Sermon Tone Analysis

Show No Partiality

Let’s remember that this book is written to the dispersed church due to persecution they had faced, and still were facing.

James has been telling them that this strength is available in the Word of God.

More specifically, he has been urging them to both take it in and live it out.

And he has not left them in doubt about what is involved in living out the Word of God.

It will involve taming the tongue, caring for the needy and maintaining separation from the world.

Roger Ellsworth, Opening up James, Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2009), 75.

The part about caring for widows and orphans begins to be discussed in greater detail here in chapter 2. It will not sound like that is what we are talking about, but it is and I hope you will see why as we go through these verses.

If we hope to care for those in need, if we hope to “Love our neighbor as ourselves”, then there is no place for partiality.

Partiality here is otherwise known as favoritism

Favoritism - the practice of giving unfair preferential treatment to one person or group at the expense of another.

Two visitors come to the church.

Let’s call them “Mr.

Goldfinger” and “Mr.

Shabby”

Why does James use this example?

The poor are often the most enamored with Jesus and the grace of the Gospel.

They are not better, but they do understand just how totally reliant they are.

Remember the rich young ruler?

Jesus was not impressed with his wealth or status.

He was also trying to teach a very important lesson that we all need to learn.

This reflects an attitude that we are to possess.

Be willing to give up the earthly for the heavenly.

So we avoid favoritism and partiality for three main reasons

1. Favoritism is inconsistent with God’s character.

Impartiality is an attribute of God.

He is absolutely and totally impartial in dealing with people.

Showing favoritism is inconsistent with God’s character, antithetical to the gospel, and therefore incompatible with “faith in our glorious Jesus Christ”

2. Favoritism is contrary to God’s values.

James addressed a situation in which believers gave preferential treatment to the rich (2:2-3).

What would motivate this kind of behavior?

Is it not because these believers valued the rich more than they valued the poor?

They would rather have the rich attend their church than the poor, and their treatment of the rich and of the poor reflected their values.

James reminded his readers that their values were not God’s values: “Didn’t God choose the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

Yet you have dishonored the poor” (2:5-6).

They were acting in a way that was contrary to God’s values.

In a message on the evil of favoritism in the church,

John MacArthur said: “We tend to put everyone in some kind of stratified category, higher or lower than other people.

It has to do with their looks.

It has to do with their wardrobe.

It has to do with the kind of car they drive, the kind of house they live in; sometimes it has to do with their race, sometimes with their social status, sometimes outward characteristics of personality.

All of those things with God are non-issues.

They are of no significance at all.

They mean absolutely nothing to Him.” (gty.org)

3. Favoritism is sin.

James makes clear that favoritism is not simply disrespectful of people; it is sin against God.

“If … you show favoritism, you commit sin” (Jas.

2:9).

It is sin because it is contrary to the character and command of God.

Because favoritism is sin, there is no place for it in the hearts of God’s people, and certainly no place for it in the church.

We show favoritism/partiality due to worldly measures, not godly ones.

In the account of the rich young ruler, Jesus exposes the issue.

If the man had loved God and other people more than he did his property, he would have been willing to give up his wealth to the service of God and man.

But that was not the case.

James is doing something very similar here.

He is reminding the people us that we all stand on equal ground.

We are either condemned equally for our sin or forgiven equally because of our faith in Jesus Christ.

As a church, there will always be a demographic we do better or worse at reaching, but the way we welcome people reveals a tremendous amount about our heart.

Let us be characterized by love, not partiality.