James 2:1-9

SINS OF PARTIALITY, ETC.

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

James 2:1. Have not.—Better, “hold not.” Webster translates, “Without showing degrees of deference, maintain ye your faith.” The Lord of glory.—There are no words in the Greek answering to “the Lord,” but the insertion is necessary in order to complete the English sentence. Some would, however, give to the genitive, τῆς δόξης, only the qualifying power of an adjective, and render either “glorious faith,” or “faith of the glory revealed by our Lord Jesus Christ.” Plumptre explains thus: “In believing in Him who was emphatically a sharer in the eternal glory (John 17:5), who had now returned to that glory, men ought to feel the infinite littleness of all the accidents of wealth and rank that separate man from man.” Respect of persons.—Greek is a plural, “in respectings of persons”; showing preferences for one person rather than another.

James 2:2. Assembly.—Greek, συναγωγή. The only place in the New Testament where the Jewish word is used for a Christian congregation. In the Jewish synagogue the people sat according to their rank, and members of the same trade sat together. James regards this as unadvisable in Christian congregations. The word ἐκκλησία, translated “Church,” was preferred for Christian assemblies. It implied that those attending were called out from the rest of mankind, and united by new and spiritual bonds. Gold ring.—Better, “a man golden-ringed, in bright apparel.” Gorgeous apparel, splendid in colour and ornament. Gay, James 2:3. Vile.—Dirty, squalid, the sign of poverty, or of some mean form of occupation.

James 2:3. Have respect.—Give special consideration and attention to. Under my footstool.—That is, “on the floor at my feet.” “In practice the seats most coveted among the Jews were those near the end of the synagogue which looked towards Jerusalem, and at which stood the Ark, that contained the sacred scroll of the law.”

James 2:4. Partial.—Same word as “waver,” “doubt,” of chap. James 1:6. “Are ye not divided in your mind?” Part wishing to be loyal to Christ, and part wishing to gain the favour of the well-to-do man. “Have ye not doubted” whether in Christ rich and poor really are one? Judges of evil thoughts.—Better, “become judges having evil thoughts, which altogether bias your judgment.” “Evil-thinking judges.”

James 2:5. Rich.—That is, “to be rich.” The poor in this world, or so far as this world is concerned, are referred to. A true estimate of poverty and riches is suggested. Heirs of the kingdom.—Some of the better manuscripts read, “heirs of the promise.”

James 2:6. Despised.—Done dishonour to. Their acts expressed a cherished contempt. Oppress you.—Lord it over you καταδυναστεύουσιν act the potentate over you. Draw you.—Drag you. It is not that a particular rich member does this, but that he belongs to a class that does it.

James 2:7. They.—The rich class, largely composed of Sadducees. Ye are called.—Or, “which was called over you [at baptism]” (Matthew 28:19).

James 2:9. Commit sin.—Alford, “It is sin that ye are working.” Convinced.—Convicted by.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 2:1

Right and Wrong Respect of Persons.—It has well been said of St. James, that “he manifests a straightforward good sense which scatters at a stroke the precepts of hypocrisy, and the illusions of religious conceit. He assails the characteristic faults of the Jewish mind; the religious arrogance, presumption, and laxity; the asperity of mutual crimination, and the readiness to assume an intolerant jurisdiction over other men’s conduct and opinions.” How little practical influence a merely ritual religion, a religion of professions and sentiments, might be was shown in the assemblies of the Jewish Christians. Class distinctions were unduly recognised; the rich worshippers were flattered, and the poor neglected or insulted. In a Christian community there should be the equality of a common Divine life, for that life a rich man can have in no fuller and no healthier measures than a poor man can have. By the term “respect of persons” we understand, showing special favour to some, not on the basis of good judgment, or from a desire to do right, but on the ground of personal favour, or to gain some personal advantage. It is therefore again and again asserted that there is no “respect of persons with God”; it is again and again urged that “respect of persons” is a grievous sin in judges and magistrates. St. James points out that it is a most unworthy and most mischievous spirit, when it gets into Christian communities. But it is important that we should recognise a right “respect of persons” as well as a wrong. So long as there are varieties of station, varieties of relationship, and varieties of ability among human beings, there will be spheres for a proper respect of persons. The child ought to respect his parent; the servant ought to respect his lord; the workman ought to respect his master; the poor ought to respect the rich; the citizen ought to respect his governors. But then it is equally true, though less recognised, that the parent ought to respect the child, the lord the servant, the master the workman, the rich the poor, and the governor the citizen. It was just in this mutual respect that the social system of China failed. It is in this that the social system of Christianity claims universal acceptance. In China five relations are recognised, but in each case exclusive attention is given to the claims of the superior on the inferior; the inferior is not conceived as having any rights against the superior. The five relations are: sovereign and minister; father and son; husband and wife; elder and younger brothers; and friends. Christianity must not be thought of as a force interfering with social relationships, and affecting those signs of mutual respect which materially help to preserve the order of society. It does give a man such self-respect as will keep him from adulation or flattery of anybody, and from servility in his dealings with anybody. St. James, however, is not dealing with general social relations; he is writing to Judæo Christians concerning what is befitting for them in their specially Christian relationships. They are brought into fellowship on conditions which altogether override all social distinctions. Neither intellect, nor wealth, nor manners, nor clothes give a man special claim or place in a Christian community. Spiritual life alone gives a man a place, and spiritual gifts alone give a man a position. Within Christian communities persons are respected for their piety and ministry. The Duke of Wellington was right when, kneeling beside a poorly clad villager at the communion-rail, he quietly reproved the verger who wanted to remove the poor man, by saying, “Let him alone; we are all equal here.”

