At one point during the U.S. Civil War, Northern General Ulysses S.Grant gave President Abraham Lincoln and the Secretary of War a list of 8 major generals and 33 brigadier generals whose service he said “the Government ‘could dispense with to advantage.’” President Lincoln looked at the list and told him: “Why, I find that lots of officers on this list are very close friends of yours. Do you want them all dropped?’ General Grant responded: “That’s very true Mr. President. But my personal friends are not always good generals, and I think it is but just to adhere to my recommendations.’” (Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, p. 629)

Ulysses S. Grant was a very unusual general, and a very extraordinary man. His desire was to show no partiality in something as important as the U.S. Civil War that was going on. The kind of impartiality he demonstrated is very rare. But it should be more common — especially among the people of God, James tells us here. Our passage for today shows us that “What Real Faith Looks Like” is that it demonstrates “No Partiality”! 

I. He reminds us that we must be saved by faith:

“My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.”  We’re going to get to the “no personal favoritism” part briefly, but before we do I think it’s important that we look at what he talked about first: our faith in Jesus Christ. He’s reminding us here at the outset of Chapter 2, of just how it is that we are saved. 

He opens Chapter 2 here by calling his readers “my BRETHREN” — this is important. James isn’t writing to the world at large; the people he is addressing are his Christian brothers and sisters. And how do you become a Christian brother or sister? He tells us here: through “faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” 

James is a very practical book. Some books in the Bible are heavy on theology, but James is heavy on practical matters; living out your faith:

— we just saw in Chapter 1 how he told us to visit orphans and widows

— later in this chapter he says you need to give your brother in need something warm to wear.

— we’re going to see in Chapter 3 how he says your faith should affect the way you talk. 

And so on, all through the book. If you want to read a book that will give you practical guidance on how to live as a Christian, James is your book. It is SO practical.

But with all that practicality, James also reminds us here that our salvation is not given to us on the basis of our works, but through faith in Jesus: “FAITH in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” THAT is what saves us. We DO want and need to do all of the individual, practical things that God commands us to do through James in this book. These are God’s directions for us as His people; they are not “optional;” they are commands!  But at the same time, we need to remember: we are not saved by keeping these commandments, but by faith in Jesus and His death on the cross, that paid for our sins.

Steve Jobs, the famous entrepreneur who with a friend of his started the Apple computer company out of a garage, years later came down with cancer. He invited  author Walter Isaacson to come to his home, and do some interviews with him, which would form the basis for a biography after he had passed away. At one point in one of the interviews, Isaacson talked with Jobs about his religious beliefs. When they came to the topic of Christianity, Jobs told him that in his view:  “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it.” (Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, p. 15)

Now, we DO need to be practical, James shows us. We DO need to live like Jesus as His followers. But Jobs was absolutely WRONG when he said “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith.” CHRISTIANITY IS BASED ON FAITH! Hebrews 11:6 says “without faith, it is impossible to please God”! You can only become a Christian by faith. We are not saved by trying to obey all the practical commands of James — you know WHY? Because we can’t keep them. Because we will FAIL. If our salvation were based on own ability to keep all of God’s commandments, we would all be hopelessly lost!

No, we are not saved by our obedience to God’s practical commands. We are saved by God’s grace, through faith, in Jesus and His death for us on the cross. This is what Ephesians 2:8-9 says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; (9) not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” 

Listen: there’s a lot of important things here in the Book of James; lots of things that we need to pay attention to, and make sure that we DO. But nothing is more important than this: make certain that your trust for salvation and heaven is in what Jesus did on the cross for you. Like the old hymn says: “Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling.” Make sure that your faith is in what Jesus did for YOU; not anything that YOU have done for HIM! It’s only “faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ” that will save!

II. He warns us against the sin of partiality

“do not hold your faith … with an attitude of personal favoritism.”

After reminding us that we are only saved by faith in Jesus, then he addresses the next issue he has for us, as individuals and as a church family especially. He says, now that you HAVE faith in Jesus as your Savior,  do not “HOLD” your faith in Jesus with an attitude of personal favoritism. In other words, as you live out your faith, do not practice partiality.  

