1 SERIES: DECIDING TO LIVE LIKE A BELIEVER #1: Keeping the Royal Law (James 2:8-9) by Rev. Dan McDowell April 15, 2018 There were 2 brothers, Joe and John Smith, who were almost universally despised in the small community where they lived. They were bullies and thieves and generally made life miserable wherever they went. They were the kind of people that you would cross the street to avoid when you saw them coming. The brothers knew that they were not well liked but they enjoyed being given a wide birth and they took full advantage of the fear that they inspired in so many people. The day came, however when Joe met his demise. He was killed in an accident, and it suddenly occurred to his surviving brother that anyone attending the funeral would more like likely be there to celebrate his brother s death rather than mourn it. He simply could not live with that thought, so he hatched a plan. He went to a local member of the clergy and said, Preacher, I want you to handle the arrangements for my brother s funeral. In fact, I will pay you $1000 to do this, but I have one condition; you have to tell everyone who attends this funeral that my brother Joe was a saint. The preacher knew the brother s reputation and was stunned by this request. He mulled it over for awhile though, and finally he agreed to handle the arrangements as long as he received his payment in advance. At the funeral the preacher gave the following eulogy: Joe Smith lived a miserable life on this earth. He was a violent bully, a thief and a drunkard and I doubt that there is more than one person in this entire town who will honestly miss him. Compared to his brother, John, however, Joe Smith was a saint.
2 One of the challenges that we have in the church is how to hold up a Biblical standard of behavior without becoming judgmental. How do you extend God s unconditional grace and love without accepting the unacceptable behavior that almost always leads to painful, destructive consequences? And how can we resist the temptation to surrender to the worldly habit of favoring powerful and influential people of wealth or social standing? That is the topic of today s scripture passage in James 2:8-9. As we begin our 4 part series Deciding to Live Like a Believer, I would like to start with something that James calls The Royal Law. In James 2: 8-9 James declares You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. As believers, then, we are called to a code of conduct unlike that of most people. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the highest law God holds us to. It demands selflessness and a respect for God and His grace that does not come naturally to us. I want to suggest three questions this morning that can help you to live like the believer that God has called you to be. The first question is: PART ONE: WHO SETS THE RULES? There are 2 versions of the golden rule. The first version states He who has the gold sets the rules. The other version is God s version treat others as you would like to be treated. When you think about it, both versions ring true to us! We see ample evidence that those who have the greatest wealth and power do tend to set the rules. Our prisons are filled with people who were too poor to afford a strong, competent legal defense, and we have all seen examples of wealthy celebrities who get off Scot-free or with a slap on the wrist because they could afford the best legal
3 representation and public relations teams money can buy. But who really has the greatest power and wealth in the universe? President Bush? Oprah Winfrey? Bill Gates? No the answer to that question is God Almighty. God owns everything. God can do anything. God makes the rules. Sure, we can disagree with him. We can disobey Him. We can even disregard his rules. But, at the end of the day, there is nothing that you or I can do to change those rules. God remains the ultimate authority and God alone will decide who qualifies for eternal glory or punishment. Fortunately God is also good and fair and just. If he weren t all of those things, He would still be in control of all things, but God is love and His grace makes it obvious that it is in our best interest to decide to follow Him. Following Him means keeping His rules. Deciding to rebel against God and His rules is almost always self-destructive. Chuck Swindoll once had a conversation with former astronaut, General Charles M. Duke. Duke was telling him about the Apollo 16 mission to the moon. Swindoll asked him Once you were there, weren t you free to make your own decisions an carry out some of your own experiments you know, sort of do as you pleased maybe stay a little longer if you liked? Duke smiled back, Sure Chuck, if we didn t want to return to earth! He then described the intricate plan, the exact and precise instructions, the essential discipline, the instant obedience that was needed right down to the split second. By the way, he said they had landed somewhat heavy when they touched down on the moon. He was referring to their fuel supply. They had plenty left. Guess how much. One minute. They landed within sixty seconds of fuel remaining. Talk
4 about being exact! Swindoll says I got the distinct impression that a rebel doesn t fit inside a spacesuit. Whoever represents the United States in the space program must have an unconditional respect for authority. The same is true for us as believers. God sets the rules. It is in our best interest as well as the Lord s that we stay within His boundaries. If the first question we need to answer for ourselves is Who sets the rules? the next obvious question we need to answer is: PART TWO: HOW DO I DO WHAT IS RIGHT? A. DO I WANT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT? 1. We have a lot of choices to make in life. We tend to focus a lot of our attention on what makes us happy. At other times we struggle with what will make our loved ones happy. But there are times when doing the right thing doesn t seem to make us or those close to us happy. What do we do then? It is scary how rarely that question seems to be asked and answered today. It needs to be. Years ago Joe Bayly, the late Eternity magazine columnist, visited some German Christians who had been devoted soldiers in the German army during World War II. Two of them had been put up for promotion to become second lieutenants in the Nazi army. The commandant told them he would approve of the promotion on one condition: that they join the officer s club. Being a member of the club would require them to attend some weekend dances. These young men believed that dancing was wrong because it could lead to immorality. Because of their convictions, they turned down the promotions. Later in their military careers these same men were assigned to the death camps where thousands of Jews were stuffed into ovens and killed. Even though they did not directly participate in the slaughter, they knew what was going on. Yet they never
