealthy discrimination is to look at existing external differences and then to ascribe subjective judgment because of those external differences. So if healthy discrimination comes from God and it is part of our reflecting the image of God then unhealthy discrimination is immoral and it is a part of our fallen nature and it's something that we have inherited from Adam. In other words it is to not just look at differences but it's to make judgments because of differences. And now we do it in a lot of different ways. It's not it's the one that always we always talk about is racial issues but I would argue that our racial prejudice itself is the fruit of something else. It's the fruit of an unhealthy distinction so that in fact we all know the story of sour grates I won't even give the old story where it came from but the idea was this this fox was trying to get to some grapes and that were high up on the wall and he kept jumping and couldn't get to the grapes and then finally he just looked at him and said well there's sour anyways because he couldn't reach it. So when we say that when we say that someone has sour grapes what we're saying is someone is making a judgment on something because of its outward appearance or really not just its outward appearance it's us reflecting something within ourselves. Unhealthy discrimination is a result of the fall. So when James here is talking about discrimination because that would be a good way to summarize what he's speaking of. When James is speaking of discrimination and he says don't let there should be no partiality. There should be no discrimination. He's only talking about unhealthy discrimination. We need healthy discrimination. We need healthy discrimination not only as a part of our daily existence but in terms of being built up in the faith. That's why we don't believe everything that comes down the pipe. We hear it and we discern and we judge it to be sound or unsound. So James is not saying don't let there be any discrimination. He's saying let there be no unhealthy discrimination. Now that brings us to a second thing and we see this from primarily verses 2 through 4 and verses 2 through 4 James gives us an example. And the example that he uses here is it shows really how healthy discrimination can be a facade for unhealthy discrimination. So let's look at the thing that he uses as as as his point of example. And he's basic and by the way he's not saying that this is actually happened in the church but he's warning against this sort of thing happening. And so here's the example that he gives. He says let's take a peril or clothing, human clothing. Now there is a category for what we would call shabby clothing. And there's another category of fine clothing. If we were to bring it into today's parlance we can say raggedy clothes and you know and just real well dress. And hold in mind there are reasons for both. There can be a variety of reasons for both. So we can talk about as easy top years ago. Talk about the well dressed man. We can talk about a well dressed person. Oh we could talk about someone who's not so well dressed. So let's look at the possible reasons for a person being well dressed. Well they could have just had a birthday. And maybe their parents bought them or someone bought them a fine set of clothes. So therefore they are well dressed. Maybe they are just fashionistas. Maybe that's their hobby the way they dress. They may sacrifice a lot of things so that they can dress well. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are rich. They just like to dress well. I had a friend who was very well dressed and and I knew his circumstances and I would say hey man you know you dress pretty sharp. You know you always have matching cuff lengths and everything. He said well he says well I know you like books and he says you spend your money on books. He says but I like to dress. So my money is spent on clothes. I had another friend who's big into shoes. I never knew guys could be that big into shoes. But he he loves shoes and that's where he spent his money. Now if you looked at either one of these guys just the way they dress for the shoes they wore he would assume wow these he's you know he's that but not necessarily these are just working joes. So there could be a number of reasons for a person wearing fine apparel. And let's look on the other hand the other person who's not well dressed. There could be and by the way one of the reasons a person could dress well is because they're wealthy and they can and all they do is buy from certain stores. So there are a number of reasons. There are a number of reasons for a person to not be well dressed. One is they're poor and they can't afford clothing good clothing and that's the category that James is imposing on his example. But brothers and sisters there are other reasons for a person to not dress well. You know one of them they might not care. They might not care what you think about their clothes. So when you leave them and you say and you're talking about did you see what she had on look like it's 1974 they really don't care. They may care about hygiene but they don't care how they dress they they don't wait for your fashion report to determine what they're going to put on. So they simply don't care as they put it all holy it's all dirty. Isn't it well so some people may not dress the way you think they they should dress because they're eccentric. They're just they're just wired differently. They have their own sense of fashion. Here's the point that James is making with all of those reasons that we given for the well dressed person and the not so well dressed person. Well James says it's true when a person comes into our midst we can say we probably shouldn't but we can say that that person is dressed well or we could say that they're not dressed well because those are our neutral categories. One can even argue that fine apparel is subjectively determined but it doesn't matter let's assume that we we can say those are neutral categories. Here's the warning that he's issuing warning that he's issuing is that you cannot impose upon a person's character or worthiness what you think about them judging them based on what they wear. That's the point that he's making and so he talks about a rich person being dressed well and a poor person dressed shabbily and then he says you cannot impose upon that person a set of values because now it takes your prejudice to another level not only are you