Partiality is the way of the world. We’ve all heard that expression, “it’s not what you know; it’s WHO you know.” And we’ve all seen occasions when that has been manifested. If you “know somebody” you can get special treatment that no one else can get. That’s the world. And it’s nothing new; it has always been that way in the world:

In Adrian Goldsworthy’s book on Hadrians Wall (one of the most interesting sights I have ever been to!) he wrote about how In 212 (A.D), Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to almost everyone in the empire. But he wrote that this status was less of an advantage that it had been in the past, as the law increasingly distinguished between citizens who were (what they called) “honestiores, or ‘the more honest or honourable men,’ who were generally the rich and received far more lenient treatment — and the majority of “humiliores,” or ‘more humble men,’ who were subject to harsher punishment for the same offences and had fewer rights.”

(Adrian Goldsworthy, Hadrian’s Wall, p. 120)

More lenient treatment if you were rich; harsher punishment if you were poor. This IS the way of the world — in ancient Rome, and you could argue, in many places even in America today. But James says here it is NOT to be that way among the people of God. As God’s people, we are to be different than the world around us; we are NOT to show partiality. We are to treat everyone the same. 

In the Old Testament, Proverbs 20:10 says “Differing weights, differing measures, both of them are an abomination to the Lord.” Now, that verse is addressing the way we are to do business with other people. It was a common practice, when they were weighing out grain (or whatever they might be selling) to have 2-3 different sets of weights to weigh out their product — depending on who the customer was! God says this is abominable to Him. As His people, we are to have “one set of weights” for everyone; not one price for some people, and another price for someone we don’t like. We are to treat everyone the same; same standard for everyone.

And this was not only to apply to weighing out produce, as James shows us here. As God’s people we are to have ONE set of standards for everyone, no matter who it is; no partiality; no favoritism.  

III. He gives a specific example:

James is good at this! As I mentioned before, James is a very practical book, and so he gives us a lot of very specific, practical examples of what he is talking about. And now he does that here, as he addresses the issue of partiality. He gives us the principle first, then he says, Now let me give you a specific example of this; and he shows it to us in :2-3:

“For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes a poor man in dirty clothes (:3) and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,’ (:4) Have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?

James says, here is one way you are doing this, even in the church! (Interestingly, the word “assembly” here is the Greek word “sunagoge,” or synagogue! But the word can mean a “gathering” — like the church worship assembly — and that is what he’s talking about here.) He says a rich person comes into your church gathering, and you fawn all over them and give them a good place (that would be at the back, right? Everyone knows that’s where all the “season ticket holders” in Baptist churches sit!) But he says then a poor person comes in, and you say, “Stand over there” — they might not even get a seat — or sit down by my feet. And what was the difference between the two? James says the first person had a gold ring and fine clothes, and the second person was poor, and had dirty clothes. He says, when you treat people differently, just because they have money, you are not being impartial; and this is a sin against God.

Sadly, this has happened in churches, all through history. I think it’s interesting that James writes about it here. The Book of James is one of the earliest written Christian books, written perhaps as early as 70 A.D. So this is the early church. We’ve been studying the Early Church in Sunday School, in Acts and following. In many ways that church has been idealized: “We need to get back to being like the Early Church!” But no church on earth is perfect — not even that one! We see in Acts 5 how there were sinners like Ananias & Sapphira, even in the Early Church. So give churches a break today. There is no perfect church. And as James shows us here, not even this Early Church was free from favoritism; even THEY gave special consideration to the rich — that’s why James had to tell them this here. Evidently he had seen or heard that it was going on.

SO partiality was there in the first church; and it has been in evidence all through history too. Back in the 1800s Washington Irving traveled to England, and he wrote about his visit to a worship service in a venerable English country church. He said there were two different kinds of people in the church:

— “The congregation was composed of the neighboring people of rank, who sat in pews sumptuously lined and cushioned, furnished with richly gilded prayer-books, and decorated with their (coat of) arms upon the pew doors; 

— (but then) the villagers and peasantry, who filled the back seats and a small gallery beside the organ; and of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on benches in the aisles.” (The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, “The Country Church,” Washington Irving, p. 104)

That kind of setup is exactly what James is addressing here. He says you’re treating the rich and the poor differently, based on how much money they do or don’t have, and he says this is an evil practice. He rebuked them for it, and we need to guard ourselves against it today as well.  

