Matt Chandler - Judgment, Mercy

Here’s an important note as we get started: if you lived in a home or grew up in a home where a father is good and gracious, his warnings or invitations are intertwined with love. As a father, when I warn my children, I’m actually inviting them into something better. I’m warning them not to flex my power, but to keep them safe. «Don’t do this.» Why? Because I want you to be safe. «Don’t do this.» Why? Because I want you to walk in joy. «Don’t do this.» Why? Because if you do this, it will bring me displeasure, and you don’t want me displeased, right? We don’t warn because we have power to flex; we warn as loving fathers because we are inviting them into something better. That’s what’s happening here. So, there are a lot of warnings, but within those warnings, there’s an invitation to something better.

Now, what we’re looking at here is what was called in Chapter One the law of love, the law of liberty. This is what Jesus demands of his followers—not just suggests. We don’t like to talk that way about Jesus, right? We want Jesus to have fairy wings, sprinkle dust on us, and lead us on demand, suggesting things. Well, you cannot overpreach justification by faith alone and grace alone; however, King Jesus makes demands. This is a summary of those demands: to love your neighbor, specifically those who are most poor and vulnerable, as yourselves, and to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, above and beyond your love for the world. That’s the royal command.

What James is writing about, what happens in the church he is addressing and in the church I help pastor, is that there are those in the congregation being deceived about whether they are Christians or not and are inadequately fulfilling either one of these obligations. They are not serious about loving the Lord, and they definitely aren’t serious about loving their neighbors. Consequently, in this space, the name of Christ is being tarnished, the church’s witness is lost, and the gladness of heart of those present is being drained.

Tim Keller weighs in on why this is such a significant issue: when you lack love for your neighbor, especially the poor and vulnerable, you reveal a deeper problem. Tim Keller pastors Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He said in his book *Gospel in Life*: «A merely religious person who believes God will favor him because of his morality and respectability will ordinarily have contempt for the outcast. ‘I worked hard to get where I am, and so can anyone else’—that is the language of the moralist heart. ‘I am only where I am by the sheer and unmerited mercy of God; I am completely equal with all other people’—that is the language of the Christian heart. A sensitive social conscience and a life poured out in deeds of mercy to the needy are the inevitable signs of a person who has grasped the doctrines of grace.

So, if you want to see who truly understands grace and the mercy of God, look to those who care for and are concerned about the needy around them. To be blind, unmoved, and static towards the needy and broken is to expose in your heart a failure to understand the true Gospel message. Works do not save us; we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. But those of us who are saved see the world differently. We’re not perfect, but we are making progress. And where there is no progress, there should be questions. Again, it would be unloving for me to encourage your veneer of lostness, so I’m just going to refuse to do that today.

This brings us to applying this to partiality, which is the next part of the book of James. Now, let’s talk about how we’re going to proceed: we’re going to read 13 verses. I want you to try to find the what, the why, and then the better way. That’s my outline: the what, the why, the better way. As we read, you should be able to recognize all three of those elements.

So with that said, let’s start in verse 1 of James Chapter 2. Here’s the what: the what is straightforward; it’s right there in the first sentence: „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 fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place, ’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there, sit down at my feet, ’ we will come back to what happens after that. But here’s the what: don’t show partiality.

If you want to analyze partiality, positively speaking, it is favoritism. You play favorites, and according to this text, those favorites are based on the outward appearance of a man or a woman. When we discuss this, it’s not only favoritism but also discrimination. The what is clear: don’t show partiality.