assuming that a person is something because of their outward appearance but you're also imposing a judgment on a person because of their because of your presuppose understanding of their economic status and so unhealthy here's where it begins where's where it's healthy it's healthy in recognizing fine clothing from shabby clothing that's that's healthy that's that's not neutral I mean if you whatever your reasons for wearing pants with holes in the knees they still have holes in the knees okay it's let's just face it it's just it has that and and the reason for your reason whatever your reasons are for wearing a coat that's three sizes too big it's still three sizes too big I don't have the right though to make any assumptions about you because of the way your clothes fit or because of where you bought them from sometimes I watch on late Saturday nights I watch the I guess you could call it a dramedy and Atlanta sort of a sitcom and and it's it deals with a story of a rapper trying to make it in Atlanta and his brother or his cousin as his manager but they had a throwback story from when one of the kids one of the young men was a was a young boy back in the 90s back when Fulbu was the big label among the lot of our of our young people and and so one kid with his mother bought him a Fulbu jersey and he's proud of it he wears it to school and he gets to school and low and behold there's another guy with the exact saying Fulbu jersey on and one of them they so everybody's like oh that's that's smooth that's that's cool and everything and then they look at oh somebody he's got on the same jersey as you so then the thing became wait a minute one of them is not real so they went over and examined one and looked at the other all the kids you know this is junior high so they are cruel and they think they know everything right so so they're going over to determine whether or not it's it's it's a knockoff and which one is authentic and the reason that became important and it was life it was life changing life saving in a sense for the one who was determined to have on the authentic Fulbu jersey because in middle school culture you you can you can't dress however you want and even if you do Lord knows what you're not supposed to do is wear knockoff name brands the only thing that is worse than wearing knockoff name brands is to buy your your sneakers from Kmart or some other discount place and not have on whatever is the the costume or the the style of the day and that that was that was really the whole storyline behind that particular episode and all of the trauma of this young man's life was was bound to that and the reason it was bound to well who had on the the the real or the knockoff jersey was because judgments would be made if you were the one who wore the knockoff your family becomes a target you're also you're also poor you have to wear and all of the rest of it because we have taken what is healthy which is the ability to recognize distinctions we've made it unhealthy by making judgments about those who have and those who do not and because of the way people dress or the way people look so whether it's well being well dressed or whether it's dressing in a shabby way to judge people according to the way they dress to judge people according to the way the cars they drive I remember in in high school there was there was a young lady whose father was he cut lawns and so sometimes he would bring her to school in his old pickup truck that he used to to carry around his his lawnmower and what she would have him do is drop her off two blocks from the school so no one could see her getting out of that old fashioned truck why because she knew that her peers would make unhealthy judgments based on the vehicle that she arrived to school in is what James is saying there's nothing wrong with recognizing the distinction between fine clothing and shabby clothing what's not right is to assume judgments positive or negative based on what people wear don't we do the same thing and can't we stretch that circle out that it's not just about clothing but when we see people or when we hear of people being from certain places that we make judgments about them and we make assumptions about them and we assume and we ascribe to them or bring judgments that are unhealthy simply because of external circumstances point that James makes in verse four is that this is not only wrong look at what he says in verse four he says you have he says have you not then make distinctions among yourselves and notice this and become judges with evil thoughts so when we when we talk about people or make judgments of people about people because of where they come from the color of their skin the texture of their hair where they went to school the way they dress we can say those those differences actually exist but what we don't have the right to do is to make judgments about them because of those external things but then notice this and the third thing we'll see is what James does in verses 8 through 11 is he challenges this unhealthy mindset he challenges it according to the standard of God's word of law verses 8 through 11 he challenges their he challenges them to view their attitudes and their actions not according to the custom or not according to their neighborhood or not according to their culture but he challenges them to view those people through the lens of God's holy law verses 8 through 11 he says if you really fulfill the royal law now remember this is him amplifying what he says in chapter 1 verse 22 be doers of the word and not here is only and what does that mean it means to allow God's word of law and his word of grace to be the lens through which you view yourself and you view others it means to allow God's word of law and God's word of grace be the the impetus and be the engine that drives all of your action because brothers and sisters everything that we do is driven by something it will be either driven by your nature which is reinforced by your community and others and sometimes other subgroups within our community it will be driven and reinforced by the collective institutions that are also contrary to the law of God and so just because everyone in our neighborhood says this just because everyone in our family thinks this way it doesn't make it right and so what James does is he challenges his readers to not judge their neighbors according to their culture or according to their immediate set of circumstances but judge them