Justice, Mercy, and the Triumph of Grace | James 2:1-13 | Faith That Works

Our latest sermon from the book of James is now available to watch. This week, we looked at James 2:1–13, focusing on how the Gospel levels the ground for all believers.

It is easy to let the world’s values of power and influence trickle into the church, leading us to make distinctions based on status or appearance. However, as those who were "poor and destitute in our sin" but "made rich by mercy," we are called to a different standard. We explore what it means to live under the law of liberty—a life where our works provide evidence of our faith and where we see others not as the world sees them, but as fellow heirs of the Kingdom of God.

 

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's word, trusting that the Holy spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

What James 2 focuses on this morning is something that I believe we know we are prone to doing. The sin of partiality is something that we have committed because we tend to have biases that affect how we interact with others. You can't avoid it. This sin not only affects the world, but it can so easily creep into how we view our sisters and brothers in the church. Sometimes these are long-held assumptions that we have based upon how someone looks, how much money they make, or their status out in the world. Now, we in intellectually know that we should try to put these biases and assumptions out of our minds. But it's super hard to do this because these things get deep down in us and they dramatically affect how we think. So as we arrive in the second chapter of James today, we see James calling this out and making us fully aware that partiality is not just a 21st century century sin. Even in the first century context, where Christians are experiencing severe persecution, this was enough of an issue that James sees the need to address this. Before we dive into these 13 verses this morning, I think we need a quick reminder of the path that we've taken to get here to verse 1 of chapter 2.

This letter opens up, and James is encouraging his readers to consider it joy to experience the trials that they are facing. He says that it's a way that God is building them up in steadfast faith. And through those circumstances, he then calls his readers to be doers of the word and not just hearers. And as part of this, he emphasizes that we're to bridal our tongues and that we truly exhibit our faith in caring for orphans and widows and keeping ourselves unstained from the world. That was how the first chapter closed up for us last week. But we need to remember, as we continue, that these chapters and verses that we have are not in the original text. There isn't a break in thought between the end of chapter one and now the beginning of chapter two. We need to keep in mind that a part of being a doer of the word and not just a hearer is to view our brothers in Christ without distinction based upon earthly identity markers. If we are believers, we want to put aside God partiality, because God has blessed us with the gift of faith. God did not show partiality when he brought us into the family of God, did he?

We were dead in trespasses and sins, yet he brought us to life. We were poor and destitute in our sin, and yet we were made rich by his mercy. We were unclean, and still he cleansed us. We were Gentile, outsiders, and he adopted us into his family. We have been united to Christ by grace through faith, and so we have a new identity. This is an understanding that should be deep down in us in the church. When we see our sisters and brothers in Christ, we are to see others who have been united to Christ by grace through faith and not see the distinctions that the world values. What matters to us is the faith that we have been given in Christ. But we know that we still see distinctions. It happens, and it happened in the first century. We see this by the example that James presents for us here. Then the problem that he specifically addresses is appearance. Let's be honest, we know what he's getting at here. He is talking about those with a higher social status because of their financial mobility. He's not talking about someone who dresses well and then contrasting that with someone who wear shabby clothing because that's the style in their subculture or something.

James isn't saying that you've got this person over here who wears a suit and this person over here who wears a hoodie because that's what they find comfortable. Not that we should judge someone for those choices either, but it's clear that what James is talking about here is their social status based upon their financial position in their culture. That's what he's talking about. Our natural tendency is to pay closer attention to those who we see as being well off. Maybe we do this because we think they are better because of their social ranking. Perhaps it's because we want to be a little closer to them ourselves in hope of getting some benefit for ourselves. It could also be that it isn't as much about the other people as it is how we see ourselves. We don't want to be associated with the poor person, and so we want to slide ourselves in next to the person who is more where we want to be or where we think we are. That might actually be the most likely. It seems to be what James has in mind because of how he describes what's going on internally in someone who does this.

He says that By moving well-dressed folks to seats of honor and putting those we see as less well off over to the side or at our feet, we have made distinctions among ourselves. We should view others without distinction. When someone comes into the room, the earthly markers of affluence or whatever shouldn't be a defining factor in how we view them. Again, our marker is whether or not someone is united to Christ by faith. If someone is a part of the covenant family of God, how much money they have or how while they are dressed shouldn't influence where they sit at the table. James makes this abundantly clear when he says that these judgments we make are evil thoughts. They are thoughts that seek to benefit ourselves from worldly status instead of us loving our neighbor as ourselves. The clarity of this is evident when James makes his big point here. Didn't God choose the poor in the world to be rich in faith? Didn't God choose them to be heirs of his kingdom? This is a great truth. God rescues people regardless of social class. But scripture is deliberate to show us that God has a heart for the outcast.

