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Partiality

James

Aug 28, 2022


by: Jack Lash Series: James | Category: Mercy Ministry | Scripture: James 2:1–13

I. Introduction
A. This morning we return to the epistle of James.
B. The first great theme in the epistle of James has to do with having the right attitude about trials which God allows in our lives (1:2-18).
C. After finishing this up, James proceeds to his second great theme, the theme of faith and works. And he goes on to spend more than a whole chapter unpacking the concept that true faith manifests itself in a person’s life and relationships.
1. The transition becomes clear in James 1:22, when James begins to talk about “be(ing) doers of the word, and not hearers only”.
D. In this section on faith and works, he mentions three examples at the end of chapter one of how our faith must be manifested in our lives:
1. The use of the tongue in James 1:26: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.”
2. Then, in James 1:27, he mentions caring for the poor: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.”
3. His final example in James 1:27 of how faith should impact the way we live is “to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
E. The significance of these three can be seen in the fact that James seems to expound on each of these three examples in the remainder of his letter:
1. Use of the tongue: James 3:1-12
2. Caring for the poor: James 2:1-13
3. Keeping ourselves unstained from the world: James 4:3-5
F. We come to the middle of these today, the Christian call and duty to care for the poor.
G. But James comes to elaborate on caring for the poor, doesn’t just exhort us to care for the poor, he dives into a sin which frequently prevents us from caring for the poor: the sin of partiality.
H. (You may not see any connection between James’ words about caring for widows and orphans and his discussion on partiality, and that’s fine. Most scholars do. But don’t be distracted by that.)
I. James 2:1–13 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 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 man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God 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? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? 8 If you really fulfill 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 but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 For 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. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
II. James 2:1-13
A. In v.1, James exhorts the Christians he’s writing to to live out their faith by not showing partiality.
B. Now, what is partiality? It means favoring one side or group above the other.
1. Synonyms are prejudice, bigotry, favoritism, bias.
2. It is defined well by James 2:4, which refers to “making distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts.”
a. “Making distinctions among yourselves,”
(1) I.e. treating people according to the category they are in instead of just loving everyone.
b. “And becoming judges with evil thoughts”
(1) It is not just talking about how you act, but how you think in your heart.
(2) What’s in your heart will inevitably come out in your words and actions, so it’s not enough to try to control what you say or do.
(3) becoming judges = judging, or pre-judging = judging someone based on what category they are in = prejudice
(4) The point is this: it is evil to assume what another person is like when you don’t know them, whether it’s based on what they look like or what group they are a part of.
C. It is an umbrella term which includes racism, sexism, classism, parochialism, nepotism, ageism, nationalism, any kind of discrimination or favoritism based on human characteristic or circumstance. God opposes all types of partiality. James 2:9 “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
D. — It’s based in OT judicial law. (It’s one of those things which fits into the category of the principles of general equity of OT civil law.)
1. Leviticus 19:15 “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.”
2. Deuteronomy 1:17 “You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.”
3. Deuteronomy 10:17 “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.”
E. Partiality is a natural part of sinful human nature. Often, we show preference toward people who are like us: my group, my people, my country, my school, my kind. Or, we show preference toward those who have something we want or which can help us: beauty, power, money, position.
F. The specific form of partiality which James is referring to here is classism, favoring one class above another. In James it’s favoring the rich over the poor, which is the most common form of classism.
1. Proverbs 14:20 The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends.
2. Proverbs 19:4 Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend.
G. There are other types of partiality which the Bible talks about. In fact, the partiality which is receives the most attention in the NT is ethnic partiality, what we call racism, where one ethnic group is partial toward their own ethnic group and partial against other ethnic groups.
1. We see this in the struggle the Jewish Christians had to accept Gentile Christians.
2. And when God gave Peter the dream about the sheet full of unclean animals (Acts 10:15) and sent him to preach the gospel at Cornelius’ house, he used this exact word: Acts 10:28-35 “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean...God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him & does what is right is acceptable to him.”
