Jesus says there is a way that others will know unmistakably that we are Christians. He says in John’s Gospel, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35).” And that love for one another is a love that extends to all persons without exception, our neighbors, or friends, and even our enemies. He says, “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…for if you love [only] those who love you, what reward do you have, or what good is that (Matthew 5:43-47)?”
Love, then, is the distinguishing mark of all true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. If a person truly has the love of Christ within himself then that love will manifest itself outwardly through loving actions.
If a man is physically sick, he has something wrong on the inside, a bad heart, a virus, or a disease of some kind. What is wrong on the inside shows on the outside. His breathing is erratic, his color is bad, his body is weak. And others look at him and say, “You don’t look so good.” But he gets what is wrong on the inside fixed. He has surgery, he receives treatment. The procedure is completed and he is better on the inside and so it shows on the outside. His breathing is normal, his body is strong, his color is good. Others say, “You look good.” When we are healthy on the inside it shows on the outside.
Spiritually we enter into this world dead in trespasses and sin (Ephesians 2:1). We have a spiritual “heart condition.” Our hearts are evil. They are hard and stony. And we need to get what’s wrong on the inside fixed. For Christians, God has performed a procedure; “heart surgery.” The Bible says in Ezekiel 36 that God takes out our heart of stone and replaces it with a new heart, a heart of flesh, a heart that is not hardened and calloused, but a heart that is soft and responsive to the will and way of God.
And once we are fixed on the inside, it shows on the outside. Things are different now. There is a change, a change that affects the way we live and the way we love. Here’s what James says in James 2:8-13:
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well;
9 but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
11 For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
12 So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty.
13 For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Love Others without Partiality
In these verses James continues to warn the church against showing favoritism or “showing partiality (2:1, 9).” We saw last time that we wrongly show partiality when we favor those who are dressed well over those who are not.
We show partiality when we favor those who are popular over those who are unpopular. We also show it when we favor those who are educated over those who are uneducated, those who “have” over those who “have not,” those who are rich over those who are poor. We show partiality if we favor those whose live on the “right” side of town, drive a certain kind of vehicle, go to a certain kind of school, talk a certain kind of way, or have a certain kind of skin color we believe to be the “right” color. Partiality, or favoritism, takes many forms.
Building upon this teaching James writes that we “do well” if we truly fulfill what he calls “the royal law” in Scripture, namely: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The word, “royal” means that which “belongs to the king,” or the law of the kingdom (cf. verse 5).
We serve our Lord, our King, Jesus Christ. Jesus taught to love, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And James is quoting from the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus 19:18, “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
Jesus was once asked about the greatest commandment. Matthew’s Gospel describes a certain Pharisee who approached Jesus and asked Him a question, testing Him. He said: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:34-40).”
And there was another Pharisee who wanted to “justify himself” so he asked Jesus to expand upon His teaching, namely this matter of loving one’s neighbors. He asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus answered his question by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, teaching in essence that our neighbor is anyone with whom we come in contact (Luke 10:25-37).
Again, Jesus says: “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…for if you love [only] those who love you, what reward do you have, or what good is that (Matthew 5:43-47)?”
If you are Christian you have been changed on the inside and that change will show up on the outside. You will love others. And by God’s grace you will even love your enemies. James’ focus is primarily upon loving those who are easily overlooked, like the “poor man in filthy clothes (James 2:2).” And James minces no words. He warns: “but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
Make no mistake: showing partiality, or favoritism, being kind to one person and shunning the other person is sin. We are to love all people, treating all equally, showing favoritism to no one. Love others without partiality. There’s something else here that James says Christians must do:
Obey the Law in its Entirety
James says: “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in line point, he is guilty of all.” Given the examples provided in these verses, it seems clear that James has in mind what we often describe as the “moral law” in the Old Testament. Much of the “cultic law,” such as dietary laws or other laws of rite and ritual, are no longer binding upon believers today. But the “moral law” is timeless. Every culture has some sense of moral law woven into the fabric of their existence, even if that culture fails to understand that their sense of law is rooted in the grace of God.
