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?
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 2:1–7 (NKJV)
This is easy to say but hard to do.
We are marinated in a culture of status. This is most obvious in television commercials, where we’re told we must have the right clothing, or the latest phone, or a cool car to be accepted. At least we no longer have to smoke the right cigarette.
We agree on something.
This is also why some schools have uniforms—to prevent students from displaying their status through their clothing. This extreme approach counters the brutal way that teens often treat each other.
You don’t have to tell me about that; I’ve seen it plenty.
Adults are more restrained than teens, but the sin DNA is still there. We tend to discriminate, though often subconsciously.
“Sin DNA.” What a strange way to describe it.
I didn’t invent it. It’s just a colloquialism that emphasizes that our sinful nature is innate.
Here, James commands us to fight this sinful tendency and to give equal treatment to all. To bolster his argument, James points out that the rich tend to be oppressors. Note that “drag you into courts,” is about civil lawsuits. Criminal cases are “dragged into courts” by the government.
In Biblical times, oppression was normally how people got rich. There was no patent law and no industrialization. The modern ways with which one person can legitimately create great wealth didn’t exist.
Instead, all production, and thus all wealth, came from manual labor. For people to get rich, they had to garner the wealth produced by the labors of others. Good management can help, but only to a limited extent.
And people tend to fight over money, the same as how students today battle for status in school—except that with adults, this often ends up in court.
Wealth may work differently now, but the principle is the same. It is possible to generate wealth through inventions and industrialization that don’t take advantage of other people, but that’s not usually the case.
Yeah, I can think of some rich folks who “deserve” to be rich because of their contribution to our civilization, but it definitely isn’t most of them.
Even for the ones who, as you say, “deserve” wealth, the sinful attitudes are the same. So James issues a stern warning.
My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.
What does he mean by “partiality”?
Rather than try to pick apart the Greek, I think its meaning is best understood from the examples he gives.
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.
But then James really lowers the boom. He notes that the poor have a spiritual advantage.
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?
That feels like a threat.
I get that feeling too. James is warning his readers to beware; they could miss out. Not paying attention to what someone has to say, just because he doesn’t have status, can be a big mistake. Those poor people whom you might think you can ignore are actually heirs to the kingdom.
Seems like everything James says runs counter to popular cultural attitudes.
Actually, there’s a popular book titled Christian Counter-Culture that gets deeply into this point. Curiously, it’s not about James, but about the Sermon on the Mount.
Why shouldn’t the same themes run though everything in your religion?
Exactly. More on this tomorrow.