I. Respect of persons is wrong when it puts circumstances before character.—When it shows deference to a man for what he has rather than for what he is. It is the common and every-day estimate that we make of men. The workman judges a man by his ability to find him work. The business man values men by their purchasing power. The poor are unduly impressed by fine clothes. Women are constantly in danger of estimating others by their appearances. It is not possible, nor would it be right, to change altogether the relationships of the week on the Sunday. We should not expect men to be otherwise toward each other at Christian worship than they are towards each other in daily business. St. James proposes no such unreasonable thing. The proper respect due to one another is as necessary in the house of God as anywhere else. Servility is very different from respect. The assumption of St. James is that the man with the gold ring, dressed in fine clothing, is wanting to make an impression, to proclaim his superiority; and what St. James reproves is the failure to deal with such a man according to Christian principles. Christians ought never to be carried away by outward appearances, by circumstances of wealth, by chance of getting personal advantages from the well-to-do. And yet what striking illustrations of the evil St. James denounces can be found in the pew system of our modern churches, especially where the support of worship is directly dependent on the gifts of the people. The man who can pay is everywhere thought more of than the man who can pray. Up to quite recent times there were separate, and specially hard and uncomfortable, seats for the poor in many churches and chapels. They had to sit in a low place. St. James calls this sort of thing wrong, because:

(1) it reveals bad, self-seeking dispositions in those who show such servility—“they are partial, and judges of evil thoughts”;
(2) it shows that they formed no true estimate of character, for these showy rich men were just the very men likely to become their oppressors and persecutors; and

(3) the treatment of the poor, contrasted with this treatment of the rich, convicted them of sin against the foundation law of the second table—“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Such servility always shows low conditions of spiritual life; for when we go past our own circumstances to concern ourselves with our own characters, we are pretty sure to be keen to recognise cultured character in others, and to be indifferent to mere show of circumstance.

II. Respect of persons is right when it puts character above circumstances.—When it shows deference to a man for what he is rather than for what he has (see James 2:5). That may make us attentive and obliging to poor people as well as rich. Nay, it is quite possible that we may find more call to attention to the poor than to the rich. For it is the compensation of those in lowly estate that they have less to hinder the progress of soul culture, and so often reach heights of Christian attainment, and Christian power of service, that are altogether beyond the rich. But servility to the pious poor would be as mischievous as servility to the showy rich. Let respect be given wherever it is due. But do not be carried away by appearances. “The Lord looketh not on the outward appearance. The Lord looketh on the heart.” And so should we who are taught of Christ and bear the Christian name.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

James 2:1. Worship of the Modern Golden Calf.—True reverence and submission are in no way condemned by this scripture; but their excess and gross extreme, the preference for vulgar wealth, the adulation of success, the worship, in short, of some new golden calf. Respecting persons is a sin of the rich, who despise the poor; of judges, who are influenced in their decision by the status of prisoners; and of the poor, who are constantly tempted to timeserving.

No Classes within Christian Churches.—Right relations of classes in society involve mutual respect. But Christianity recognises no classes. It brings men into the unity of a common new life. There are no classes in the children of one family. The redeemed are restored sons in the family of God. Christianity makes new relationships on the basis of the new family life. It keeps its “respect” for cultured and sanctified character, rather than for external conditions.

