Horizontal or Vertical Divide
James 2:1-13
Many years ago when Terri and I were living in Bowling Green, KY, we were members of a very large church for a while. This church was so large that they had two of everything—two Sunday morning worship services and two Sunday School services. Now, I have no idea of how many classrooms the church had, but I estimate maybe 20 classrooms and then they also had a large common room which was partitioned off for 7 or 8 other classrooms.
This church maybe had 1500 Sunday worshippers. Around half of that number would be in the early worship service while the other half were in Sunday School. Then at the designated time, both groups would swap back and forth. The early worship service people would go to Sunday School while the early Sunday School people would go to the later worship service. It was a very efficient system that accommodated large numbers very well.
But large churches have their downsides. For example, when Sunday School classrooms have 30-40 people in them, it’s difficult to really get to know anyone outside of the classroom. So, you become just a number—one of the masses. To combat this, small groups were begun. Each group would consist of maybe 10 people, max, or 5 couples. Now, I’m a real proponent of small groups. I think they’re great when under the control of the spiritual leadership such as the pastors, deacons, or elders of the church. That way, whatever studies the groups do must be approved and are in line with the Bible and the beliefs of the church.
However, just like large churches have their downsides, small groups can also have their downsides. For instance, the difficulty of getting into a small group. Because of the membership limits (5 couples), many are already filled so it may take a while to get into one. But another problem can also be the mismanagement of the small group by its leadership.
One day, Terri and I were finally asked to come to a small group meeting by a friend I knew from work who was part of this group. So, we went and spent the evening with everyone and we had a really nice time of fellowship, or at least Terri and I thought it was nice. But when I asked my friend a few days later when and where we would meet next, he told me that we had been blackballed.
Let me tell you folks, that really hurt. Neither of us knew why they didn’t want us to be a part of them, and my friend wouldn’t or maybe couldn’t say either. I think he actually ended up quitting that group himself. But to have a group of “Christians” tell you that they don’t want you, it hurts, its offensive, its degrading, and we were left thinking that we weren’t good enough, rich enough, educated enough, or that we didn’t drive a nice enough car, live in a nice enough home in a nice enough neighborhood. Folks, this single action by that one small group still hurts when I think about it 20+ years later.
The effects of prejudice, favoritism, or discrimination can be long lasting, and it can cripple relationships for years to come. It goes on every day, and it exists in varying degrees in almost every place. Boardrooms, the workplace, school classrooms (such as teacher’s pets), or even families where children are treated differently based entirely on certain qualities they may or may not have. Unfortunately, even though the Lord specifically commands us against it, it also occurs in the churches too. This is why our text in James was written. He wanted to deal with favoritism that he saw in the early church. The history of the church is filled with examples of these things, and it continues to be a problem as my own story illustrated.
Folks, if we are practicing any form of favoritism, prejudice, or discrimination, then we need to stop, immediately. But you know, it’s not just us doing these things that are bad, but it’s also us receiving the benefit of these things as well. I’m reminded of the Christian actress, Lori Loughlin and her husband who paid $500,000 in order to have her two children accepted into college. Now, she isn’t the only one who’s gotten in trouble for this, but the fact that she’s a well-known Christian, in my mind, makes it worse. They paid for favoritism but were arrested instead.
So, if we’re doing it, we need to stop. If we’re receiving the benefit, we need to stop that as well. If we’re suffering the adverse effects of it, then we need to learn how to deal with it in a biblical way. This is why we’re looking at James, chapter 2, verses 1-13 today.
Jas 2:1-13 My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. (2) 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, (3) 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," (4) have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (5) 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? (6) But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? (7) Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? (8) If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF," you do well; (9) but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. (10) For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. (11) For He who said, "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. (12) So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. (13) For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
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I. You shouldn’t practice favoritism.
Friends, if you find that you are giving preference or maybe you feel that you should get preference, then this is what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of “respect of persons.” It doesn’t have anything to do with showing respect to our employers, our superiors, or the elderly because the Lord does tell us to be respectful toward others and to give them their due. The apostle Paul told us to Rom 13:7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.
