WWUTT 272 Breaking the Whole Law?

The Bible is clear, being prejudiced is sin. If we show love toward one neighbor, but disregard another neighbor, then we have broken the law that God has said to love your neighbor as yourself. When we understand the text.

You are listening to When We Understand the Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God. For questions and comments send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

And greetings, everybody. Hey, I've got good news. I did not watch the debate last night. So this is going to be a political free Bible study for you today. What I did get the chance to go do was attend the For the Church conference going on at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City yesterday and today.

I'm not able to attend today. I've got some other engagements going on, but I was able to go last night. Thank you to my wife who encouraged me to go. And I listened to a sermon from President Jason K. Allen and another president, Daniel Aiken, who's the president of Southeastern Seminary.

Dr. Allen spoke on the pastor as preacher and Dr. Aiken spoke on the pastor as family man to terrific messages. And in fact, I felt like the sermons could have been longer. I could have sat there and listened to them preach all night.

I thought it was absolutely fabulous. Hey, I want to send a shout out to Mark, Jake and Jason, whom I met there at the conference last night from Concord Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Missouri. They watch what videos and listen to the podcast and show the videos to their youth group, which is awesome.

Great to meet you guys. You know, sitting here on this side of the microphone, I don't interact with a whole lot of people except for on Twitter. So to get to the be able to get to the conference last night and meet you was a real pleasure for me.

Hey, Jason, did you get the chance to score some of those Mondo cookies that they had at the Q &A? I noticed that Jason likes cookies, probably because his name is Jason Grubbs. OK, let's get to the Bible study here, James chapter two, starting in verse eight.

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 you 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. Going back to verse eight again here. If you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, the royal law, it's the decree of the king. OK, this is not just words on a page that we are reading here.

It's not just a law that the Israelites came up with so that they would have a system of government by which they would operate. This is the decree of God. He sat on his throne and he issued his law and it was written down for his people to follow and obey.

When we have the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, and it says that Jesus went up on a mountain and he sat down and his disciples came to him. The picture that Matthew is meaning to create there is one of a king sitting on his throne and speaking the law.

And then his scribes are there writing down what the law says. So Matthew is showing Jesus as a king issuing the king's decrees. And that's what we have there in the Sermon on the Mount. So everything that we have written for us in scripture is the royal law, according to the decree of God.

And he has said Leviticus 19, 18, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment? And he said, you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The second is like it. You will love, you shall love your neighbor as yourself on these two commandments hinge all of the law and the prophets. Because everything that we have written down in the law is directing us toward loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving our neighbor is ourself.

You take the 10 commandments. The first four commandments are vertical. I am God. You don't get another one. Don't worship anything that looks like me. Don't mess with my name. Don't mess with my day.

Okay. Those are the first four commandments. That's the Gabe Hughes version there. And then the first of the horizontal commandments is honor your father and your mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not covet. There's the 10 commandments. The first four are vertical commandments. The next six are horizontal commandments. This is referred to as the first and second table of the law.

So the first table of the law is you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If you're doing that, then you're obeying those first four commandments. The second table of the law is you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If you're doing that, you're obeying those next six commandments. And this was the point that Paul was making to the Romans in Romans 13, verse 10, where he says that love is the fulfilling of the law.

If you are loving your neighbor as yourself, then you're not going to be doing any of those other things that would inflict harm upon your neighbor, whether that is committing murder, or adultery, or stealing, or lying.

All of these things would not only be committing sin against God, but it is committing sin against a neighbor. And so the first and second table of the law, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So if you are fulfilling the law, and this ties into what we were talking about yesterday where James was saying, show no partiality to anyone. If you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here at a good place while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

So this in keeping with what we talked about yesterday, James saying that if you keep the royal law, the decree of the king, that you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and you 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. Now there's a double meaning here because you could think that you were keeping the law, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if there's one neighbor over here that you're not going to love, you're only keeping that law partially, and so therefore you're breaking the whole law. There might be neighbors that you do love, but if there is a neighbor that you're showing partiality to or you are dismissing or you are prejudice against, then you are breaking the whole law, which says you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Doesn't matter whether you love one, you dismiss another, you're breaking that law. Likewise, it is breaking the whole law of God, which is what James goes on to explain as he says in verse 11, 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 if you do not show love to your neighbor, you have also broken the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Because God has said that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So if you're not loving your neighbor, then you're also not loving God. You've broken the whole law. It's the Apostle John who said in 1st John 4 20, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

One of the evidences that we have been transformed by saving faith by the grace of God that we have tasted, the saving grace of God, is that we will be showing the love that God shows us to other people, that love and that patience and that grace and that mercy that God has poured out upon us will be reflected in our lives in the way that we show that same love to other people.

If you have a person who says he loves God, but he does not show love to the brotherhood, then it's likely that he's lying. He is a liar who does not truly love God because he does not love the people of God.

My friends, you show love toward the people of God by going to church. Where else do you have an opportunity to display love toward the fellow saints, the brothers and sisters in Christ, except in the church, which is the body of Christ?

Describing the members of the church this way in Romans 12, 5, we though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. So if you love God, if you have been changed in Christ, if you are part of his body, then you will be part of his body.

You will love the members of his body. If you are resistant to participation, to worship, to growth with the body of Christ, if your heart is hardened toward that, then you're not part of his body and there's a good possibility you're not actually saved.

If you've ever read the little book from Mark Dever, What is a Healthy Church? At the very beginning of the book, he talks about how when he will go into seminaries and colleges and he will talk to the students there, he often begins his speech this way.