James 2:2. The Weakness of the Early Church.—We must not judge the early Christian Church too harshly. The appearance of a stranger in costly apparel, with a gold ring, however common a mark simply of wealth in later times, would in those days cause a far greater and more painful surprise in an obscure and probably timorous assemblage of Christians than at this distant period we are willing to believe. The time of persecution had already commenced, and upon his testimony how many issues might depend! Anxious to propitiate the favour of the great man, we can easily imagine that every consistent courtesy would be offered to him. The prominently jewelled ring, itself an insignium of the equestrian and senatorial order, would instantly announce the rank of the visitor. Many of these rings are preserved in the national and Continental collections; they are solid, tapering, and of massive gold, with a large jewel, often an onyx or jasper cameo on the face. Some of these specimens weigh nearly an ounce. The gems are often engraved with magical devices, as charms of talismanic power, or valedictory inscriptions for the wearer. Others, like Hannibal’s famous ring, contain a secret recess, in his instance filled with poison. Such ornaments were both cumbersome and costly, so much so that a Roman writer ridicules an enervated fop by stating that,—

“Charged with light summer rings, his fingers sweat,
Unable to sustain a gem of weight.”

James 2:4. The Sin of Partiality.—In the common intercourse of life it cannot but be that men have preferences for one person over another. This, indeed, is the basis of the selections on which human relationships rest. We come into life unions because of our partialities. The sin of partiality is determined by

(1) the occasion,
(2) the way in which it finds expression. Class partialities are wrong. Sect partialities are wrong. Partialities are always wrong when they lead us to do injustice, by giving to one what is due to another, or by withholding from any what is his due. Within the Christian Church, where all should stand in the equality of brotherhood in Christ, partiality must always be a source of bickerings, jealousies, and heart-burnings.

The World’s Standard.—The, world must always measure by its own standard, and consider poverty a curse, just as it looks on pain and trouble as evil. The peril of organised Christianity is unduly estimating those who can pay.

James 2:5. Poverty and Piety.—“There are no gains without pains, and no pains without gains.” Our Lord taught that, relative to the religious life, the rich were placed at some very grave disadvantages. It is but the truth involved in this teaching, that those who are poor in this world are at advantage in relation to the religious life. It must, however, be kept in mind that the cares of the poor, their painful efforts to obtain a livelihood, and the lack of cultured intelligence, provide serious hindrances to piety. There is not much to choose between poor and rich in respect of occupation and worldly care, but the kind of occupations of the rich are more inimical to the religious life and spirit than those of the poor. They tend to nourish self-reliance and self-satisfaction, and so draw men’s minds and hearts away from God. True religion—the religion of Christ—proposes to culture into perfection man’s whole nature, but it finds one side of man’s nature specially neglected, and it puts its strongest force into it. The passive graces (characteristic of woman) flourish in the soil of dependence; and that is the habitual attitude of the poor. True, the strain of poverty often makes men bitter and hard; but where there is the religious sense, the poor have always been found noble examples of piety, spirituality, and service. “Blessed are the poor,” when poverty of circumstance is joined with “poverty of spirit,” that keeps the soul open and receptive.

Powerful Men from the Ranks of the Poor.—Moses was the son of a poor Levite; Gideon was a thresher; David was a shepherd-boy; Amos was a herdsman; the Apostles were “ignorant and unlearned.” The reformer Zwingle emerged from a shepherd’s hut among the Alps. Melancthon, the great theologian of the Reformation, was a workman in an armourer’s shop. Martin Luther was the child of a poor miner. Carey, who originated the plan of translating the Bible into the language of the millions of Hindostan, was a shoemaker in Northampton. Dr. Morrison, who translated the Bible into the Chinese language, was a last-maker in Newcastle. Dr. Milne was a herd-boy in Aberdeenshire. Dr. Adam Clarke was the child of Irish cottars. John Foster was a weaver. Andrew Fuller was a farm-servant. William Jay of Bath was a stonemason.

James 2:6. Good and Bad among the Rich.—The denunciations of the rich by our Lord and by His disciples may be seriously misunderstood and misused. They are when they are employed to support class enmities, and to excite prejudices against the rich, and to hinder them from accepting the religious life. The conditions of society in the time of our Lord need to be fully understood and wisely estimated. Then the rich were self-satisfied Pharisees or cynical Sadducees, and one of the grave disabilities of the age arose from the arrogance, masterfulness, and injustice of the rich. But even then there were good and bad among the rich. There was a Barnabas as well as a Dives, a Joseph of Arimathæa as well as a Herod. Let severe reproaches come upon those who are rich and bad. Let the Divine acceptance and human respect come to all those who are rich and good.