according to the royal law of God again he says according to the scriptures you shall love your neighbor as yourself and if so you're doing well but if you show partiality and by partiality again he's speaking of unhealthy discrimination if you are if you show discrimination then you are committing sin according to what standard according to the standard of God's holy law James challenges them throughout these verses to view their actions and their attitudes towards other not others not according to what they can get away with in their community but according to the law of God I do give credit to Cotton Mather who was a Puritan during the period of the colonial period and the period of slavery here in the United States and when many Christian churches refused to evangelize or share the gospel with their slaves which they viewed as property Cotton Mather stood on the principle of God's word he says aren't we not supposed to love our neighbors and then he says brothers aren't our aren't the African slaves your neighbor one of the first steps in otherizing and demonizing and justifying actions that are ungodly towards others is to somehow distance them from us and so here's what James is saying that if you these whether they be rich or poor they are your neighbors and the reason they are your neighbor is because that's what God says and your obligation into your neighbor doesn't matter what island they're from doesn't matter what community doesn't matter what school they are your neighbors and to not see them as your neighbor is sin against the law of God and so we don't have a right to view others or treat others regardless of the external circumstances and you say yeah but but he is this he is that you can't judge people because of those external circumstances we can even judge actions that are right and wrong that are immoral or moral but we can't judge a person because of those external circumstances when we do James says we sin we are committing sin because God has commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves and when we otherwise people what we're doing is not seeing them as self here's the fourth and final thing that we want to look at and that's reinforced both in verse one and also in verses 12 and 13 what James infers in this passage is that to look at people other than through the lens of God's law for the people of God it is inconsistent with the grace that we ourselves have received look at the way he expresses it in verse one he says brothers show no partiality show no unhealthy discrimination and notice this as you hold the faith as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Lord of glory so in other words in other words if you are holding by faith to Jesus Christ what he's saying is showing partiality prejudging is inconsistent with the Lord of glory and the object of your faith this is that ought not be let me just back up here brothers and sisters this is so important for us to understand we should never say when people do something that's inconsistent with the faith we should never say and they call themselves Christians because the sad reality of what James is addressing here he never says you you and you call yourself a Christian and you said you were Christian no he's saying because you say you are in Christ holding this contrary position this unhealthy this toxic mindset it does not adorn the grace that you have been covered with but it also doesn't nullify that grace so therefore he picks up on that same theme and he amplifies it even larger in verses 12 and 13 he says so speak and act as those who are to be judged notice this under the law of liberty and we talked about the law of liberty last week because here's the point the law is only the law of liberty for those who have been set free by the gospel and so what James is saying is your actions and your attitude towards others is inconsistent with the liberty that you yourself have received and he amplifies it even further he says not only is this in in verse 12 he says so that if you you speak and you act as those you are you should speak and act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty but in verse 13 for judgment is without mercy but notices implication here you are the recipient of mercy so then he further he says further judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy but mercy triumphs over judgment brothers and sisters the points that James is making here is that those who are the recipients of the free grace of God and the person and work of Jesus what that means is God has heard listen we were enemies and God does not judge us as enemies but yet he showed mercy to us and has made us sons and daughters so that those who have been made sons and daughters by God would be able to have a healthy mindset in fact would view everything that they encounter in the created order they would view it through the lens of the mercy that they have received the challenge here is not like well if you were really a Christian you wouldn't know the challenge is that since you are a Christian revisit and here's what he's saying show no partiality yes understand and don't get so don't get so impartial that you don't see a difference between red and between blue know that red is red and blue is blue don't make judgments on red don't make judgments on blue don't make judgments based on the externals but understand that all that you see other image bearers they are creatures of God and they are your neighbors in the 50s I think it was Dwight Eisenhower during a period of crisis calling on Christians and religious people to act in a way that was civil and he says that we are all we are all brothers and sisters and I would argue we are not all brothers and sisters but we are all neighbors and what God calls us to do is to love our neighbors as ourselves not as a means of salvation but because we are the recipients of mercy and judgment has been averted from us so that we can have mercy and compassion on others so when you combine what he says here in verses 12 and 13 about acting out of the mercy that we have received then we connect that to verse 1 brothers sisters show no partiality as you hold to faith in Christ Christ Jesus our Lord who is the Lord of glory so therefore don't make judgments because sometimes people whether they are dressed well listen whether they are dressed well or whether they are dressed shabby everyone needs a good neighbor and God has saved us to be good neighbors amen