James 2:1-4 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?

James 2:5-7 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 2:8-11 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. 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.

James 2:12-13 So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Mahatma Gandhi was the world-famous leader of the Indian independence movement. In his autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi wrote that in his younger years, he read the Gospels seriously and considered converting to Christianity. He was enthralled by the words and teachings of Jesus Christ. He saw in Christ some of the answer to the caste system that divided the people of India. As you know, he spent many of his years in South Africa. One Sunday, he decided to attend a church while in South Africa, and speak to the minister about becoming a Christian. As he approached the entrance, he was met at the door by an usher who told him to leave and go and worship with his own people. Gandhi left, and wrote the following: “If Christians have caste differences also, I might as well remain a Hindu.” And so one of the greatest men of the 20th century was turned away from Christianity right at the moment he was considering it.

In some ways that man in that South African church was actually denying the Gospel. It is not that he was denying one of the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel – the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the virgin birth, the substitutionary death of Christ and His bodily resurrection. Instead, he was effectively denying the meaning of the Gospel with his actions. By displaying partiality – favouritism towards his own race and prejudice against Gandhi’s – he was saying, “the message of the Gospel in this church is only for some people, and not for you. You need to go somewhere else to get some other message.” This is not a theological denial of the Gospel; it is a practical denial of the Gospel. It is what Paul says in Titus 1:16: “They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him.”

One of the great truths of the gospel is that it is for all people. The Great Commission is found in a different form in every one of the four Gospels, but it is clear it is a global Gospel:

• “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,” (Mat 28:19)
• And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mar 16:15)
• “and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luk 24:47)

Even the Jewish apostles, who had grown up with the thinking that ‘salvation is of the Jews’ meant ‘salvation is only for the Jews’ in the end are writing books which proclaim the Gospel is for all people.

• The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2Pe 3:9)
• who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1Ti 2:4)
• And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. (1Jo 2:2)

Therefore, one of the worst distortions of this universal, global Gospel is the sin of partiality.

Partiality is to prefer some and to disdain others based on some thing that can be judged outwardly: a person’s skin colour, age, weight, appearance, wealth, ethnicity, education, intelligence. Partiality is to see something in a person and use it to our advantage, so we gravitate to them, and see other things that are useless to us, so we are repelled by them. So we welcome and love those who we are comfortable with, and we turn from those we are not.

To do that in general with your neighbour, and to do that particularly in church, is to distort and pervert the message that God loves all people and all kinds of people, and wants them to be reconciled to Himself through His Son.

James takes this seriously enough to include 14 verses to deal with it. According to James, partiality is an example of faith without works – claiming to believe the Gospel, but failing to act out the Gospel. He wants us to know that meeting different kinds of people in church is one of the tests, one of the trials that will come into our lives and test what kind of faith is really in our hearts. Are we people who have been humbled by the hospitality of Jesus, and so humbly extend it to all? Are we a people so surprised by mercy and forgiveness, that we extend it to all? Or is ours an inconsistent faith, that takes the welcoming, impartial grace of God, but does not extend it? James wants us to see how partiality is like cracks in the window of the Gospel, distorting people’s ability to see in, and see the beauty of Jesus Christ. The three cracks we’ll see is that partiality is a sin, partiality is shallow, and partiality is serious.

I. Partiality is a Sin

James 2:1-4 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?

Verse 1 is the command for this whole section: do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. In other words, do not practise your Christianity with favouritism, do not worship and fellowship and disciple and mingle it with partiality.

Partiality means someone who judges another not on his or her intrinsic nature as a human made in God’s image, but on outward circumstances. The word here and the one in verse 9 are words that come from the Greek words for face and receive. Literally, to look upon the face, to lift up the face. To judge by external appearances, and to prefer those things which are outward and circumstantial, like wealth, good looks, noble birth, class.