I. The bad among the rich are not those who have riches or acquire riches, but those who trust in riches.—There are many persons who are born into the possession of wealth. From no point of view can this be regarded as any reproach to them. It simply makes the set of human conditions which are to provide the discipline of their lives. Character has to be won under these conditions, call them conditions of privilege, or of disability, as we may please. There are many who acquire wealth by their genius, perseverance, or by fortunate circumstances. They need not be envied; character has been made or spoiled in the getting of the riches; and now the great question is—How do they stand related to the riches they have acquired? Our Lord repeated His saying so as to make His reference quite clear—“How hardly shall they that trust in riches enter the kingdom!” It is the trusting in, not the having, that always has made, and still makes, the bad rich man.

II. The bad among the rich are not those who are rich, but those who will be, are determined to be, rich.—When a man forces his way to get riches

(1) he can have no spirit of humility and submission before God;
(2) he is very likely to do shameful wrong to his fellow-men; and
(3) he is sure to “fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts.” There is such a thing as being “rich” toward God.

James 2:8. The Law of Human Relations.—Very remarkable is the insight which our Divine Lord showed in dealing with the revealed law of God. He went behind all formal commands to the essential principle. Love God, and you will do everything right, because love will be the constraint of obedience. There really is no need of a second law. One is only stated in accommodation to human weakness. Loving our neighbour as ourselves is involved in loving God with all our heart. We must love whosoever God loves. We cannot help loving those who stand in the same relation to God as we do. Observe, however, that the claim of the Divine relation is not precisely the same as the human relation. We are not to love God as ourselves. We are not to love our neighbour with all our mind and soul. God stands absolutely first and alone. Our relation to Him is unique, and all-inclusive. A whole devotion of the whole self to God is consistent with all due service of others. But what we give to God may be shared with none. His sacrifice is a whole burnt-offering. There is a careful limitation in the command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is not “as you love God.” It is “as you love yourself.” But “yourself” comes after God, and can stand in no rivalry with Him. We must love ourselves consistently with supreme love to God. We must love our neighbour consistently with supreme love to God. There is a certain subtlety in St. James’s reference to this law. He hints that our love to self sets us continually upon efforts to serve self; and if we love our neighbour as we love ourselves, that love will continually set us upon efforts to serve them. True love is always, and everywhere, the inspiration of service. Show how this “royal law” seeks to get applications in the family, business, social, and church spheres. We can never meet aright our obligations to our neighbour until we can be said to love him so as to take a personal interest in his well-being.

James 2:8. The Royal Law.—After rebuking partiality, St. James goes on to lay down the rule of the believer’s duty to his fellow-men. In the few words of this most comprehensive law, we have the essence of the second table of the Decalogue. The Christian’s duty is to cherish towards every man a true kindliness. “As thyself;” as much in degree would be impossible; but as really, as constantly, as persistently in spite of ill-deserving. We do not exactly love ourselves, but we care for ourselves, we sympathise with ourselves; and without the smallest sentimentalism, in the homeliest reality, we might do the like toward our fellowmen. And to do this is, in the full Scriptural meaning, to love our neighbour as ourself. The law which bids us do so seems all our duty to our brethren in humanity; for once the genuine principle of unselfish kindliness is implanted in us by God’s Spirit, that principle will prompt every right deed, and permit no wrong deed. Prejudice rather than selfishness is the main obstacle within ourselves to the due keeping of the royal law—at least in the case of really worthy people. There are not many who are at all worthy to be called Christian people who find it in the least difficult to feel kindly towards any mortal creature when they really come to know him tolerably well. St. James goes on to point out a too common way in which this law is broken. “If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin.” This was the besetting sin of the people he had in his mind, and was writing to. It is transgression, plainly enough, whether the person unduly respected be one-self or another. Meeting the possible objection that “respect of persons, though not quite right, is no great matter,” St. James says, that anything wrong is a great matter; doing wrong, you break God’s law; and if you break God’s law on one point, it will not avail you to plead that you keep it on twenty; you are a law-breaker, a transgressor, and you must rank as such and take the consequences. Far from being a paradox, it is almost a truism. Every man punished for a breach of human law is held a lawbreaker, a criminal, just for the one crime he has done. The law is a whole; you break it by breaking any one of its innumerable provisions. Dwell upon the vital and central matter of that kindly principle within us which will be the spring of all duty to our fellow-men. Nothing worth is that kindliness which dwells in a mere soft heart and a super-sensitive nervous system. Nothing worth is that so-called Christian love which ends in tears, and reaches not to stout, daylight work. Nothing worth is that philanthropy which results from mere physical feeling. Sound, equable, lasting kindliness, not to be discouraged or soured, not to be wearied out, is that which is implanted by God’s blessed Spirit, and which takes note of men not merely as the objects whose sufferings remind of our own, but as beings on whom a common Father has conferred a common immortality, and towards whom a common Saviour has felt a common love. Ordinary people will never attain what is in the least like loving our neighbour as ourselves, unless by the abounding grace of God’s blessed Spirit. It is possible by God’s grace to cultivate and keep a frame so sweet and kindly, as that you shall be sources of blessing and help to those around you, as you go on your pilgrimage way. There are excellent gifts, but there is a most excellent. There are mighty graces, but there is a mightiest. A kind heart, a sweet temper, is the very best thing the Holy Ghost can give to mortal man or woman. It is the thing that is likest God. It is “the mind which was also in Christ Jesus”—the very same.—A. K. H. B.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2

