No partiality as we trust in Christ
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· 17 viewsJesus underscored the impartiality of God, and as his followers we should live in that way. If we break any part of the law, we are condemned unless we trust the mercy of Christ.
Notes
Transcript
Intro self briefly
Intro self briefly
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1 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2 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, 3 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,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 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? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? 7 Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
8 You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11 For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you 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 without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
What’s our gut level response to a passage like this?
Maybe we feel condemned- we know that sometimes our hearts are like this.
Maybe we feel a sense of spiritual pride - I’m not like that. I treat everyone the same.
Maybe we skimmed right past all the stuff about rich and poor, and got ourselves a bit worried by the last few verses - are we condemned if we break any part of God’s law?
One of the challenges of preaching is that everyone responds differently to a passage, because we hear different things depending on our context. As an example, I recently read ‘Reading While Black’, by Esau MacCauley, who is a youngish black Bible scholar in the US. I can’t recommend the book enough! One of the things that really stayed with me from reading that book was how much he drew encouragement fomr the story of Joseph’s two sons being accepted as sons by Jacob, and being the heads of the two half-tribes of Israel - Ephraim and Manasseh. This was because Joseph’s wife was Egyptian, and so his two sons were half-African. For Mr MacCauley, reading about how two young half-African men became leaders of one of the 12 tribes of Israel, part of God’s chosen people, affirmed his belief that Christianity is far from a White man’s religion. How many times in my life have I read that story, and I have never drawn that point from it, until he pointed it out.
So there might be things in your response to today’s passage that are specific to you. Some of what I share might be what I notice from my own perspective . None of those things are necessarily invalid, though of course not every interpretation of scripture is true. But the goal of our time here together this morning is to focus particularly on a shared interpretation. To look at how the Word of God speaks into our individual lives, and perhaps especially with a passage like this, our lives together as God’s church. I’m praying that anything in what I bring this morning that is either just for me, or even worse, just my idea and not in God’s word, will fade away from your minds, and that together we’ll walk out of here equipped with the truth of God’s word. The goal is that we would live out James 1:22
22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.
OK, that was a long introduction. Let’s get to our passage! James is not an easy read, right?
Right in the opening verse of this chapter he asks a very pointed question:
The New Revised Standard Version Warning against Partiality
do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?
Ouch! But sometimes we can skip over the really important context. James is not some guy walking up to strangers and shouting at them. Look at how he opens this section:
My brothers and sisters.
Now a quick word on the language here. In English we have brothers, sisters and siblings. So if a stranger asks me, how many siblings do you have, I would say ‘I have three brothers’. If someone asked one of my brothers, he would say ‘I have a sister and 2 brothers’. In Greek, which is the language that this letter was originally written in, the same word is used for brothers and siblings, though there is a separate word for sisters. The context tells us whether the word should be translated as brothers, i.e. men, or more inclusively as brothers and sisters. It’s important to understand that there are good reasons that a translator might use ‘brothers and sisters’ here, it’s not just that they’re trying to fit with the culture.
So James is writing all of this to siblings - to brothers and sisters. Not to his genetic siblings, but to brothers and sisters in Christ. And not just brothers and sisters, but let’s look at how verse 5 begins:
James 2:5 (NRSV)
5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters...
The criticism of the behaviour is sandwiched between this reminder that the hearers are beloved brothers and sisters. So as we let the word of God challenge us today, let’s remember that we are beloved. Let’s remember that this teaching is not aimed at one individual, but at a collective - how can we apply this together?
The main situation being addressed here is one of favouritism. A well-dressed, rich man walks into the gathering, and is given a good seat, and spoken to kindly, with manners. Meanwhile a poor person, whose poverty is visible even in their clothing, walks in and is treated with disrespect - like they’re an inconvenience. This is the opposite to what God is like. There were far too many verses that I could have shared at this point, but let’s remind ourselves that this is what God demanded from His people right from the beginning:
15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.
The Old Testament and the New Testament have a consistent witness on this - the people of God are not to show favouritism. Jesus actually subverted some of the expectations of his hearers when he told the story of the rich man, and the only character given a name in a parable - Lazarus:
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.
Now this parable is not given in response to questions about the afterlife. It comes in a section of Luke’s gospel where lots fo Jesus’ teaching about money is put together, and where we hear that:
14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.
So we know that Jesus did not look down on the poor. In fact, he was one of them.
22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Leviticus 12:7–8 (NRSV)
This is the law for her who bears a child, male or female. 8 If she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf, and she shall be clean.
Jesus’ parents could not afford to bring a lamb, so they brought two doves.
Yet Jesus went on to say that the poor were blessed!
20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
And that’s where James has got his teaching from. Throughout this letter, we hear echo after echo of the teaching of Jesus.
5 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?
So going back to the harsh question of verse 1, understanding that this teaching was central to the message of Jesus helps us understand why James is speaking so strongly. If we claim allegiance to Christ, if we say we are trusting in Him, how can we neglect something so core to his teaching?
Gary’s kids are often down at Shadwell Basin doing watersports.
Imagine if I said to you “oh yeah I’m a member of Shadwell basin”.
So you ask me “oh what do you do? Canoeing? Sailing?”
“Oh no, not me. I’m terrified of water. Can’t swim actually. Think it’s a waste of time.”
You’d think I was mad.
If my favourite food was PFC I would not join the Vegan Society.
