JUDGES WITH EVIL THOUGHTS
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on May 15, 2024 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: May 15, 2024 from James 2:1-7
Theme: We must not practice our faith in our glorious Lord with worldly favoritism toward others.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
We come to a passage in James today that brings back an interesting memory for me. It has to do with how I once tried to teach it to a group of teens in a church youth group.
I asked a young friend from a different youth group of another church to do a little play-acting for me. He had very long, well-kept hair and a great sense of humor. So, since none of the kids in my group knew him, I asked him to pretend to be a visitor to my class. I got our own youth pastor in on it too. After my class started, he brought this young man in; but didn’t introduce him. He simply gestured to him and told him in a gruff sort of way, “Go sit over there”; and then left. My friend came in with hair a mess, ratty-looking clothes, and just an overall odd manner about him. I had asked him in advance to come up with some strange behavior of some kind; so as soon as he arrived, he pulled a box of Cracker Jacks out of his pocket and began munching away. The ’prize’ was a sticker … which he then proceeded to peel off and put on his bare ankle. And in the opening time of our class, you could see some of the kids staring and beginning to draw away from him.
I then announced, “Okay; for today’s class, we need to form pairs. So everyone pick a partner.” Fortuitously, there were thirteen kids in the class. And guess who nobody picked! My friend was clearly being shunned. It was the perfect time to start our lesson. I finally announced that this was a friend of mine whom I asked to come and do a little play-acting for me, and then I read our passage from James 2:1-13:
My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? (James 2:1-7).
We all had a good laugh. And my friend even passed around some Cracker Jacks to share with everyone else (which I thought was a nice touch). It was a great lesson. But after class, we all then filed into the sanctuary for the church service. And there in the church was a new couple visiting for the first time. They were very poor, odd-looking, and a little smelly—and were not actors. No one greeted them, or sat with them, or gave them any attention. Everyone waited to see who’d be first, but no one was. Including me.
I came away thinking, “God is letting us know that this problem is much deeper in our hearts than we wanted to believe it is.”
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Many of our problems in living the Christian life on earth come from a failure to consistently maintain a heavenly perspective—a perspective that recognizes that, while we live, and work, and maintain our lives, and deal with everyday problems on earth, we always do as full citizens of heaven. As citizens of a kingdom that is ours only by God’s amazing grace, and that is ruled over only by the almighty Lord of glory, we need to consistently keep a ’heaven-ward’ point of view in our relationship toward others. Our Lord Himself is our chief inspiration; and our own gracious fellowship with Him is to characterize our conduct in the ’every-day matters’ of life.
One of those ’everyday’ matters is our interaction with and relationships with other people. We’re to remember that, as the Lord Himself tells us in the Bible;
“… the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
That was why God chose David to be king over his more impressive brothers. And that standard is to be ours too—especially in this age of grace, during which the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ is to be proclaimed freely to all people without distinction. As the apostle Paul once explained;
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:14-17).
So often, we who have been transformed by the grace of our Lord still seem to fall into the worldly habit of judging people on the basis of the outwardly observable criteria of this world instead of by heavenly standards. But if we profess to follow Jesus, then we must adopt a heavenly perspective with regard to other people, and value them in terms of what God sees—not just in terms of what this worldly system values. Pastor James wrote to encourage the people under his care to cease practicing the faith in Jesus Christ with a spirit of worldly favoritism with respect to others.
In James 2:8-11, James speaks very frankly about the sinful nature of showing worldly favoritism to others in the household of God. And in verses 12-13, he describes the cure—which is to remember that ’mercy triumphs over judgment’. But today, we’ll just look at verses 1-7 in which he describes how inappropriate such favoritism is in the house of the Lord. In those first few verses, he shows us that we must not practice faith in our glorious Lord with worldly favoritism toward others.
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James began by making it clear to us, in verse 1, that …
1. WE CAN’T HOLD OUR FAITH IN CHRIST WITH OUTWARD FAVORITISM (V. 1).
He wrote, “My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.” The word that he used that’s translated as “partiality” or—in some translations “favoritism”—is a compound word that literally means “to raise up the face” of someone. Figuratively, it means to show favorable behavior toward or to be unusually attracted to the outward appearance of someone. In time, it came to be a figure of speech for the negative practice of showing partiality toward someone on the basis of outward appearances or qualities.
The Bible teaches us that this is something that God Himself does not do. Romans 2:11 tells us that—whether it is with respect to the covenant Jewish person who had possession of the law, or the non-Jewish person who only had the testimony of the law internally—“there is no partiality with God”. Christian masters are warned in Ephesians 6:9 to treat their employees and servants with equity; “giving up threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.” Likewise, Colossians 3:25 tells us that believing servants and employees are to show honor to their masters in the sight of God; warning, “But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.” This same principle—that is, that there’s to be no partiality in our practice, because God Himself shows no partiality—is also to be applied in how we treat the members of His household.