Remember the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God that is expressed to us in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peace makers. All those that Jesus says are blessed are those that the world usually pushes aside. But those traits are valued in the Kingdom of God. Regardless of worldly distinctions, God brings his people into his family by giving them the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. That is the great leveler. Faith in Christ makes us rich because we become heirs of the Kingdom. This is the promise we have. We are heirs. We're more than just people who get to go to the celestial city someday, but we live in shanties on the edge of town. No, we are children of the King. We are heirs who feast at the table. We are children of God. With that reality in mind, James asks a question. You're dishonoring the poor among you, but they aren't the ones oppressing you out in the world. The less fortunate folks aren't dragging you into court. The poor aren't blaspheming the name of the God who saved you. In other words, he's saying, why are you faunting over the rich and the influential?

You're kissing the hand that is slapping you. In their first century culture, the social elites were making their lives very difficult because the social elites could afford to use the legal system to keep the poor down. Poor people don't have the status to take advantage of the system to oppressed others. Also, it wasn't Sally and Bill living out on the street hoping for just a scrap of bread that were persecuting the Christians. It was the social and religious elites who were putting the first century Christians through great tribulation and persecution. What James is making really clear to us is that partiality just isn't being unfriendly or rude. He's saying it's also foolishness because we find ourselves siding with the values of a world that hates our savior. We dishonor the people that God has rescued, and in doing so has crowned them with honor and dignity. The answer to this isn't to just stop separating people out by worldly standards. James wants us to realize that partiality violates something foundational in the Kingdom of God. As we move on to verse 8 here, we see that summary of the second table of the law that I mentioned just a few minutes ago.

It says, We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we are adhering to this command, he says that we are doing well. This is pretty obvious, right? If I'm loving my neighbor as myself, I'm not putting the poor to the edge of the room or at my feet while I give the place of honor to a social elite. While this goes without saying, we still do things like this. I'm guessing we do it without even giving it a thought. We just do it. Even if we realize we're doing it, we We most likely blow it off or justify it. But James doesn't let us off the hook. He flat out says that favoritism is sin, and the law exposes the fact that we are transgressors. Basically here, James is trying to block any excuses and justification his readers might have for what they're doing. We all know how justifying buying and excusing our sin goes because we all do it each day. Well, my sin isn't that big of a deal because I'm not like so and so. Or we like to think, well, at least I didn't kill somebody, so that sin wasn't so bad.

You know exactly what I'm driving at. You've thought that way. You've justified your sin more times than you can possibly count. But James lets us know that breaking the law at any point causes us to be guilty of breaking the whole law. The best way I've seen to describe what he's saying here is to think of the law like glass. If a rock hits a piece of glass in the corner, it's likely still going to cause the whole piece of glass to break. Even if a window isn't shattered by something that hits it and it just spider-webs out from the impact, you don't look at that window and think, I can cut out that center space there, and I'll put in a new piece of glass Then it'll look like new. We know how glass works. We know the whole piece is broken by that one spot that has been impacted. That's how James wants us to understand law. While the sin of partiality might seem like a small stone, it's still a violation that breaks the whole law of God. I think we easily understand the truth of this. I think we also feel the weight of it.

If this is where we left off, if this was the end of the story, we would only have despair because there's not one of us here who can say that We've kept the whole law. We know that we've done more than just hit the glass of God's law with a few pebbles and cracked it here and there. Every one of us has taken a large stone and we've thrown it through the window and completely shattered it. And apart from Christ, this is the state of affairs. But because of the grace of God, because of Christ, we know that there is good news. Look at how James describes the law for those who are united to Christ. He says that we will be judged under the law of liberty. For those who are outside of Christ, we understand that the law is a means of condemnation. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The law makes that distinction very clear. But for those of us who are in Christ, the law has been fulfilled because Jesus kept the law for us and took on the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin.