Notice how he makes no distinction between governmental authority and private individuals. You must pay your taxes and the customs to the government you live under, and give fear (or respect, reverence) and honor to anyone else to whom it is due. So, it’s good and right to obey the law and to show respect to whomever it is due, but this isn’t what a “respecter of persons” is speaking of. A respecter of persons in the context of our text means to show respect, or preference when it is not due.
Take a look at verses 2 and 3 again, they say Jam 2:2-3 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, (3) 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,"
So, you’ve got two men who come into a church, and simply because one of them was wearing a gold ring and fine apparel he’s given a good place to sit while the other guy who’s wearing clothes that are worn and dirty looking, well, he’s told to stand over there in the corner or to sit on a footstool. Mr. Goldfinger, that’s what the Greek actually means here, it means the “gold fingered man”, well he is treated like a prince while the other guy, probably a hard working man, is mostly ignored and made to feel like less of a man simply because he wasn’t wearing a suit and tie, so to speak.
Now folks, you can’t let the outward package guide your judgment of a person. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t be judging people like this anyway. That’s what the Bible would call “unrighteous” judgment. I can remember back in Bowling Green, KY, I sold cars at a dealership in town for about 3 or 4 years. I hated it because each day was a struggle to make a sale and earn my keep. Well, one thing I learned on that car lot is that you simply can’t judge a book by it’s cover because it’s entirely likely that the guy who drives up in a beat up old work truck wearing overalls, dirty shirt, work boots and with an overall scraggly look about him may very well pull out a wad of cash and buy the most expensive truck on the lot.
You see, KY has a lot of tobacco farmers. Anyone who owned anywhere from 5 to 20 acres could make a good chunk of change come harvest time! That guy who looked like he didn’t have two dimes he could rub together, could just as easily have 10K dollars or more in his pocket! While the guy who drives up in a BMW to look at the new Ford Thunderbird is more than likely just gonna drive off into the sunset in that BMW.
Now, to put this in the context of the church and showing respect for one person over another it is simply out of place. We are specifically told not to do it. Moses wrote in the law Deu 1:17 You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great; you shall not be afraid in any man's presence, for the judgment is God's.
A lot of people walk away from this scripture thinking that it is saying you shouldn’t show preference to the rich over the poor, and it does in fact say that. But many fail to see that it is also saying just the opposite of that, that we should not show favoritism toward the poor simply because he’s poor over the rich. It says, “you shall hear the small as well as the great.”
Maybe Leviticus will make it a little clearer. Lev 19:15 You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. In righteousness, you shall judge. God is our righteous judge, and He shows preference to no one. You are either in Christ, or you are not. You are saved, or you are lost. You see, God doesn’t divide us horizonally, that’s what we tend to do. We make divisions among ourselves based upon the color of our skin, the kind of car we drive, how much money we make, what job or career we have, what political party we belong to or where we play golf. All sorts of divisions that we create to divide us, but God doesn’t divide us like that. In His eyes we are all mankind. He divides us vertically like I just said—saved or lost. In Christ or not in Christ.
Making judgments or giving undue preferential treatment to one person over another is completely unfair and undeserved, but it’s also a very self-centered thing to do. When it gets right down to it, the main reason we make these kinds of distinctions is because we gain something from it.
Now, think about Mr. Goldfinger. In biblical times, a gold ring was a symbol of authority and many times they doubled as seals for official documents. Self-centered thinking would cause people to show Goldfinger more favor in hopes that one day he will remember and do something for you using his authority and influence.
But what about the poor man? Well, using the same self-centered thinking, there’s nothing to be gained by showing him any advantage at all. He can’t enrich us with his influence or anything else, so why bother with him? Now, can you see how evil self-centered thinking can be? When we like people, we help people, we do things for people based upon what we can get from them in return, friends, that is the way of the world, not the kingdom of God! It’s undue. It’s unfair. It’s self-centered and even unbelievers will mostly admit that favoritism like this is a bad thing, yet, they still practice it. Many times, they’ll even condemn it for everyone else, but practice it themselves.