James 2:2. A Brahmin’s Reproof.—The other instance in which I had the pleasure to meet this most interesting man (Rammohun Roy) was at breakfast in my own house. On that occasion I invited men of various religious opinions to meet him, and there were about thirty persons present. The conversation was very lively and well sustained. The Brahmin exhibited wonderful shrewdness. “Ah,” he said, “you say that you are all one in Christ, all brethren, and equal in Him. Well, you go to the cathedral at Calcutta; there you see a grand chair of crimson velvet and gold—that is for the Governor-General of India; then there are other chairs of crimson and gold—they are for the members of council; and then there are seats lined with crimson—they are for the merchants, etc.; then there are the bare benches for the common people and the poor; yet you say we are all one in Christ; but if the poor man whose seat is there, on that bare bench, if he go and sit down on the crimson velvet chair of the Governor-General, they will break his head! yet you are all one in Christ!” Some one was about to expound this matter to the Brahmin, and explain the impropriety of any one taking the seat of the representative of majesty. But the thing was too good for our Quaker friend, James Cropper, quietly to let it go. He so thoroughly sympathised with the Brahmin’s view of the matter, that he could not refrain from interposing. “Nay, nay,” he cried, “thou must not seek to put aside the force of our friend’s remark.” So the Brahmin and our friend James had the matter entirely to themselves.—Dr. Raffles.

James 2:5. Gain in Poverty—Trees struck by Lightning.—When some giant tree is struck by the lightning’s flash and scorched to death, its shattered trunk and torn boughs have not been destroyed by the action of fire from without. The tree, it is true, has been subjected to the direct action of the most intense heat—a heat proportioned to the terrible brilliancy of the electric illumination, which we call lightning. But the action of this heat is rendered fatal by the condition of the tree itself. The dismemberment of its body and branches, which extends to every part, results from the sudden conversion into steam of all the moisture it contains in sap and wood. The instant expansion that thus takes place by the power of the generated steam rends the tree to pieces, just as under very similar circumstances it would burst even a vessel of wrought iron. Thus the giant of the forest falls a victim to its rich and flourishing condition. The greener and fairer the tree, the more its vein-like tissues swell with those nourishing juices that build up a life which has the promise of hundreds of years, the more inevitable and crushing its ruin. It is not otherwise with human greatness and prosperity. While misfortune’s stroke finds less upon which to feed in the case of the poor and lowly, whose very poverty is in this respect a protection, its effects are far more deadly on those with whom all is flourishing. Lazarus in his want is far less exposed to the shocks of trial than Dives in his wealth. The humble fishermen of Galilee could, humanly speaking, better face the loss of their all than could the rich and amiable young man, who indeed desired an interest in Christ, but felt that his fortunes were too splendid to be sacrificed even for heaven—“for he had great possessions.” It is one of the chief and peculiar glories of the philosophy of the gospel that it teaches us not only the dignity but also the gain of poverty, thus extracting its double sting. “Hath nut God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him?” Deeper and more real than we are sometimes apt to suppose is the meaning of the Master’s words when, speaking of a state of which He had actual experience, He said, “Blessed be ye poor.”—James Neil, M.A.