Some time ago I was at a meeting (not here in our church), and a well-known, well-off person came into this meeting, and I noticed that one of the organizers of the meeting jumped up to meet this esteemed person, and lavished greetings upon him. I thought: does he do that for everyone who comes in? Or only for the rich and influential?

That’s a good question for US as a church, isn’t it? How do we treat people when they come into our church? I hope we DO rush to greet people when they come in — and not just people who look well-off or influential, but everyone who walks in this room. (I have in fact seen a number of you go up to people who are visiting, and you introduce yourself to them, and welcome them, and try to make them feel at home. THANK YOU for doing that — you are welcoming them in the name of Jesus, and that is what we SHOULD do! Don’t stop doing it; and let’s more of us do it! 

But in line with James here, let’s make sure we do this for everyone who enters this room, regardless of who they are, or how they are dressed, or what color they are, or whether we think they may be “important” or not.

I read about a gathering they had in Hollywood a few years ago, and this one woman sidled up next to someone who was standing there at the party, and she half-whispered to them: “Are you somebody?” (Of course, the implication was, are you “somebody” famous, or important, or whatever.) That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?  But do you know what the answer to that question is?  “YES!” Whoever it is, the answer is YES! Whoever it is, they ARE somebody. They are somebody that God loves, and someone we should meet, and greet, and treat as important — without partiality as to whether they are white, black, or brown, rich or poor, well-known or unknown. Romans 2:11 says: “For there is no partiality with God.” And because of that, there should be no partiality among us, either.

But we need to remember one thing as we ponder these verses: the example that James gives us here about the men coming into the church service is just that: it’s an EXAMPLE. The way we greet people who come in to our worship services is just ONE example of how we could show partiality. There are probably 10,000 other ways in which we could show partiality too. What we need to realize is that the general principle James gives us here, applies to ANY situation we might face, not just the one example he mentions here. It’s not just “greeting people in church” he’s getting at here; the principle is that we should not show partiality in ANY area of life. No partiality; hold everyone with the same standard, regardless of who they are.  

There are SO many ways that we can apply this. It certainly applies to treating people more favorably because they have money — not just in the church but all through society. I was reading a history of how Robert Moses built the highways and parkways all through New York City in the mid-1900s. At one point he was condemning land for his Northern State Parkway — a small farmer, James Roth, lost his whole living because Moses would not move the route even 1/10 of a mile.  But Congressman Ogden Livingston Mills, and Colonel Henry Rogers Winthrop were able to get the route shifted farther south, so it wouldn’t go through their estates. (Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, pp. 278-279)

But it’s not only the rich who are sometimes shown partiality; sometimes it is the popular, or the beautiful. Lindy Boggs was the wife of powerful Congressman Hale Boggs from Louisiana, 1947-1973. She shared the story of how day her husband called and asked her to come and listen to some testimony they were having in Congress, so she threw on some clothes quickly and ran down to the Capitol. She told the clerk at the door that he husband was the chairman of the committee, but he said, “Sure, lady!” and wouldn’t let her in!  (She said they had no capitol I.D. in those days.) 