3. And then in Romans 2:11, speaking about the same thing, Paul says, “God shows no partiality.”
H. Now James is exhorting them to not show partiality toward the rich. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 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 man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
I. Then he elaborates on how wrong-headed this is for a Christian: 5 “Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God 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? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?”
1. Predominately, God has chosen the poor and lowly to possess the riches of His kingdom.
a. Why does God choose the poor? Well, 1Cor.1:26-29 answers that question: “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world... 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”
2. God doesn’t prefer the one who can offer Him something.
3. I remember in my youth group growing up, there would often be talk about how great it would be if this cool kid or that captain of the football team, or this cheerleader would become a Christian. “Think of the impact it would have on other kids!” But it rarely happened. And the times it did, the person would often not be very strong in the faith or his faith wouldn’t last very long. Predominately, it was the little people, the ordinary people, who God would call to Himself and give the gift of faith.
4. You see, Jesus said it is hard for the rich to inherit the kingdom (Matthew 19:23–26). This is because, as Paul says in 1Timothy 6:17, the rich tend to be haughty, and to “set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, instead of on God.”
5. But by showing partiality or favoritism, “you have dishonored the poor man” (v.6).
a. Poor people are used to being dishonored, disrespected, disregarded and disdained. They’re used to being treated like second-class citizens.
b. But they ought not get treated like this by Christians. Christians are the ones who love and honor all people, no matter who they are or what category they’re in.
c. And sometimes this means going out of our way to reach out to those who habitually get dishonored by others. Remember that the church of Jesus was built on a rejected cornerstone: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men...and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Isaiah 53:2–3
d. Often the ones the world discards are God’s hidden jewels.
J. James goes on to make it clear in v.8-11 that this is a matter of great importance.
1. First, he ties it to the second great commandment: loving our neighbor as ourselves. And if we don’t love the poor who wander into our churches or our lives, we are “committing sin and are convicted as transgressors by God’s law.” This applies to other forms of partiality as well.
2. Then he goes on to emphasize the point by saying that whoever disobeys one part of the law disobeys it all. It seems that he is thinking that some people will interpret his exhortations about partiality as a minor and not major application of God’s law, or that it’s merely one little law.
K. Here’s his conclusion: 12-13 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
a. Go out and speak and act as a person who lives under the law of Christ, the law of liberty. Live a merciful life because those who don’t show mercy to others will not be shown mercy.
b. How can we expect to be treated by God with mercy when we have been anything but merciful? This is what Jesus taught: “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” Matt.7:1–2
c. When it comes to the gospel, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” That’s what the gospel is: mercy triumphing over judgment. Instead of God giving us the judgment we deserve, He gives us His mercy! And if that’s the gospel of our salvation, it ought also be the way we live our lives! We ought to be people in whom mercy triumphs over judgment. The mercy of Christ ought to triumph over our fleshly judgmentalism in how we think and act toward others.
III. Application
A. There are three main points to get from this, it seems to me.
1. One is that the gospel of salvation by faith alone should not lead us to think that once you come to faith, it doesn’t matter how you live. On the contrary, true faith transforms the way we think/live.
2. The second thing is that people who have faith in Jesus ought to look past the human distinctions which are common among people, distinctions like male and female, old and young, rich and poor, black and white.
3. And the third thing is that we ought to consider our attitude toward the poor. The Christian church ought to be different than all other settings in society. It ought to be a place where the poor are treated with respect/kindness/honor, in spite of how they’re dressed or the car they drive.
B. Faith and works
1. The overall concern of James in this section has to do with living out the faith, being “doers of the word.” He has no objection to Paul’s teaching that salvation is by faith alone apart from works.