James then gives us a real-life example. Two men come into the assembly. One has gold rings and fine, literally, bright clothing. Amongst Jews of the first century, rings were very customary – remember the father wanted to put a ring on the finger of the prodigal son? But most could not afford gold rings. Here in the Greek, it is literally gold-fingered. This man is deliberately putting a ring on every finger. In fact, there were even ring-rental businesses where you could go and rent your rings to pretend you were wealthy. Mr Fortune-Fingers.

The other man’s clothes are literally, soiled, filthy. This is probably his only pair of clothes, so he rarely gets to wash them, except if he can find a place of complete privacy. With that filth, comes the smell, the unpleasantness of body odour and the unkempt appearance.

James says, you actually gaze upon Mr Gold-Fingers. He becomes your special attention, and you quickly, and hastily say, “Sit here in the best seat!” – in other words, ‘we’re so happy you came, please come again, look how well we’ll treat you”. Then, to the filthy clothes man you roughly say, “Look, just stand over there” or even, “There aren’t enough chairs, sit on the floor here, at my feet.” If you do that, James says in verse 4, you have shown partiality, you have become evil judges. You are valuing people according to an unjust standard, a worldly standard.

Why is this such an evil standard? Because it is not God’s standard. Scripture is clear that this is not God’s nature. In the Law, God forbad partiality.

• 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.”
• 2Ch 19:7: “Now therefore, let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take care and do it, for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes.”
• Joh 7:24: “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”
• Romans 2:11: “For there is no partiality with God.”
• Ephesians 6:9: “And you, masters, do the same things to them, giving up threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.”

God is not this way. Partiality is a sin because it replaces God’s view of my neighbour with a human, worldly view. It unfairly prefers one against another for unjust and worldly values.

The very nature of God’s grace is the opposite of partiality. No one receives salvation on inner or outer merit, and no one is refused salvation for class, race, sex, wealth.

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. (Gal 3:28)

This gracious impartiality of God was very hard for first-century Jews to understand. They believed that since Israel was the chosen nation, that people had to become Israelites to be saved. Even once the church was established, some were confused, preaching that faith in Christ was not enough, Gentiles also needed to be circumcised, and join the nation of Israel to be saved. Peter needed a vision of animals on a sheet in order to convince him to go to the home of a Gentile Cornelius, and believe with his own eyes that God was going to save Cornelius outside of Israel.

Then Peter opened his mouth and said: “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.” (Act 10:34-35)

The Jews also struggled not only with partiality towards their own race, but partiality towards the wealthy. They thought that wealthy people were godly people, and so Jesus had to tell parables like that of the rich man and Lazarus to show that there was not always a correspondence between wealth and righteousness and poverty and sin.

But sadly, the church of Jesus Christ has been slow to get this message. For several centuries, many churches practised pew-renting, where much of the income of the church was gathered through people renting the seats they would sit in. So the wealthy and powerful would secure the best seats, those most prominent and visible. Those who could not afford to rent a pew would have to hope there would be space at the back, or simply stand through the service. In many cases, the names of the people who could sit on those seats was posted on a board, or even engraved on metal and placed on the pew.

But even though pew-renting has fallen out of favour, partiality is still in the human heart. What might have happened in South African history, had the churches said, “the law of the land says we must ride separate buses, and go to separate schools, and live in separate areas, and have separate pools and beaches, and parks. We cannot change the law of the land. But in Christ’s law, the gospel is for everyone so on 10:00 on a Sunday morning, everyone is welcome here.”?

I can tell you that growing up in apartheid South Africa, the only thing that practically challenged the racism and prejudice I grew up with was the church of Jesus Christ. There as a boy I sat with, and heard the Bible preached, and memorised Scriptures and played with and travelled with children of other races, and understood on real life, practical level, the Gospel is for everyone.

But let’s think of it in your own local church. Fighting partiality in your own heart means resisting the temptation to stick to those you are comfortable with, familiar with, and similar to, and excluding those opposite. To hold the faith of the Lord Jesus without partiality means stop judging people in your church by whether they will be of advantage to you, or increase your comfort. Start extending to others the interest God showed you.

