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The most common kind of prejudice, of discrimination that happens in the church today is probably a discrimination of social class. And yet, the God that we worship became poor so that through Him we might become rich when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.
Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone, after spending three weeks in James, Chapter 1. We are moving on today to Chapter 2, and we will be looking at verses 1 through 13. So open your Bible to James, Chapter 2, as we read.
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing, and you say, You sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, You stand over there, or sit at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man.
Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.
But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder.
If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.
Mercy triumphs over judgment. Today we'll be looking primarily at the opening section of this chapter, verses one through seven. James says, My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
And I love how James brings us back into a reminder here of who exactly he is addressing his brothers. He is speaking to one as an older brother, lovingly correcting and giving guidance, not in any way trying to be overbearing, not exerting some sort of superior authority, but one who does have authority yet is also a loving brother.
So we saw this in verse 19. After we saw such direct imperatives in verses one through 18, then we get to verse 19, where James says, Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.
So once again, reminding that he is speaking these things in love. And as we open up chapter two, this same way, he is reminding the reader that he is speaking as a brother, not as an adversary, but as one who loves those to whom he gives these instructions.
My brothers show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. Interesting thing about this, this reference to Jesus Christ. This is only the second time in his letter that he is referred to Christ by name.
It's also the last time the name of Jesus comes up only twice in the book of James. At the beginning, when James says a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and here in chapter two, reminding everybody to show no partiality as we hold to the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, our commonality is in Christ, who, by the way, was poor.
And I'll come back to that point in a moment. That's very pertinent to what it is that he is saying here, the instructions that he is giving in verses one through seven, as he is discouraging the body of believers from showing partiality, especially partiality that has to do with class.
And this is the most common kind of separation that I believe happens even within our modern churches today. The most common kind of prejudice is one of class separation. It has to do with social standing.
Now, even though we've got segregation that occurs racially in the church in America, this should not be so. But it does happen. You have your stereotypical white church or black church or Hispanic church, Vietnamese church, Korean church.
But even when you go into those congregations, some of those churches, I understand, might be ethnic because of a language barrier. So they are they're speaking Vietnamese or Spanish or Korean there because they're trying to appeal to those who only understand those languages.
I get that, but I still think that the church needs to do whatever it can to be welcoming of everybody of different languages and ethnicities and backgrounds so that we can be a body of all of these different cultural distinctions yet in one baptism and in one spirit.
So we need to do what we can to overcome these barriers and come together as as one body. But again, even even within those different segregated congregations, you will still witness discrimination happening that's based on social standing.
So like you take, for example, a Hispanic church, you'll have the rich Hispanics and the poor Hispanics, and you'll still see a segregation occurring there that is that is one of social standing. So this is why that I say it is the most common kind of prejudice that happens in the church.
This is something that I struggle with in my own flesh, and I need to be careful about the ways that I may possibly discriminate against somebody that I know is of a lower class situation than this individual over here.
I don't try to keep very close attention to the giving in our church, who it's coming from, like which families in our church are giving and how much that they are giving, because there there's a possibility in my mind that I may show favoritism toward the family that gives more money and less favoritism toward the family that doesn't give as much.
There was a situation that happened not too long ago when somebody came into our church that didn't smell very good. And it was it was one of those body odor kind of smells that you would associate with a person who is of a lower social standing, but a person who has good hygiene and takes better care of themselves doesn't have that particular odor.
And it was during the time of our greeting in church where we're walking around and shaking hands with one another. And I smelled what I did and I immediately turned around, was trying to look for where that smell was coming from and and grabbed myself almost as as quickly as I turned around.
I turned back around because I'm thinking in my mind, no, I can't do that. I'm already discriminating against this brother or sister before I've even laid eyes on them. So I don't want to find out where that is coming from.
I would rather be able to look in the faces of my entire congregation from where I'm at up at the podium, looking at everybody who needs to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ instead of saying, I need to keep my distance from that person because they don't smell good.
So this is something that in my flesh I have struggled with. And this is the kind of discrimination that is most common within the church is to discriminate against those of a lower social standing of a lower class.
We will tend to think of a person who is more middle class or upper class as having it all together. Why can't this person of a lower class be more like this middle and upper class person? I mean, they they're responsible.
You know, they've got their situation figured out. Why can't this lower class person be like them? And then we miss the reality that the middle and upper class person needs to hear the gospel as much as the lower class person does.
But we also miss the opportunity to serve those who are not as privileged. They are in our churches so that we might have an opportunity to show the love of Christ to them. And they have an opportunity to receive the love of Christ from a brother or sister.
And again, this is the way that James starts in on this chapter by addressing the church congregation as brothers, a brotherhood show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man and shabby clothing also comes in. And if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say you sit here in a good place while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or you sit down at my feet.
Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? See, that's evil to discriminate against one another in such a way, whether we are discriminating according to skin color or social class.
It is evil that we should discriminate against anyone that we should think of one person as being less than another because of what they wear on the outside. What's on the outside of themselves has nothing to do with who they are in Christ Jesus, because as we've already read previously from James in chapter one, verse nine, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and let the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes.
So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. And yet you would show the rich man more favor because of what he has adorned himself with on the outside or because of what his bank account number looks like or because of the amount of money that he is giving to the church on a regular basis.
He's giving that much because he can, because the Lord has so laid it on his heart to give that much. But the person who is poorer in your church, who is not as blessed financially, still gives of what they have and they give just as much as the rich person does, though it is not reflected in the size of the amount that they give.
Okay, makes sense. And so we need to be showing love to everyone within the body of Christ, regardless of what their social standing is. You show favoritism toward a person who is rich. You're automatically discriminating against those who are not as rich as he is.