For Christians, the moral law is aptly summarized in the “Ten Commandments,” located in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. This moral law is a cohesive unit to be obeyed in its entirety. We are not permitted to ignore any part of it. James says we are to “keep the whole law.”
This raises a necessary clarification. Remember that James is writing to Christians. We’ve said more than once that this letter is not about how to become a Christian, but how to behave as a Christian. James is writing to those who have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. So James is not teaching here that the way one is saved is by keeping the Old Testament Law, keeping the 10 Commandments.
Many people think that’s what the Bible teaches. Many people wrongly think that Christianity is about following rules and regulations. But Christianity is not so much a about following principles as it is about following a Person, namely Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who obeyed perfectly “the whole” law so that we could be forgiven of our sin. Once we have trusted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we live out the moral law in obedience to God not as a means by which to be saved—that has been accomplished already through faith in Jesus—but as a means of glorifying God with our new hearts.
One of the primary functions of the Old Testament law is to convict unbelievers of their sin, forever pointing up their inability to keep the law and pointing to the only one who perfectly has, Jesus Christ (cf Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:21-24).
The Bible is a mirror. As we look into it, we must allow it to show us what we are before we can expect to do what it says. We can’t really do what it says until we first see what we are. We must first see our sin before we can rightly see our Savior. Then we turn to Him, trusting Him as Lord. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Jesus lived for us and died for us. He kept the law perfectly and thus fulfilled the law on our behalf. He died, taking our punishment for breaking the law, and He rose from the dead so we could be declared righteous by faith in Him.
So if we have been saved through faith in Christ, then the law is now “lived out” in us, not to gain our justification, but to grow in our sanctification. Christians live the law not in an effort to get saved; Christians live the moral law because they are saved.
James teaches that Christians, then, should be living out this moral law, by “keeping” it, keeping “the whole law.” Again, William Barclay is helpful: “The Jew was very apt to regard the law as a series of detached injunctions. To keep one was to gain credit; to break one was to incur debt. A man could add up the ones he kept and subtract the ones he broke and so emerge with a credit or a debit balance.”
This is exactly how many today regard the observance of biblical commands. They think if they keep a biblical command they will gain a credit, and when they break a biblical command they will incur a debt. They hope that they will have more credits than debts in the end and perhaps tip the scales of justice in their favor.
But one reason it is impossible to be saved by keeping the law (Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:16) is precisely because it is a cohesive unit. A person must obey it in its entirety—and no person does that consistently and perfectly. To break one single command is to break all the law, much in the way one single crack on a windshield affects the entire windshield.
If you hope to be saved by keeping the law, you would have to keep all of it consistently and perfectly.
Think about taking a test in school. Say there are 100 questions worth one point each and you miss 5, you get a 95%. That’s an A by most calculations. But imagine if you took that test and there are 100 questions worth one point each and you miss only one and receive an F. You would argue, “But I got 99 right, I only missed one!” The teacher says, “Doesn’t matter. This test is “pass” or “fail” test and because you did not get all of the questions correct, you fail.”
If you’re hoping to keep the Old Testament law as a means of earning salvation, you need to know that God does not grade on a curve. You’ve got to keep the whole law in its entirety. Breaking any one of them is to break all of them. Breaking just one command makes one “a transgressor of the law.”
Imagine you are rushing to catch a plane. You are hurrying through check-in, moving quickly through the security line, and now running to the gate so you can catch the plane. But when you finally reach that gate it does not matter whether you are just one minute late or ten minutes late, once that gate is closed you are not getting on that plane. It doesn’t matter how close you got, you are not allowed to board that flight.
If you are not a Christian, it doesn’t matter how closely you try to follow the 10 Commandments. It really doesn’t matter how “close” you get, because you are not saved by keeping the law. Nobody keeps the law consistently and perfectly—nobody but Jesus. That’s why He is the only way in.
From the standpoint of an unbeliever, “sin is sin,” whether it is murder or adultery or lying. Just one sin will keep a person from getting though the “gate” into heaven. It doesn’t matter if it’s a so-called “big” sin or a so-called “little” sin. Just one is enough to keep anyone from entering heaven.
