In James 2.1-13, James is showing the need for total obedience. We must speak and act and keep speaking and keep acting as those that are under God’s law, God’s standards for life. Because this is God’s law, it brings a wonderful liberty, like a train that runs better when on it’s tracks, your life will be better if you run on the tracks God has set before you which here is not showing partiality and keeping the law.
Total obedience is the key.
If we ever want to grow in faith, complete and consistent obedience is needed.
What a heavy burden.
Can you imagine if this was it?
Would this message preach in a synagogue? I think it would.
Do this, don’t do that. Keep the law. Nothing distinctly Christian about that, is there.
The only way to keep the law is to keep the law, every last iota of it, every last t crossed and i dotted. Every single thing, every single time.
This is crushingly bad news, isn’t it. Can you feel the weight and hopelessness of this? That you must keep the entire law and not ever love anyone less than anyone else even though it is so natural and fleshly to love some more than others, to esteem some more highly than others, to discriminate both positively and negatively.
It would be easy to read this passage in James and feel more burdened wouldn’t it; you need to be so careful to love each and every person equally because if you don’t you are sending yourself to hell.
Wow, that’s heavy. Can you do that?
Can you honestly say that you can look at any person, from any place, in any condition, and love them? That you can guarantee that whoever walks in the church door, in whatever condition, you are going to unconditionally love them without any thought of oh no, no thanks?
If we could do this, we would do this, but we don’t, do we.
It’s so easy to read texts like this and put ourselves in the wrong position, isn’t it. So we read this and we think well, yes, people discriminate against me, I am the victim here, come Lord Jesus and vindicate me!
Or, we go all the way to the other end of the scale and think oh yes, I am fair and equitable in my love, I freely give of myself to any and all that ask me without hesitation or discrimination.
But, in truth, in this text, we are those showing discrimination, we are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors, we are those whose actions are leading us away from God and not towards Him. We are those who are committing the sin of partiality. That’s bad news, isn’t it.
But do you know what? There was One who loved like this. Who looks at the heart and not the outer appearance. There was One who loved without partiality.
There was One who loved, and loves, Jew, Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, rich, poor, male, female, old, young, you, and me.
There was One who kept every last iota of the law and fulfilled it.
One who wants to transfer this earned righteousness to you simply by His grace through faith.
Of course we’re talking about Jesus.
Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, because He has carried it.
The law of liberty that we are under is still a law to be obeyed, but because He has saved you and you are full of love for Him, you are under the law of liberty, you put yourself under that law, and you seek to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and you seek to love your neighbour as yourself.
You know He has fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law, you know that He has given you the righteousness He earned and when God looks at you He sees the righteousness of Christ, so you take this truth, you internalise it, you take the amazing, saving, life changing, life giving grace and you put that to work.
You don’t work to love people to be saved,
you work to love people because you are saved.
You cannot keep the law to earn your way to God, and as we work through James we must must remember this; we cannot and must not try to do all of these things through compulsion as those under law.
He already did this.
“There was One who loved, and loves, Jew, Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, rich, poor, male, female, old, young, you, and me.”
Follow His example because you love Him.
James Travis 