09 James 2:8-13 The Royal Law & Partiality

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1 09 James 2:8-13 The Royal Law & Partiality Text 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 accountable for 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. Εἰ μέντοι νόμον τελεῖτε βασιλικὸν κατὰ τὴν γραφήν ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν, καλῶς ποιεῖτε 9 εἰ δὲ προσωπολημπτεῖτε, ἁμαρτίαν ἐργάζεσθε ἐλεγχόμενοι ὑπὸτοῦ νόμου ὡς παραβάται. 10 ὅστις γὰρ ὅλον τὸν νόμον τηρήσῃ πταίσῃ δὲ ἐν ἑνί, γέγονεν πάντων ἔνοχος. 11 ὁ γὰρ εἰπών μὴ μοιχεύσῃς, εἶπεν καί μὴ φονεύσῃς εἰ δὲ οὐμοιχεύεις φονεύεις δέ, γέγονας παραβάτης νόμου. 12 Οὕτως λαλεῖτε καὶ οὕτως ποιεῖτε ὡς διὰ νόμου ἐλευθερίας μέλλοντες κρίνεσθαι. 13 ἡ γὰρ κρίσις ἀνέλεος τῷ μὴ ποιήσαντι ἔλεος κατακαυχᾶται ἔλεος κρίσεως. Review Nobody likes fake. Fake hair, fake nails, fake tans, fake teeth. Fake chocolate Fake solitaire icons James is after the real deal. No fake Christians. He want genuine, repentant, justified, Spirit filled Christians. There are enough hucksters in the world. There are enough fair weather Christians. There are enough people who just show up and pretend. They live in a spiritual Mr. Roger s Neighborhood. They hop on the trolley and take a ride to make-believe land where they pretend to be Christians for half a day. There are enough of the comfortable hot-tub religion people around. James is earnest for the real article. He wants people who will be doers of the word, and not hearers only. For this is how you know that you are saved. This is how you know you are a Christian. Paul says in Titus 1:16, They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any goodwork. Now if anyone were to tell you in earnest that they deny that Jesus is God, that he died for sinners and that he was raised from the dead, would we have any doubt about that person s salvation? When they deny the faith, there is no good reason to suppose that they are saved. Paul further says in 1 Tim 5:8, But if anyone does

2 not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. You see there are two ways to deny the faith. You can deny the faith by your words, or you can deny it by your actions. The apostle John says, Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, (1 Jn 2:4). James says we must be doers of the word, that is, we must obey the commandments, and if we do not, then we are deceiving ourselves with regard to salvation. John also says in 1 Jn 2:3, And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. How do you know if you are saved? How do you know if God s Spirit is withing you? You keep his commandments - you are doers of the word. So far in James, he has been laying out a number of things that Christian would do. He has been laying out for us what a doer of the word looks like. The real Christian is one who remains steadfast under trial. He will persevere. The real Christian will resist temptation. He will bridle his tongue, being slow to speak but quick to listen. He will visit the widows and orphans, he will keep himself clean from the world. And, he will not show partiality. Last week we covered three points that James made on why favoritism is wrong (especially as it relates to the poor.) First, we deny God s election and thereby deny his own heart. God cares for the poor, and so should we. This is not something we can consistently do while holding to the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus, the lord of glory! The land is level at the foot of the cross. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male, nor female, slave, nor free, poor nor rich, democrat nor republican, Huskers, nor CU Buffalos, Baptist nor Presbyterian. All are one in Christ Jesus. He is the only way. And since that is so, there is neither a reason to boast nor any room for favoritism. Second, why would you honer someone for being part of a certain class when that class is one that regularly oppresses people? Third, why would you want to honer someone for being part of a certain group when that group typically blasphemes the name of Jesus? That brings us to the fourth point on favoritism that James discusses - The royal law. Partial Love James here puts on display their partial love. 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. They are not loving all the way. They are only partially loving others. James quotes from Lev 19:18. Jesus, when he was asked what the greatest commandment was said, Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. We will see momentarily how profound that is. But for now, it is sufficient to know that James considers a person as a transgressor if they show partiality. It is inconsistent with the command to love. If we love, we do well, but if we show partiality, we sin. What Shall We Do? Love, You shall love. This is how they will know that you are a Christian, by your love. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.8 Anyone who does not love does not