This raises the need for another important word of clarification. While the phrase “sin is sin” is rightly used when referring to an unbeliever’s ability to earn forgiveness or his hoping somehow to gain entrance to heaven based on an accrued number of “credits” he hopes outnumber his “debts,” it is not always appropriate to use this phrase.
We should use the phrase “sin is sin” with care. Not all sins are equal in the sense that not all are equally heinous, equally ugly, or equally reprehensible. You may be fired from a job for lying to a co-worker or for beating a co-worker, but which would you rather have to explain at your next job interview?
Would you rather your daughter be found guilty of driving too fast or for robbing a bank? To say, “sin is sin” is to fail to account for degrees of wickedness as well as degrees of punishment or consequences.
Some sins are more or less heinous, but all are equally deadly in terms of a lost person’s hope of gaining some sense of favor before God, doing good works in the hopes of becoming more “savable.”
The law is a cohesive unit. It is an interdependent whole. It is to be obeyed in its entirety. So the Christian lives the law not in order to gain justification, but to grow in sanctification. And James reminds Christians that they are not permitted to “cherry pick” which commands they like and leave off those they don’t like.
So you can’t say, “Well, I know murder is bad and I’m not going to do that,” but then you ignore the commandment of committing adultery, lusting in your heart, which makes you a lawbreaker (Matthew 5:27-28). More to James’ point: it is wrong to think, “Well, adultery and murder, I’ve never done these things and I never will,” but then you show favoritism by being kind to rich people and shunning poor people. You have become a lawbreaker.
Love others without partiality and obey the law in its entirety. There’s one more action James calls for in these verses:
Live with a view to Eternity
James reminds Christians that there’s a judgment to come. He says, “So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty.” Every Christian will be judged one day, judged by the One True God.
The Apostle Paul writes: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”—(2 Corinthians 5:10; cf 1 Corinthians 3:12-15; 1 Peter 1:17).
Christians will one day stand before the Lord at the judgment. Christians will not be judged as to their justification. Christians are not in danger of facing condemnation, but they will be judged concerning their sanctification. In other words, Christians will be judged based upon how they “lived out” their Christian faith. This is a judgment that results in reward—or loss of reward.
Thankfully, the true Christian will never hear Jesus say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you (Matthew 7:21-23),” but he will be judged on the basis of what he has said and what he has done. “So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty.”
We Christians will give an account for every word spoken (cf Matthew 12:36) and for every deed done, whether good or bad. And we will receive either reward for what we have done well, or loss of reward for what we have done poorly.
James says, “So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty,” the law that brings freedom, freedom from the penalty of sin. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. And he adds, “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
The phrase “Mercy triumphs over judgment” means that Christians who show mercy, those who are merciful towards others, will be vindicated at the judgment. To paraphrase: “It will go well” with them. They will be vindicated, exonerated, because they showed love for others and had mercy upon them. They did not show favoritism or partiality. So at the judgment, their love for others is taken into account and it goes well with them.
On the other hand, “judgment without mercy” is shown to “the one who has shown no mercy.” If as Christians we have shown no mercy to others, then we can expect God to judge us the same way, “for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.”
This seems to be the point of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew’s Gospel: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:14-15).”
Similarly, Paul writes to Christians: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:32).” Our tendency is to argue, “But they don’t deserve it!” But that’s the whole point of mercy. Mercy is your not getting what you really deserve.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches about one particularly unmerciful servant. Let’s allow Jesus to illustrate precisely what His half-brother James is teaching:
The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.
“But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.
“So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses (Matthew 18:23-35).”
So our Heavenly Father will treat us if we fail to love our neighbor, fail to show mercy, fail to treat anyone “without partiality.”
What About You?
- In Matthew 5:43-47, Jesus says: “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…for if you love [only] those who love you, what reward do you have, or what good is that?” How is it possible to love those who don’t love you?
- Why is it not possible for a person to be saved by obeying the Ten Commandments?
- What will happen to Christians on the day of judgment? What can you personally expect on that day?
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