Understand that if you are a Christian, you are a recipient of God’s universally extended welcome. And you are now to be a part of the universally extended welcome – to the person who speaks broken English, to the person who cannot afford nice deodorant or perfume and who is sweaty from walking 5 kilometres from the taxi-rank to be here, to the socially awkward person who struggles to understand why people avoid him, to the shy and difficult teenager, to the partially deaf person who cannot hear you unless you shout, to the poor and unkempt person, to the little child who is in church without his parents.

I didn’t say you will become best friends with everyone. I didn’t say those differences won’t be uncomfortable for you. I didn’t say it will be easy and that you will have a fantastically stimulating conversation. I said, extend a universal welcome. Let no one be excluded from your heart. You might have your closer friends, but do not push anyone out, look out for those still out in the social cold. Don’t simply follow your natural inclinations to gravitate to those like you, but look around for the one needing ministry.

Just think, what would have happened to you, had Jesus stuck to His comfort zone? What would have happened to you if Jesus had stayed with those most familiar and comfortable to Him? We are saved, because the Triune God reached out to those unlike Him, to extend hospitality in the Gospel.

Partiality is a sin.

But it is not only a sin in that it is unlike God. James shows us a second way that partiality cracks the window-glass of the Gospel.

II. Partiality is Shallow

James 2:5-7 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 now wants his readers to think about how foolish their values are when they are partial. When his readers love Mr Goldfingers and despise the poor man with soiled clothes, they have an inverted value system. They are loving what they should hate, and hating what they should love.

Poor believers are in fact, chosen by God to be rich in faith, as we saw in chapter 1:9-11. God, on the basis of impartial choice, has chosen people who are poor from the perspective of the world to be rich from the perspective of faith. God has chosen people who are without power or property or estates from the world to be heirs of a kingdom. When you mistreat poor believers, you are mistreating someone that God has sovereignly chosen to be rich in faith. You are mistreating an heir of the kingdom.

“Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luk 6:20)

On the other hand, when his readers fawn over and flatter the unbelieving rich man who comes into their services, they are flattering someone who exploits his power over them, who openly blasphemes the God they love. He dominates them, sues them, and in his arrogant independence, casually blasphemes God’s name, the name of the God who called them, the name that they now carry – “Christian”. But yet they are enamoured by his outward wealth.

To put it simply, James says, when you are partial, you have a shallow and worldly value system. The world is shallow and fickle.

“But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.” (Luk 6:32-33)

When we are partial, we are taking that shallow system and letting it guide us. Like James says, you love this, but you are loving something from a system that comes back to bite you. Worldliness always preys on its own, in the end. You pursue beauty in outward appearance, to fit in with the fashionistas, and one day they turn on you – you’re no longer good looking enough, what you wear is so yesterday. You pursue being with the in-crowd, until the fateful day when the in-crowd wants you out. You pursue having the signs and symbols of being successful and powerful, and then the world says, ‘No, those aren’t the signs anymore.” Why would we want to chase this shallow system, and make it our happiness? Why would we prefer people for worldly reasons, when that same worldliness is going to come back and bite us and exclude us and harm us?

Does this mean God discriminates against the rich? No. It simply means that the things man is drawn to, and the things man is repelled by have no bearing on God. God chooses poor people out of grace and mercy. God chooses rich people out of grace and mercy.

In fact, the doctrine of election, far from teaching that God is partial, teaches the very opposite. God is impartial. He is sovereign over salvation, He chooses, but He is not interested in you because of what you have, or disinterested in you because of what you lack. He chooses to love you impartially, in spite of yourself.

Partiality is a shallow, worldly way of thinking, and will come back to bite us. Look at Matthew 25:

Matthew 25:31-45
“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’

And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'”

Don’t mistreat those whom Jesus loves. Don’t let the shallow system of the world corrupt your universal welcome.

Partiality is a sin. Partiality is shallow.