She suddenly remembered Mrs. Dugas, a beautiful New Orleans socialite who had told her, when she was leaving for Washington, that the most sophisticated and becoming thing a woman could wear (at that time) was a purple veil. So she said “I dashed back to the apartment and changed into my best outfit, a black Davidow suit, a pretty silk blouse with my pearl circle pin, black velour hat, and kid gloves. (At a fancy store near the Capitol she said) “I hurried to scarf counter and had the saleslady drape a purple veil on my hat.” She said: “When I returned to the hearing room, the same clerk was minding the door. I took off one glove and then the other with as much authority as I could muster. In my sweetest Southern accent, I said, “I’m Mrs. Boggs. I’d like to be seated, please.” “Oh, yes ma’am. Come right in.” He opened the door and led the way. Lindy Boggs said, “That day I became a true believer in Mrs. Dugas’s purple veil theory.” (Lindy Boggs, in Katharine Graham’s Washington, p. 692)

There’s a lot of that in our society, isn’t there? They won’t let the “housewife” in, but they’ll admit the sophisticated woman with the purple veil! There’s so many ways we can apply this scripture:

— to businessmen in their transactions

— judges in the courtroom

— teachers in the classroom

— law enforcement officers as they administer justice

— pastors and leaders and members in churches

In whatever sphere of life we inhabit; we ALL encounter and deal with people in some way. Whenever we do, let’s ask for God’s help to treat everyone the same; however they may look; whoever they may be.  

(By the way: this works both ways, too! We are not to favor the rich, or the beautiful, or the popular — but neither are we to engage in a kind of “reverse discrimination” either. Leviticus 19:15 says: “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” In other words, don’t be partial to the rich, no — but don’t be partial to the poor, either! JUST DO JUSTICE! Just do what is right for every person. Treat every person the same, no matter what color or sex or status they have.)

God says there is no partiality with Him, and as His people we should not show partiality either.  

IV. He reminds us that we are all equal before the Lord:

:4 “have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?”

He indicates here that what the sin of partiality does, is to “make distinctions among ourselves” as God’s people: to consider some people as higher, or better, or worthy of different treatment than others. James says this is wrong. There should be no “distinctions.” We are all the same in the eyes of God.

Billy Graham once said: “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.”

In other words, the gospel is the same for everyone; whoever you are:

rich, poor, young, old, influential, or friendless; everyone has to be saved the same way: each of us must repent of our sin and trust Jesus as our Lord & Savior, in order to be saved. It doesn’t matter who you are. In Matthew 19 Jesus met the young man we call “The Rich Young Ruler,” and He told him what he needed to do to be saved. When he heard, the Bible says “he went away sorrowful.” It is significant that the Bible does not say that Jesus ran after him, saying, “Oh wait, you’re rich; you don’t have to do that;” or “Oh wait, I’ve got another standard for you.” No, His standard was His standard — and rich or poor, that is what you had to do. There is no distinction with the Lord. He treats us all the same. 

There is a story that after the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the former Confederate general, and a former slave were both in attendance at a certain church. At the end of the service, there was a time of prayer and the church was going to serve communion. When the invitation was given, both former General Lee, and the former slave, went down to the front, and knelt, and prayed, and they both had communion together.  I’ve read where some have questioned whether this story was true or not; I hope it IS true; but in a way it doesn’t matter if the STORY is true or not, the PRINCIPLE IS TRUE: the ground IS level at the foot of the cross!  

— There is no partiality with God:

— there is no partiality between black and white; 

— there is no partiality between rich and poor; 

— there is no partiality between “well-known” and unknown

There is no partiality with God, and as God’s people here on earth, we are His representatives — and there should be no partiality among us, either!

Don’t favor the rich; don’t favor the poor; don’t favor the white; don’t favor the black; don’t favor the beautiful; don’t favor the homely; don’t favor the popular or the unpopular. 

In every way, James says: “My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.”

This is the word of the Lord. 

INVITATION:
There are numerous ways we can apply the principle that James gives us here; I’ve suggested a few — but maybe the Lord brought one or more to your mind today. Remember, the person you need to apply this scripture to most today, is YOURSELF! How do YOU to apply this principle of No Partiality? Where have YOU fallen short in it? Ask God to help YOU treat everyone the same, in all of your own personal dealings.

And then, we saw that God has only one standard of salvation; everyone has the same Gospel to hear and obey: you aren’t a “special case” to God; There aren’t going to be any “special excuses” for you. If you have heard His gospel, you need to humble yourself, repent of your sins, and trust Jesus as your Lord & Savior today. There’s no other way of salvation. Not for you, not for anyone. Respond to Him today!