James 2:1-13
“Do you play favorites?”
June 27, 1999
Everybody has favorites. [Ask different people in the congregation what their favorite items are in these categories: food, ice cream, car, color, time of year, holiday]. When I was growing up, my mom had it pretty easy whenever she was getting food for me. My favorite flavor of ice cream whether it was in the form of a cone or in the form of a milkshake was vanilla. Nothing unique or unusual - just vanilla. And my favorite kind of sandwich was bologna. She kept trying to get me to eat something different, but I always asked for bologna. It was my favorite.
Having favorites can create problems though. When we were in school, there was always at least one person who was accused of being the teacher’s favorite - the teacher’s pet. This was the person who always volunteered to hand out papers for the teacher, or who got the best grades, and was always trying to be a brown-noser. One of the pieces of advice that most new parents receive is to make sure that you don’t play favorites when you have more than one kid. When Ben was born, Tammy and I made sure that we continued to pay a lot of attention to Victoria so tha she wouldn’t think that we favored Ben more than her since he was the new kid in the house. Playing favorites among your kids can create real problems. Do you remember the story of Joseph. He was the eleventh of 12 children, and he was his dad’s favorite. To make sure that everyone knew how much he valued his son, his dad gave Joseph a special coat - a coat of many colors. That was pretty unique since many colors in those days consisted of different shades of brown. His brothers hated him for it and actually ended up selling him into slavery. Favoritism and the jealousy it creates can cause an awful lot of pain.
Favoritism can enter into our lives in our relationships with other people both outside the church and inside the church. The passage of the Bible that we’re going to examine this morning talks about favoritism particulary within the church, but the truths that we will find impact every area of our lives. The main thing that I want us to see this morning is this: In our relationships with people, both inside the church and outside, we must not allow our actions and attitudes toward them to be determined by how we think their presence can benefit our organization or us personally. I can’t allow my feelings toward you or desire to build a relationship with you to be determined by what I can get from you. That’s the issue that James is going to help us deal with this morning.
I. There are theological reasons for not showing favoritism (vs. 1)
a. We are all equal in God’s eyes - “brothers”
A little over a week ago, I was at the SBC. There were pastors there of churches the same size as ours, and there were pastors there of churches with a membership of over 20,000 people. Pastors who were authors and had radio and TV ministries. How do you think they would have reacted had I tried to enter into a normal conversation with them or if I had a different interpretation of a biblical passage than they did?
James was the pastor of the church at Jerusalem, very large church; he was also the half-brother of Jesus. Either fact had the potential of causing him to think that he was more important than the common person in the church. But he addressed the readers as “brothers” - equals.
Gal 3:26-29 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,
for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
It has been said that death is the great equalizer. We were all born the same way, and we will all die. What happened in between those two events will be relatively insignifigant in God’s great plan. God created each of us, and one day, each of us will have to stand before Him to give account for how we used the life that He gave us. In God’s eyes, we are equals.
b. We all come to Jesus the same way - “as believers”
We all got to our relationship with God through the same door - humbly admitting our sinfulness and placing our faith in Jesus Christ to pay for that sin through His sacrificial death on the cross. Ephesians 2:8-9 “. . . lest any man should boast.” Can you imagine what heaven would be like if we got there through our own efforts? [relate skit about persons who boast about the way that they got to heaven] Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6) Before coming to Jesus, we all had the same destination - hell. Jesus came and rescued us not because of anything that we had special about us, but because of His great love for us.
c. Giving glory to a person steals glory from Jesus - “glorious”
One rendering of James 2:1 goes like this: “Brethren, you believe that all glory belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ; do not combine this faith of yours with flattery of human greatness.” Jesus deserves all the glory and all the praise for who He is and what He has done. When we give some glory to men for their accomplishments, we steal glory from Jesus. We can’t worship people and Jesus at the same time. The first of the ten commandments is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
d. God shows no favoritism - “Lord Jesus Christ”
Jesus Himself showed no favoritism. In Jesus’ time on earth, He spent more time with prostitutes, tax collectors, poor people, and sinners than He did with the religious and well-to-do. Some might even look at Jesus’ life and be tempted to think that He practiced affirmative action. Our government has set up laws to prevent businesses from discrimating on the basis of certain factors in peoples’ lives - race, sex, national origin, religion, as well as other factors. I heart recently that “sexual orientation” is getting ready to be added to that list in some states. In other words, if a company has a certain number of employees, they will soon have to have a certain percentage of employees who are homosexual. Companies are being forced to seek out employees based on physical and emotional characteristics rather than on the basis of their qualifications. That’s what is different about why Jesus spent so much time with the poor and not with the rich. It’s not that He sought the poor because they were poor. It’s just that the poor and the sinners were the ones who would listen to Him. Jesus doesn’t care what your background is so long as you are willing to come to Him and forsake that background. Acts 10:34 says that God is no respector of persons. God does not play favorites. And since we are His children, we need to follow in His example.
e. God commands it - “do not show favoritism”
The dictionary defines favoritism as “the showing of more kindness and indulgence to some person or persons than to others”. Prejudice is a close synonym. It’s treating one person or persons as more important or valuable than another because of some factor over which they may or may not have any control. When you show favoritism to one person over another, you become a judge of their signifigance and value based on what that person can do for you. “I’m going to show favor to you because you have something that I need or want.” Prov 19:6-7 Many curry favor with a ruler, and everyone is the friend of a man who gives gifts. A poor man is shunned by all his relatives-- how much more do his friends avoid him! Though he pursues them with pleading, they are nowhere to be found.
Luke 6:27-35 "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ lend to ’sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Our attitude toward people is supposed to be an attitude of unconditional love regardless of whether we think we are ever going to see any reward or fruit in that person’s life because of our actions.