So even if you don't deliberately discriminate against a person who is poorer, if you show favoritism toward the man who is richer, then you're already dismissing those who do not have as much as him.
And this is evil because it is a matter of the flesh. It is thinking with the heart of man rather than with the heart of God. God weighs the thoughts and intentions of the heart, not what he looks like on the outside.
Remember the exchange that happens between Samuel and God when God had sent Samuel to anoint the next king of Israel because Saul had fallen out of favor with God. So Samuel goes to the house of Jesse and Eliab, Jesse's oldest son, passes before Samuel and Samuel goes, look at this guy.
I mean, he fought in Saul's army. He was a strapping dude, a soldier. And Samuel's looking at him going, surely the Lord's anointed must be before me. And God said to him, do not consider his outward appearance, for I have rejected him.
The Lord does not see what man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. And so we must see one another just as God does, not discriminating against one another because of what we observe on the outside.
Rather, we need to be concerned with the heart of the people who come into our assemblies. And as James uses that word here, assembly, this is likely referring to a house church. And so at the house, you have the position in the home that is reserved for those who are more well-to-do.
And you have the position in the home, that of the servants, which is for those who are not as well-to-do. They sit at your feet, while the person who has the wealth has prestige. He sits at the head of the table, or he sits in the tallest chair.
The servants are down here on the floor, sitting over by the window. And so we should not be treating one another as this. We should rather welcome all in the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter says, or I'm sorry, James says in verse 6, but you have dishonored the poor man by showing favoritism toward the rich.
You have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? Now, be careful here, because if you ascribe verses 6 and 7 to every rich person, well, then you're going to discriminate against rich people.
There's a certain cultural element that is present in this warning that James gives, because see those who were Jews, particularly the merchants who were trying to get rich. And James comes back to this again a little bit later on in the letter.
They were trying to shoulder up and buddy up with the Romans, those who were rich and had power because they wanted what they had. And yet it was they who had the Romans who had all the political power.
So they're dragging the Jews and the poor into court and suing them and also stealing from the temple. And so, therefore, that's how they blaspheme God. And so these are people that James is saying you need to avoid.
And yet you're showing them the favoritism and therefore dishonoring the poor man. And that's what James was referring to with the audience whom he is addressing. And again, we need to treat one another in the Lord Jesus Christ, because this God that we worship himself was poor.
Matthew 8, 20, Jesus said, foxes have foxholes, birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. We worship a Lord God who in his incarnation lived as a poor man. As Paul puts it in Philippians 2, he took on the form of a servant, a form of the lowest class person in society, a servant.
That was who Jesus was when he came. He was among the poorest of the poor. And yet it is by his death and his resurrection that we become fellow heirs of the kingdom of God. Even the poorest among us are going to be fellow heirs in the kingdom of God.
So why should we show any discrimination against them? Would we have also discriminated against the Lord Christ who would have come into our midst as a poor servant? We read about Christ in Isaiah chapter 53, who has believed what he has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. This is Jesus that Isaiah is talking about.
It's prophetic, but he's describing Christ. He had no appearance of himself that we would have looked at Jesus and gone, man, look at that guy. What a handsome blonde haired dude with a white robe and a purple sash around him.
OK, nobody would have looked at Jesus in the first century and thought that even though most of our depictions of Christ look that way. When Judas betrayed Christ to the to the officials in the temple, he said to them, here is the that this is the man that you should arrest.
The one I kiss is the man. Jesus was even indistinguishable from his other disciples. And Judas had a signal to show which one was Christ. The one he kissed would be the one that needed to be arrested.
So there was nothing about Christ that even made him stand out from anyone else. He was despised and rejected by men. Isaiah 53 3. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces.
He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to his own way. That's what happens whenever we sin, we turn to our own way.
Whenever we are prejudice against someone else, it's because we're turning to our own way. We are not thinking with the mind of God. We're thinking with the mind of the flesh. Whenever we indulge in our in our sinful passions and lusts and desires, all of those things are being done out of our own way.
It is not the way of God. It is the way of an evil heart. And yet, though we have gone astray and turned every one of us to his own way, the Lord has laid on him on Christ, the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent.
So he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people, and they made his grave with the although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
And again, this is all prophecy. Isaiah is saying that his grave would be with a rich man, which is exactly where Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a borrowed tomb of somebody else.
He had no lot of his own. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand out of the anguish of his soul.
He shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge. Shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.
Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. That is our God who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So since this is the God that we worship, this Christ who made himself nothing so that through him we would have everything, so we should also be a servant of all as he was a servant to us.
Jesus said to his disciples, if you want to be great in the kingdom of God, you must be a servant of all. So let us not think great of ourselves and let us not think great of another person just because they would have a certain social standing, just because they would be of a certain ethnicity or race, just because they speak a certain language or they are articulate or they just look beautiful.
Whatever the reason might be, let us not show any discrimination toward any person, favoritism toward one or less of another by their appearance or by their social class or any other reason that we would discriminate.
For the Lord is not discriminated against us, and we worship a God who became a man of sorrows for our sake so that we might be the children of his glory. Our wonderful and great God, how beautiful you are and how generously and merciful you have dealt with us.
Though we had discriminated against even you when you came to us as a carpenter, as a poor man, and we esteemed you not, yet you laid your life down for us on the cross so that through this death, we might become the righteousness of God.
And through your resurrection, we would become heirs to your eternal life. And so I pray that knowing this, and this is the God whom we worship, that we would no longer discriminate against others, but realize everyone needs to hear this gospel, rich or poor, black or white, this language or that language.
Everyone needs to hear the gospel and so be transformed, rescued from sin and death into the perfect and humble life of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.
Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.