But then, James wants us to know, thirdly,

III. Partiality is Serious

James 2:8-13 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. 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. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Here’s what we can be tempted to do with this matter of partiality. We can say to ourselves, “Oh, this is much ado over nothing. I’m a friendly sort of chap. I have no problem with anyone in church. Clearly, this message is for someone else.”

So what James says is, no, this is serious. Partiality is breaking God’s Law – verse 9. And just like an adulterer cannot say, “Well at least I’m not a murderer”, so the man committing partiality and favouritism cannot say, “Well at least I’m not an adulterer!” Verses 10-11 tell us that if you break one of God’s Laws, you have broken the whole lot, because God’s standard is a unit. Our self-righteousness wants to divide up God’s Word, and say – well, I’m good on that score, even if I’ve missed a bit on that. No, James says, it is more serious than that. If you show partiality, you sin, you transgress. James is confronting a sophisticated but sinister self-righteousness, where all is clean on the outside, “I don’t commit heinous sins”. But if you avoid some and favour others, you don’t love. You break the second commandment, so no point in boasting in your self-righteousness, if you are breaking the entire second Table of the Ten Commandments with the refusal to love your neighbour.

If we show no mercy, show no compassion, no interest in others, verse 13 says we may be held to that harsh standard. That’s the standard that the world will face.

• Mat 7:2 “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”
• Pro 21:13 “Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor Will also cry himself and not be heard.”
• Mat 5:7 “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.”

So to take it seriously, we must go back to the second commandment in verse 8, which summarises all the horizontal commandments. The second greatest commandment summarises the second table of the Ten Commandments, and indeed it summarises all my obligations to my fellow man. Love your neighbour as yourself.

The basic law governing relationships is love your neighbour as yourself. Use yourself as the test. How would you like to be treated? Would you like to be judged, excluded because of your poverty, age, health, race, looks? How did you feel at school when you were excluded because you were not sporty enough, or good looking enough, or immoral enough? How have you felt in situations where you were unwelcome, excluded, noticed but merely tolerated?

For that matter do you want people to include you and love you and admire you for your wealth, youth, race, looks? How do you want to be treated when you enter the assembly? How do you want to be treated each time you come? What kind of reception do you want to experience from other believers? What kind of hospitality from other believers would comfort and nourish and strengthen your faith?

According to verse 12, you and I will be held to the standard of the perfect law of liberty. That is, Christ’s law of love God ultimately, and love your neighbour for God’s sake will be the standard used to evaluate our lives. So speak to others, and act to others using that standard, not the world’s.

Partiality is serious because it breaks the second greatest commandment.

There’s good news here, though.

The last line of verse 13 gives you the heart of God: Mercy triumphs over judgement. God prefers mercy to punishment.

Eze 33:11 “Say to them: ‘As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’

God does not want to judge us with a harsh standard, He delights in mercy.

Mic 7:18 “Who is a God like You, Pardoning iniquity And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in mercy.”

God delights in mercy. If God delights to welcome repentant sinners, so should we. If God has been impartial in redeeming humanity, so should we be impartial. The church should be an outworking of His plan to redeem all nations, tongues, tribes. To distort the Gospel within the very walls of the church is a terrible thing – it’s sinful, it’s shallow, and it’s serious. We must flesh out the Gospel by overturning worldly ways and welcoming all.

There was a little boy who once arrived in a small church in the city. He came by himself without his parents, who were not Christians. He was awkward and unfriendly, and didn’t know when to sit or stand, or how to use the hymnbook, or what to do in the Lord’s Supper. But one or two people welcomed him, gave him a hug when they saw him, one bought him a beautiful study Bible. They had nothing to gain in reaching out to a nine-year old boy on his own, but they did.

And now, three decades later, that nine-year old boy is the one writing this. I’m thankful that God welcomed me by His impartial grace. I’m thankful some people acted that out in a little church where I was a stranger. May that scene be repeated again and again.