Friends, we simply cannot adopt the world’s attitude in this. We cannot condone or practice favoritism. Look at what James says in chapter 1, vs 27: Jas 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Pure and undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows and keep oneself unspotted from the world. In other words, don’t be like the world. This isn’t our home, and our hope is in Christ, not what we can gain in this world. Then, immediately after what James said in 1:27 we read the very next verse which says Jas 2:1 My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.
The faith of Jesus Christ and favoritism cannot co-exist. They are incompatible. They are diametrically opposed to each other. In our Lord Jesus Christ Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. One in Christ. He ministered to all who came to Him: Jew, Greek, and Samaritan. The righteous and unrighteous. Jesus made no distinction between men, women, and children. He saved and healed all who came to Him, and so should we without regard to anything other than they are fellow human beings who need God’s grace and mercy just like we do.
So, favoritism exists, and it even exists in the church. What should we do? Or how should we deal with this problem?
II. Dealing with Favoritism
As followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should never value people according to worldly standards. We shouldn’t give preference based upon clothes, job, wealth, status, or anything else like that. Everyone absolutely must have equal importance in our eyes without regard to social status, material wealth, or outward appearance. Everyone, rich or poor, beautiful or not so beautiful, bears the exact same image of God. This is why it is so wrong to show favoritism. It is sin against God Himself; not that we are gods, but we were made in His image.
All of us are sinners who are only worthy of God’s judgment and eternal hell. Now, in James’ time, the poor were most often looked upon as guilty before proven innocent because being poor, they were thought to be more likely to commit a crime, steal, or cheat others so that they could lift themselves out of their poverty or debt. The rich though, were just as sinful, because they were known to use and abuse their wealth and power to drag those who couldn’t afford to defend themselves into the courts and make false accusations against them. Also in James’ time, it was the rich who tended to persecute Christians.
The plain and simple truth is that everyone is just as sinful as everyone else. We all came from the same parents in the Garden, and so we all were equally affected by their sin. Wealth, status, race, age, education, or gender have no bearing on sinfulness or worthiness because God’s word tells us that Rom 3:23 …all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
So, once we understand that and repent and turn to Christ, then what we can do to combat favoritism is to love our neighbor just like Jesus said, Mat 22:37-40 …'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' (38) This is the first and great commandment. (39) And the second is like it: 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' (40) On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
This is the “royal law” that James wrote of. Jas 2:8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF," you do well; The royal law is the chief law, the king of laws, and it boils down to love, unconditional love. It’s the agape (agapao¯) love of God that Rom 5:5 …has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Now, you may think that you can’t love unconditionally those who you hate. Those who hate you and want to harm you. You might think that you can’t love those who not only have been prejudicial or discriminatory toward you, but still are. You think you can’t love them unconditionally because they aren’t changing their ways, they’re not repenting, they’re still doing whatever it is they do to you. So, you can’t love them.
But yes, you can. You must. Unconditional means without any conditions. In other words, you are to love your enemies and everyone else even if they don’t stop. Even if they continue to discriminate against you, or like the guy in the parable, tell you to go sit over there, or sit on a footstool. Even as they are speaking those words, or as they are doing whatever it is, you are to love them. That is what Jesus tells us to do. It’s what Jesus demonstrated when He was being beat, mocked, and whipped. Even while He was suffering greatly on the cross. He loved them and was doing for them the very same thing He did for you and I.
What He did for them is what He did for us, and when we believed on Him, He came into our lives and resurrected our cold and dead hearts. We were born again and made completely new. We were sanctified, or set apart in Him, and now, day by day we are being changed into His image from glory unto glory.
What He did for us, He will also do for you if you will turn to Him. You can do that today. You should do that today!