Knowing that we have his perfect righteousness, we now desire to keep the law because we have been set free from sin. We strive after God's commands not to earn his favor, but because he has already shown us favor by giving us the gift of repentance. When we see that word judged here, It isn't that we need to avoid the sin of partiality or we will be banished to eternal torment, even though we trust in Christ for the forgiveness of our sin. That's not what's being said here. What's being expressed isn't the idea of final judgment, but instead points back to the idea in the first chapter about being doers and not just hearers of the word. Does your faith match up with what you say you believe Or have you gone back to looking at the world the way the world does? Essentially, being judged by the law of liberty means our works, our evidence of our faith, and not what we do to earn salvation for ourselves. As we close up, we see this expressed to us with the great point that James makes about mercy. God has shown us great mercy by forgiving us of our sins.

If we lack mercy ourselves by looking down on others and worrying about worldly status, we would be acting like people who haven't been shown mercy. James says that those who have been shown no mercy receive judgment. But then right away, he gives us the great truth of the gospel. Mercy triumphs over judgment. In the divine courtroom, justice had a claim on us because we had been shown guilty because of our rebellion against a Holy God. Our sin shattered the glass and the devastation was strewn out everywhere. But at the cross, Christ showed us that mercy triumphs over justice because Jesus satisfied the wrath of God at the cross and triumphed over death and his resurrection. We have been overwhelmed by the mercy of God. When we lay hold of this great truth, it changes how we view the world. We desire to be merciful because God has first shown mercy to us. In light of this, we look at our fellow believers without distinction. In the Kingdom of God, we do not see the poor man. We see a fellow child of the King. We don't see someone as poorly dressed. We see them as someone who is clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ.

We understand that those who are in Christ have received the exact same radical mercy that we've received. When we have a faith that works, that faith lets mercy have the last word. As we finish up this morning, I challenge you to carry a question with you from this passage that comes out this passage. That question is, who do you desire attention from? We are so deeply influenced by a world that values money, power, and influence that it can help but trickle over into how we view our fellow believers. But in God's family, we are to love one another. Each and every one of us are heirs of the kingdom. We are children of God. We are all clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and his mercy has given us true wealth beyond our imagination. Like I mentioned a few weeks back, in our modern times, it's really easy for us to love our neighbor in the abstract. It's easy to adhere to a particular cause or send money to somewhere else in the world and feel like we are loving our neighbor. And doing those things That's good. But we don't want to love our neighbor in the abstract and fail to love our neighbor that we actually know.

That is a real temptation for us in our modern times. The struggle that we have with what James is talking about in our passage for this week isn't going to be that somebody came in here and we shoved them to the fringes of our worship space place, or we forced them to sit at our feet while we drink coffee after the service. That's not going to be what partiality looks like for us, right? The temptation for us who know each other pretty well because we live in a small community and relatively average-size church, our temptation is to make assumptions about fellow believers because of what we know about them in the outside world. Again, this won't make us keep them back in the narthex during the service, and it won't make them... We won't tell them that they can't come have coffee and cake with us afterwards either. That's not what it's going to look like. How we live out in our context, what James is talking about here, is by looking at each other as God sees us, as forgiven people of God, as heirs of the kingdom. Then we make an effort to get to know someone that we think we know, but we might not know much about at all.

Like I said, yes, we're a small community, an average-size church, but we all have people within our covenant community that we don't know all that well. I challenge you to put aside any blockades that you've set up in your mind based upon what you think you know and get to know more of your church family, because we are one in Christ. We are all heirs of the kingdom. We are all clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We are a covenant community of faith. The benefit of this is more than just us being a friendly congregation. It's also a witness to the world that we understand that God has shown us mercy. And in Christ, there is no distinction among us. Those earthly things that divide, that doesn't happen in the Covenant community of faith. We are together. We are one in Christ. So may there be no distinction among us. And may God bless us with opportunities that we might grow in faith because we have learned how to better love one another as Christ has commanded. Amen. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank you for the gift of your word, and we pray, oh Lord, that as we meditate upon this passage in the coming week, we would desire to see all our sisters and brothers, whether they worship here or somewhere else, that we would desire to see them as you see them, that we would see them as sisters and brothers, fellow heirs of the kingdom, and that we would remove earthly distinctions and markers from our mind, and that we would love one another as you have called us to do.

Bless us with faithfulness to your word, that you might be glorified in all that we do. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.

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