3 know God, because God is love. Who Shall We Love? Our Neighbor. When someone asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus turned the question around to show what a neighbor does. Which of the men in the parable of the good Samaritan was a neighbor to the man in need. Neighbor is not a set of people, it is an attitude. So when you see someone in need and you help them, you were their neighbor. And by definition, if you are their neighbor, they are yours. If I can borrow a bit from Geoff Thomas, we know exactly what this means. Love is patient towards you co-worker, love is kind to your family. It does not envy your neighbor, it does not boast to its friends, it is not proud toward anyone. It is not rude toward your children, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered by church members, it keeps no record of wrongs toward your spouse... it always protects (your neighbour), always trusts (your neighbour), always hopes (in your neighbour), always perseveres (with your neighbour)" (I Corinthians 13: 4-7) (Geoff Thomas, James 2:8-13 GOD S ROYAL LAW GIVES FREEDOM, n.d., How Are We to Love? As yourself. John MacArthur comments: You love yourself so much....i mean, it's as simple as whose mouth do you put food in, whose face do you wash, whose hair do you comb, whose body do you dress, whose looks are you concerned about when you leave the house, whose career occupies your mind, who are you trying to make comfortable, who are you trying to make happy? It's you and when you learn to occupy yourself with everyone else in the same way you are occupied with yourself, you will have no problem with partiality because no matter whether a person is poor or rich, educated or uneducated, ignorant or intelligent, no matter whether a person looks good or doesn't look good, whether they're high on the social scale or low, if you treat them all the same way you treat yourself, you will treat them all equally. And so all of the laws of human relationships, in a sense, can be summed up in this one law, the royal sovereign supreme law made by God, love your neighbor as yourself. When you look in the mirror and you do not like what you see, you spend time trying to make it presentable. You will brush your teeth and clean your face, shave, or make-up, fix hair, all kinds of things. So when you see someone else who doesn t look good, if you loved them like you loved yourself you would lovingly and graciously help them to be as presentable as possible. You would want to take care of them just like you take care of yourself. And this goes so much deeper than just the superficial things like hair and make-up. What if We Don t? If you do not do these things, you are a sinner. James uses two different words here to describe our depravity. The first one is sin. Sin is a falling short of the mark. Here is the target that you are suppose to hit, but you fall short. Like Paul says, we all have fallen short of the glory of God. This is a negative way to state it. Something we were suppose to attain but didn t. The second term is transgressors. This describes a line that we are not suppose to pass. Here it is something positive that we do. We wilfully cross over a line that we know we are not suppose to. Partial Obedience

4 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for 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. James moves carefully from limited love to limited obedience, from partiality with people to partiality with the commandments of God. All of us have favourite commands that we believe we keep, and particular sins which we hate. Lawbreaking is not like lining a bunch of cans up on the fence and throwing rocks at them. You hit one and knock it down, but the rest are still standing. Lawbreaking is like hitting a window with a rock. You may only hit it in one spot but it will shatter the whole thing. It is all one piece. The Law of God is like that. It is all of one piece. If you throw a rock through one part of it, the whole things shatters. The reason for this is simple. Jesus said that all of the law is summed up in these two commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. If you ask me what it means to love God with all my heart soul mind and strength is, I will answer: Have no other gods before him, make no graven images, do not take His name in vain, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. And if you ask me what it means to love my neighbor as myself I will answer: Honer your father and mother, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. And if you ask me what it means not to covet my neighbor s possessions I will answer: If you see your enemies ox wander away, you shall go and get it and return it home for him. All of the crazy number of civil law in the OT are just an outworking of the 10 commandments. And all of the 10 commandments are just an outworking of the Great Commandment. If you break any of them you have broken the Great Commandment. So don t treat your partiality so lightly. All sin is ultimately a sin against God and a violation of the Great Commandment. Live in Light of Judgement 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. We are one day going to stand before the Lord and we will be judged by the Law. You may object, I thought all that mattered was whether you believe in Jesus. Yes, that is true, but what evidence is there that you believe in Jesus? The bloody glove does not make a person guilty. Murdering a person is what makes them guilty. But evidence of the murder may include things like the bloody glove. In like manner, we will be judged. Our good works and our bad works will be brought forth as evidence that either substantiates our claim to be a believer, or betrays our claim to be a believer. Live in light of that Judgement. I contemplated announcing that I would be requiring everybody to give a list of the good deeds that they had done during the week. If they failed to help someone else during the week or of they failed to tithe their 10%, they would be brought of front to answer for their lack of works. I think it is a good illustration but I don t think it would have been received in the light it was intended. Consider also your job. If your boss were going to review your work and either keep or fire you on the basis of that review, would you not work harder? Having our deeds reviewed or exposed has a way of motivating us. But the coming judgement is more than just a job review. It is everything. Don t be caught unaware. Are you the real deal? Are you a Christian? Are you indwelt by the Spirit? Do you care for the poor? Do you visit the sick? Do you keep guard on your tongue? Do you show favoritism? You never walk by someone collecting for charity, but do you love those people for whom they are collecting? IBID

5 Martin Luther said that there were only two days on his calendar, this day and that day. Live in light of that day!