At first glance, this seems unreasonable. Isn’t it a basic duty of courtesy and human respect to show some level of honor and respect toward those who are in certain positions in life? Doesn’t God—in His providence—place some over others? Doesn’t He give power and authority to some that He doesn’t give to everyone? Shouldn’t we show special respect toward those who are our masters and leaders and officials in special areas of life? Even—in some sense—to those who are rich? John Calvin offered a wise solution how we’re to understand James’ words:
For he does not simply disapprove of honour being paid to the rich, but that this should not be done in a way so as to despise or reproach the poor … Let us therefore remember that the respect of persons here condemned is that by which the rich is so extolled, that wrong is done to the poor …
Now; why this is so is shown to us in that this is to be the context of “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory”. Think of what it tells us in Philippians 2:6-11 about Him:
who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:6-11).
When we look at the Lord Jesus as He truly is—and consider how much He humbled Himself on our behalf—then how can we dare to live in the context of faith in Him while continuing to make distinctions with respect to one another on the basis of mere worldly values?
Pastor James himself set the example for us in this. He was, after all, an esteemed half-brother of the Lord Jesus; and the honored pastor of the foundational church of Jerusalem. When the church had a controversy, God’s people went to him for a decision. But he set himself over no one; and humbled himself to the level of being the equal of those to whom he wrote; referring to his readers as “my brethren”. In fact, he says it again in verse 5 with even greater affection; calling his readers, “my beloved brethren.”
So; here’s the first thing we need to learn from his words: it is utterly out of place for us to conduct ourselves in the household of faith with an attitude of outward favoritism.
Now; when I tried to teach this lesson to my youth group, I tried to create a living ’example’ of the lesson. As it turned out, God Himself then taught us all with another convicting example’. Well; James also creates an example by way of illustration. And this was to show us that …
2. SUCH FAVORITISM IS INCONSISTENT WITH FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST (vv. 2-7).
He began in verses 2-4 by saying, “For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ’You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ’You stand there,’ or, ’Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?” This was meant to show us that such partiality can only be based on evil values.
Note that, in the above illustration, it’s not our Lord Jesus who made the evaluation. As far as our Lord is concerned, there are no distinctions to be made on the basis of outward matters. Rather, as James says, it’s the people within the church who have become judges with evil thoughts. It may have been that those who were showing special favoritism to the wealthy man wanted to look good, or to encourage a big donor to remain in their church. And in the cultural climate that we live in today, it may even be that the situation becomes reversed. Some may become treated with contempt if they are thought to be wealthy or privileged, and others are given preferential treatment in order to make an outward show of favoring those who are considered poor and disadvantaged. This ’outward appearance’ problem runs deep! But the point is that, whenever we neglect anyone that Jesus loves in preference for outward appearances, we’re taking our cues from this world and are becoming judges with evil motives.
In verses 5-6, James went on to say, “Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man.” This shows us another way that such favoritism is inconsistent with our faith in Jesus. It’s in the fact that such partiality doesn’t take into account God’s unmerited grace.
It’s important to understand that in this, James was not saying that someone’s poverty is the reason for God’s grace to them. Whether rich or poor, all people are saved only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus; and no one is automatically rewarded with heaven simply because they are poor. But what James is pointing to is a remarkable aspect of God’s grace. This remarkable aspect is described for us in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; where Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers and said,
For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).
The famed entrepreneur Ted Turner was once heard to say that ”Christianity is a religion for losers”. It was a rather malicious comment, and he received due criticism for it. But there’s a sense in which he was right. God in fact deliberately chooses the foolish and weak things of this world in order to shame the ones this world considers wise and powerful. He chooses the world’s ’losers’ in order to shame the world’s ’winners’. How terribly wrong it is, then, for the Lord’s own people to then—on the basis of this world’s standards—dishonor the very ones that Jesus has honored!
And finally, in verses 6-7, Paul wrote, “Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?” And again, we need to understand this carefully. James was not saying that it’s inherently evil to be rich, or that all rich people oppress the followers of Jesus. As we read on later in his letter, we find that the specific kind of rich people he was speaking of were most likely those described in James 5:1-6;
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you (James 5:1-6).
And this shows us yet one more reason why such favoritism in God’s household is completely inappropriate and out of place. It’s because such partiality tends to give honor to those who dishonor God. James is saying that we demonstrate that we have adopted the world’s wicked set of values whenever we choose to honor those who dishonor our Lord.
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My grandfather died when my dad was just four. So; Dad grew up in a large family with a widowed mom. It was in Joplin, Missouri in the late 1930s. My grandmother was a hard-working woman who did the best she could. But there just wasn’t the money to buy nice things.
I’ll always remember my grandmother as a godly woman who read her Bible and loved to talk about Jesus. She even played piano in the church. But Dad told me about how, on one particular Sunday morning, someone in charge told her that—if she was going to play piano—she needed to go home and started dressing herself and her kids in nicer clothes. She couldn’t afford to… and so didn’t feel like she’d fit in anymore. My dad never forgot that, and explained to me that it was the main reason that he could never feel comfortable setting foot inside a church ever again.
We do terrible damage when we show favoritism in God’s household. So, as James says, “My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.”
AE
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