The word ‘believe’ here isn’t necessarily the most helpful one if we think of it in terms of an intellectual belief. As Gary will talk about next week - ‘even the demons believe’. But when the writers of the New Testament talk about belief in Jesus, they are usually talking about trusting in him.
James is reminding us that to welcome poor and rich alike is core to following Jesus. This is good news. It’s good news for the poor, who often feel judged in our society. It’s good news for the rich, who need a place where they can come and just be who they are, and know that they are accepted not because of their wealth, but because God loves them. It’s good news for all of us - it means we don’t have to seek status, or man’s approval. Church can be a place where those hierarchies are suspended.
26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
The church is to be the light of the world, a city on a hill. A place where the welcome of God for the poor and needy is loudly proclaimed.
I have seen this done really well. I grew up in church. First in Hampden Chapel in Hackney, and then when I was 8 we moved to THCC. My family really struggled. There was never enough money. The church cared for us right the way through. People gave us clothes, food, money and time. And as a young person in the church, I was never, not once, made to feel ashamed that my family couldn’t afford to pay for me to do things. As I grew into adulthood in the church, I never felt like people looked down on me because of our poverty.
So I’m speaking to you this morning as someone who has been on the receiving end of people who have taken this teaching and lived it out. I know that even now, Erik and Sue are generously sharing his home with a young man in need. Living in this way is powerful. It is part of our witness - it is the deeds that back up our words.
Sadly the history of the church is that we haven’t always taken this teaching seriously. We have bene like those people who look in the mirror and then instantly forget the massive piece of spinach between their teeth. There have been times when the church has been full of gold and art, and the people outside her walls have been dying of hunger.
Before we move on I want to suggest one further way that we can apply this teaching. James is really concerned here with rich and poor, and we know that concern runs right through Scripture, and especially in the heart of Christ. However we also know that he is speaking about an issue that had the potential to divide the church. I wonder if there might be things for us to consider about how we move forward in this pandemic? On a global scale, and right here on a local scale, every kind of inequality has been magnified. Some have got richer, some have got poorer. Some people’s lives got easier, and some got harder. Some people got lockdown fit, and others’ health got much worse. Some are frustrated or terrified by the degree of control that our government now have over what we do and how we live and even worship, and others are still scared to step outside their own front door from fear of the virus.
I think there is much for us in this letter. Firstly, let’s approach this time of division as brothers and sisters. Let’s put each other’s welfare first. Let’s go out of our way to welcome those who are scared - making church safe for them. Whatever our views on vaccines and government apps, let’s continue to love those who we disagree with. Let’s not just gather with people who are in the same boat as us.
In all of this, we love because He first loved us. We were all poor in Spirit, but Jesus has made us rich, inheritors of the Kingdom. And from that place of love, as dearly loved brothers and sisters, let’s be a family that is radically different from our status-obsessed, money-worshipping, backbiting and divided world.
So in verses 1-5 we have the ethical teaching, and then in verses 6 and 7 James reminds his readers that showing favouritism is not only sinful, but it doesn’t even get us anywhere. The very people we are trying to impress might be the ones working against us.
In verses 8-13 we read of the Royal law. The law of the King and of the Kingdom. This harks us back to verse 5 and the Kingdom of God, and of course the Royal law is the law that Jesus himself affirmed:
8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right.
And James says that if we break even one part of the law, we break the whole thing.
The other day my husband dropped something in the kitchen and it broke a corner off a dish. It is only a little bit broken, so we use it still, and we just avoid the broken corner. But some things can’t be a little bit broken. One Biblical Scholar gives the example of a flat tyre on a bike or car. If you’re tyre is punctured, you’re not going anywhere on it. I once tried to cycle on a flat tyre and I was basically going along the road on the rims of my wheels, feeling every single bump.
That’s what the law of God is like. Either it’s all kept, or it’s totally broken.
So we can’t come to God and say “oh well I kept most of it”.
The moment we do that, we are essentially saying “I don’t need the cross. I don’t need Christ.”
10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
So what do we do? I think James is counselling us against spiritual pride. If there is any prejudice, any favouritism in us, we can’t claim that we are loving our neighbour as ourselves. And that puts us in the same camp as murderers, adulterers, and all the other lists that we can find in Scripture. The most dangerous thing we can do is to try to make excuses for it. To minimise sin. To try to point to all the areas where we’ve behaved ourselves. We have only one hope, but it is a great hope:
13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
James has shone a mirror on our hearts, and shown us that each one of us is guilty in some way of breaking the Royal law. Even worse, some of us, I’m going to dare to say all of us, have broken God’s law while simultaneously claiming allegiance to Christ.
Thanks be to God that mercy triumphs over judgment.
As long as we throw ourselves on God’s mercy, it is there for us.
We claim allegiance to Christ. We say we trust in Him. In that case, if that is true, we will want to do all we can to obey Him. To live out His teaching. And we will do that especially when we’re together. We’ll encourage each other in it. We’ll challenge and admonish each other too - as dearly loved brothers and sisters. But in all of this, whether we fail or whether we think we are succeeding, we will throw ourselves onto the mercy of God.
15 The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost.
This is Paul writing. Missionary leader. Writer of most of the New Testament letters. Spiritual giant. Spiritual father to Timothy and yet here, in his letter to Timothy, he describes himself as the foremost of sinners. Yet there is a joy in Paul. Because He knows that God is rich in mercy.
Because of God’s love, we don’t need to fear strong passages like this passage from James. We can embrace it, let it challenge us and let God change us.
Let’s pray together now.