5 voiced any protest. When Joe Bayly talked to them many years after the war, they looked back on their experiences with no regret, convinced that they had made the right decisions. For them, not conforming to social pressure and refusing to dance was an act of righteousness. And conforming to patriotic mass murder and remaining silent while thousands of Jews burned in ovens left them with no feelings of unrighteousness. That s what happens when we set our own standards. We are capable of any evil. On the other hand, when we are filled with His righteousness, no good is too great. That s why God sets the rules and that s why He gives us the Royal law. The royal law is to love your neighbor as yourself, but the love spoken of here is not primarily an emotional love. It is a behavioral principle. Following the royal law means asking ourselves What is in that person s best interest? If we are serious about loving others, we will always try to think through our actions and say, What would accomplish God s best in his or her life? So - if I express anger toward my children because of what they have said or done, is that going to help them be all that God wants them to be? Maybe and maybe not. It depends on how I express that and how they receive it. If a friend does something foolish and I support and encourage him out of my desire not to rock the boat with him, is that the right thing to do or am I really acting out of selfishness? Ultimately, doing what is right is a matter of faith. We embrace God s righteousness and trust in His grace to sustain us rather than our own selfish interest. In western Colorado there is a road called The Million Dollar Highway. Few people know how the road got its name. One might assume because it was expensive to build, but that s not it (although it was undoubtedly a costly undertaking because it is through
6 difficult terrain at a high altitude). The real reason it s called the Million Dollar Highway is that waste material from the ore in gold mines was used as the bed for that highway, and not all of the gold dust and nuggets were removed by the mining processes available at that time. So, there is a partial roadbed of gold that is probably worth a lot more than a million dollars. It isn t the cost that gave it its name, but what is inside it. That s the way it is for the Royal Law of love. It is costly, but it is made up of something Divine. Once you have come to a conclusion regarding who makes the rules and whether you want to do the right thing, you come to the last question we need to address regarding our behavior as followers of Jesus: B. HOW DO I LOVE MY NEIGHBOR AS MYSELF? Our passage this morning deals both with what to do and what not to do. Verse 9 tells us If you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. In fact, over and over again in this chapter, James addresses the subject of favoritism in the church. Why is that? Well, for one reason, when we play favorites, we demean those who have less. James seems to be talking about people who have less money, but it might mean people with less power or influence or popularity or intelligence. In any case, showing favoritism implies that there are those who are of greater and of lesser value. In the church of Jesus Christ that is a very dangerous message. We are the heirs of God s grace and that inheritance is not to be squandered on petty favoritism. But let s be honest, we all are guilty of this to one extent or another. We judge one another by appearance, by reputation, by age, race, income level and by other standards having much more to do with our self-interest than anything
7 Godly. It is wrong, but we do it every day. Every one of us carries with us certain biases and blind spots. We might not mean to be judgmental or partial but we are human and it is human nature to show partiality toward those we find common ground with and judgment toward those who we have a hard time relating to. We saw this come into play last week with the port controversy in our government. If you followed the news, you saw that the government awarded a contract to an Arabic firm to manage our ports. Before this a British firm had been doing so. In our post 9-11 world this raised all kinds of issues. Members of both parties in the congress have been terribly upset by this. The United Arab Emirates is the country that this firm is from, and the UAE is an ally of the United States, but for obvious reasons we are much more comfortable with the British. We have a natural inclination to gravitate toward those who have the most in common with us. That kind of behavior might be ok in politics and in society in general, but James makes it clear that it is out of bounds behavior for followers of Christ. We are called to keep the Royal Law and loving your neighbor as yourself means doing what is right no matter who your neighbor is. We are to see one another with the pure eyes of Jesus, who looks beyond our backgrounds and even our past behavior to love us unconditionally. Several years ago, Princess Diana and her friend were driving along and they saw a van go off the road and into the water. They stopped and the crown princess of Great Britain jumped into the water and pulled the man out of the van and saved him from drowning. Then she waited with him until help arrived. Later the press followed it up and found out the man she saved was a homeless vagrant. Princess Diana was royalty in the kingdom of Great Britain, but in that instance
8 she lived by the royal law of God. You don t have to be a prince or princess to do the same. God calls us all to live by God s royal standards and to love others as ourselves. If you want to live like a believer, you need to start by applying the royal law to your life. God sets the rules. Decide to do what is right. Love others as you love yourself.