He says, if you are not attending church, you're probably not saved. And he says, you can bet that there are some students there that get pretty riled up by that comment. I made a similar comment in one of our what videos.

And in fact, it is one of the most contested what videos that I have put together. I get more complaints about that video than any other video. I'll go ahead and play it for you here. If you call yourself a Christian, but you don't attend church, you're probably going to hell.

What? No! Church is not what makes a person a Christian. Just because you stand in a garage doesn't make you a car, right? So going to church doesn't make me a Christian. Yeah, that's true. But being a Christian means that you're part of the body of Christ.

And what is the body of Christ? Ephesians 5 .23 says it plainly. The body of Christ is the church. See, when Christ died on the cross for our sins, he reconciled us back to God. That word reconcile is a beautiful word that means to accept that which was not previously desired.

Because of our sin, we did not desire God, and he did not desire us in that state. But because he loves us, he sent his son Jesus to die in our place. That righteous sacrifice makes us acceptable in the eyes of a holy God.

As it says in Titus 2 .4, he purified for himself a people for his own possession. So Christ not only reconciled us to God, he reconciled us to God's people. Sin sets us against God and against one another.

Christ repairs those relationships and makes us one. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another, which is Romans 12 .5. Christian understand something. If you say you're a Christian and desire to be with Christ, then you should also desire to be part of his body.

If you don't want to be part of the body, you're probably not a Christian, which means you're still dead in your sins and you are not saved. Hebrews 10 .25 says do not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

So let's do that and be faithful to the body of Christ when we understand the text. Whenever the Bible talks about loving brothers or sisters, it's specifically talking about the church, loving the members of those who are in the church, your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Whenever the Bible talks about loving your neighbor, that's everybody. So brother and sister church context, neighbor or everybody or everyone is everybody. Okay, we have, we have it said to us in Galatians chapter six, verse 10.

So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. So that is where our love is directed first toward the brothers and sisters who are in Christ.

That's where our attention needs to be first. And then as we have opportunity, we show goodness and charity to everybody. The command to love your neighbor is therefore a command to love everyone. And we show love to everyone, by the way, by preaching the gospel.

If you withhold the gospel from those who need to hear it, which is everybody, the saints and the lost, then you cannot say that you love your neighbor for you would withhold from them the life saving message of Christ.

And so here, James is giving direction that we show partiality to nobody, whether you're talking about your neighbor or the brothers and sisters in Christ. Everyone needs to hear the gospel. Everyone needs to be shown charity and love.

We withhold the gospel from nobody. We show favoritism toward no one, because again, showing favoritism toward one is to disregard another. So we need to see all equally just as Christ looks at all of us equally.

Nobody is going to receive privilege in heaven because of our social status on earth. We are all the same before God, all filthy, rotten sinners desperately in need of the love of Christ Jesus, who covers a multitude of sins, who became sin, who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God, as we also talked about yesterday.

For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I'm reading from Galatians chapter three, by the way. So, you know, even even in our culture, we can see we can show favoritism toward a man over a woman or show favoritism toward a woman over a man. But in Christ, there is no male or female, because the same treasure in heaven and fellow heirs of the kingdom of God is extended toward men as well as women, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as free.

In fact, the slave gets exalted in heaven because they receive such a great standing in the kingdom of God that they did not have on earth. And the man who on earth had great social status and was probably a ruler or somebody who had great prestige is therefore humbled in the kingdom of God because he does not have that kind of prestige in the kingdom.

He is in the same place that the poor man is. We all receive the same, according to Christ Jesus, fellow heirs in the kingdom of God. All right. I'm trying to get back to James here. And somehow I've ended up in Philippians.

Hang on, let me turn my pages. OK, here we go. James chapter two. So James goes on to say, verse 12. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. In Christ, we have been set free to obey God and do what pleases him.

Before Christ set us free from our bondage of sin and death, we could not please God. So we have the freedom now to please God. It is through the gospel that we have been set free from sin. And so the law of liberty is that we are now free to obey God in such a way that is pleasing to God where previously we could not.

Now, verse 13, for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. I am reminded of the instruction that Jesus gives in Matthew chapter six on how to pray.

He says, pray then like this. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others, their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. This is another way that we show partiality when we withhold forgiveness from someone else because we would rather have bitterness toward them rather than showing the forgiveness of God that was shown to us because of our sin.

If you cannot show forgiveness to your neighbor, to your brother or sister in Christ, then it's likely because you have never received the forgiveness of God and you are still dead in your sins and your trespasses.

God is quite plain on this point, that if you do not forgive your brother, he will not forgive you. Judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. We have nothing to fear of judgment.

If we have been shown mercy, then we will show mercy to one another. My friends, no longer be prejudiced against anyone else, but pour out love lavishly as our Heavenly Father has poured love upon us, has lavished love upon us.

As it says in 1 John 3 .1, how great the love the Father that he has lavished his love upon us, and we can be called the children of God. And so that is what we are. As children of God, let us show the traits of God, love and mercy and grace to everyone equally as God has shown it to us.

Our great God and King, we thank you for this love that we have received through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And if we have been set free from the bondage of sin and death, then let us freely love one another with that same grace and love and mercy that was shown to us by Christ on the cross.

How great a thing it is that Christ has done this for us. How great a King he is that he would love us in this way. So let us obey his commands and therefore show the love of God in the way that we love one another.

And we pray and ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand The Text.