James

This is is written to believers

Could you imagine if partiality was allowed? The body of Christ would have no feet! Nobody would fraternize with the feet.

You know when you’re driving and you see those big metal strips on posts that run along the road?

What are those called? Guardrails! Yes!

They’re so sturdy and beefy.

Those posts that they’re mounted on are strong and they’re embedded into the earth to keep them fr

Guardrails have to be strong because their job is to keep people from driving off a bridge or into oncoming traffic.

These big metal things are there to keep us in our lane.

They’re meant to limit the damage that we can inflict with our vehicles.

They’re installed to save our lives.

I hope you don’t have firsthand knowledge of how exactly they do that.

But no matter if you’ve had to “use them” or not I hope you can appreciate their function.

But they’re not only sturdy - they’re also soft.

They have to be!

They need to have a certain amount of give or flex in order to keep those who are crashing safe.

If they weren’t engineered to crumple, car crashes would be a lot more dangerous.

Imagine crashing into an immovable object.

Vehicles and their passengers would incur a lot more damage.

It would be like an airbag made of cement.

A cement airbag would be really effective at keeping your face from hitting the steering wheel!

The only problem is that your face is now hitting a cement block.

That kinda defeats the purpose.

No - guardrails are designed to cushion the impact, cradle the crash victims, and in so doing preserve their lives.

So guardrails are strong, and keep us confined to our lane, but they’re also soft so as to protect us in the event that we do crash.

Why am I telling you this? Because I think that guardrails are a great metaphor for the gospel.

The gospel keeps us from straying outside of the path to life.

And not only that, when we careen off in the direction of sin the gospel softly redirects us.

It could just kill us for deviating from the path - that’s what our sin would earn us anyway - but it doesn’t.

If the gospel killed us as soon as we started drifting into sin - it wouldn’t be the gospel.

Jesus’ atoning death on the cross bought for us the gentleness of those barriers.

And what’s more the gospel offers us a life of joy and love that comes from knowing what’s on the other side of those barriers.

Knowing who we would be without Christ.

If you don’t reflect on your sin or what your state would be without Christ - you should.

It’s a healthy way to fuel the creation of joy in your life.

The text I’m teaching on tonight is full of the gospel.

And if you’re not familiar with the gospel it is simply this -

Every human on earth has a problem. And that problem is sin.

Sin is anything we do that is wrong.

When we lie, steal, cheat, or harm ourselves or others.

Even one sin makes us completely guilty.

God hates sin - he hates it so much that he wants to punish it.

Because of our sin, we deserve to be punished by God.

And this punishment isn’t a slap on the wrist.

It’s an eternity of pain and torment.

This punishment is hell.

But God is merciful to us, and offers us a way to escape this punishment.

He sent His son to die in our place, taking the punishment that we deserved so that we could be with God.

Jesus has already come and died - and as a result of that we can be saved now! Today!

That’s the gospel - and it’s glorious.

It’s grounded in the gospel in two ways.

First it’s written to those who profess faith in the Christ and who recognize their salvation as being from Christ.

The gospel groups us together through the common bond we share - which is our identity in Christ.

Secondly our obedience to this text is motivated by our knowledge of what the gospel saved us from.

Because we know what’s on the other side of those guard rails, we’re joyfully obliged to stay close to God’s word and obey it.

If you were here last week you heard all about doing God’s word.

And James doesn’t waste any time in giving the church something to “do”.

Let’s read our text and find out what that is.

James 2:1–13 NASB95

1 My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. 2 For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, 3 and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 5 Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? 7 Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? 8 If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 11 For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.