2. But he is concerned that some might twist this to mean there’s no need to put faith into action.
3. Faith not only produces salvation, it also produces a lifestyle of reflecting Jesus.
4. One of the classic expressions of salvation in the Reformation tradition is this: “Salvation is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”
5. “Salvation by faith alone” articulates the fact that we are saved not on the basis of any merit of our own, but only by trusting in Christ, and on account of His merits.
6. “Salvation is not by a faith that is alone” states that true faith is never devoid of the good works which result from faith in Christ. These works themselves cannot save us, but they inevitably exist nonetheless in the life of a person of true faith.
7. Well, Paul is the apostle of salvation by faith alone, which he sets forth in Galatians and Romans.
8. James, on the other hand, is the apostle of salvation by faith which is not alone.
9. Next week we’ll talk about the second half of chapter 2, where James further unpacks the relationship between faith and works.
C. Human distinctions
1. Christians are influenced by the people around them just like everyone else. We need to know that there is a natural bend in us to do exactly what James is talking about here.
2. The story of David is illustrative. When Samuel was sent to anoint a new king from among the sons of Jesse, everyone assumed that God’s chosen king must be one of the older sons, who were big and strong and impressive. But no, it was little, unimpressive David whom God had chosen.
3. 1Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature... For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
4. God doesn’t see things the way we see them. And therefore, we must learn to see things differently than the way we see them naturally. We need to learn to see things according to Christ.
5. We naturally have a bend towards those who are like us, and it’s easy to assume God agrees. But God sees people from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev.7:9) and loves them all regardless of their human distinctives. And He asks us to have this same mindset.
6. There is a contradiction between partiality and the gospel, a contradiction believers need to recognize and repudiate. The Lord wants to help us love all people regardless of their human distinctives, not just the ones who are like us.
7. The Jesus we love and embrace was Himself very different from us: culturally, ethnically, and linguistically. But in His grace He has welcomed us in spite of these differences.
8. And now Jesus wants to welcome and love through us even people who are different than us in terms of culture, class, age, gender, ethnicity, nationality and language.
D. Attitude toward the poor
1. It’s natural for us to favor the rich and disdain the poor. And this manifests itself in subtle ways.
2. It’s easy to be fascinated by the latest news of the royal family, or on all the celebrity gossip, but to actually work hard to avoid hearing anything about famines, destitution, oppression, starvation.
3. Luke 14:12-14 “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
4. Do you think that might have anything to do with what we’re enamored with?
5. But this goes beyond being enamored with the rich and famous. It also involves the very human tendency to think of or treat some people like trash.
6. It would be good for all of us to do an inventory in our minds of how we view various kinds of people, to make sure that there aren’t categories of people we consider as trash.
7. And for many, the poor are one such category.
8. So, to cooperate with the Spirit of Christ instead of giving in to the inclinations of our own flesh, we’ve got to be able to recognize these inclinations, call them what they are, and repudiate them.
9. We can fool ourselves in this by thinking that since we’re not rich, we can’t be prejudiced against ourselves. But this isn’t true. There are many poor people who are prejudiced against the poor, who are enamored with riches even without having very much.
10. 2Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
a. James paints a scene in James 2 where the congregation is milling around before the worship service begins. And two visitors have entered the gathering, a rich man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing and a poor man in shabby clothing. And a member of the church approaches them very differently, steering the rich man toward one of the best seats and steering the poor man to one of the undesirable seats.
b. But let me tell what is really happening at church when we’re gathering for worship. We are the poor who are walking to church in shabby, filthy and stinky clothes. And there’s a rich man at church with a fine robe and a gold ring. And as soon as we are visible he comes bounding out with compassion to embrace us and kiss us. He takes his robe and puts it on us and his ring as well. And he calls for a large meal to be prepared that we might be fed and that the whole church might celebrate our coming (Luke 15:14-24). That’s what really going on at church! 
c. Now, in light of that, how are we going to treat the next poor person who wanders through the doors of our church or our lives?
d. Is our reaction going to be more like this rich man? Or are we going to self-righteously get angry and resent others who want to welcome the poor person in?