In Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace, he writes about how during Napoleon’s War with Russia he commanded a group of his soldiers to go downstream and find a good place to ford the river, and go to the other side. When the officer in charge received the command, he asked if he and his men could have the privilege of NOT looking for an easy place to cross, but to swim across right where they were, in the presence of the Emperor. And so they did. Thirty of his men drowned in the attempt, but the officer and a few others made it to the other side — and stood there, proudly exhibiting their to serve their Emperor!

Sometimes I think that we as Christians could learn a thing or two from the world — among them that our King deserves our radical obedience. If a MAN, like a Napoleon, can receives such fanatical obedience from his followers, then what does the true King, the Lord Jesus, deserve from us?

In our passage for today we see a couple of “The King’s Laws” that He would have us obey, to His honor and glory. 

I. The Standard: “The King’s Law” of Love.

:8 “If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law, according to the Scripture, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.”

In the first verses of James 2, he talks about how we are not to show favoritism to people because of their wealth — or their appearance, or color or social status or any other thing. As we saw last week, we are to deal fairly and justly with all people. Verses :5-7 continue to emphasize how wrong this is, then :8 summarizes just what God’s standard IS for us in treating other people: and it’s very familiar to most of us. He gives us here what he calls “the royal law” or literally “the King’s Law.” What is this “King’s Law”? He says it is: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

What “King” is this referring to here? He’s not talking about Caesar! He’s talking about King Jesus! This is HIS law. Do you remember when the Pharisee asked Jesus in Matthew 22, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”, how He answered him? 

— First, He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Then He said, “This is the great and foremost commandment.” 

— THEN He added, “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And He added “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

In these 2 sayings Jesus summed up the whole moral Law of God:

— Love God with all your heart

— Love your neighbor as yourself

These are some of the most quoted verses in all the scriptures, and rightly so, because they summarize everything that God wants from us, in such a simple way: 

— Our first and most important relationship is with God. He’s the King; we owe everything to Him. He’s our God. So we’re to love Him with all we have. 

— But we also have relationships with other people. How should we treat them? This is the 2nd great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  

It’s so simple. If you want to summarize how we are to live the Christian life, it’s just: Love God, and Love Others. Our vertical relationship with God, and our horizontal relationships with other people: Just “Love God with all your heart,” and “love your neighbor as yourself. 

THAT is what James is talking about here. He says this is the “Royal Law,” or the “King’s Law.” This is the summary of how we’re to treat other people. Love them like you would yourself (or as He said in the Golden Rule in Matthew 7, “treat them the way you would want to be treated.” 

It’s so genius; it’s so simple. We don’t need endless books and laws on how we should treat people in 100,000 different situations; in every situation you find yourself in, just “love your neighbor as yourself” and you’ll do the right thing. Just “treat them the way that you would want to be treated,” and you’ll be good.

Romans 13:8-10 summarizes this in a great way; it says:

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Romans 13 puts it in such a good way there: if you just love someone, you will fulfill the intent of the law. Love won’t do the “wrong thing.” “Love does no wrong to a neighbor.” So He says, all the commandments are summed up in this: “love your neighbor as yourself.” If you’ll just do that, then you will do the right thing in every situation.

Going back to the first part of James 2, applying this standard there would have fixed that situation, wouldn’t it? If a rich man and a poor man both walk into your worship service, how should you treat them? Easy: “love your neighbor as yourself.” “Treat them the way that you would want to be treated.” You don’t need to look up some specific law somewhere that says: “How should I treat a rich man when he comes to church?” NO! Just love him! And you don’t have to look up “How should I treat a poor man when he comes to church,” either! No, just love him, too. If you’ll just apply the “King’s Law” Jesus gave us, then you won’t have to worry about what to do in any situation. Just love the people involved, just treat them the way you’d want to be treated — and you’ll do the right thing.

On our trip to see our grand daughters baptized, we stopped just off I-40 in Nashville and visited former President Andrew Jackson’s home, the Hermitage. Not long ago, I’d read about something that happened at the Hermitage, where President Jackson had owned some slaves.

“A slave at the Hermitage, Alfred (asked) Roeliff Brinkerhoff, a tutor Andrew Jackson, Jr., had hired for his children …: ‘You white folks have easy times, don’t you?’

‘Why so, Alfred?’ (Brinkerhoff) asked.

‘You have liberty to come and go as you will,’ he replied.

(Brinkerhoff said) I thought it wise to turn his attention to the brighter side … I showed him how freedom had its burdens as well as slavery; that God had so constituted human life that every one in every station had a load to carry, and that he was the wisest and the happiest who contentedly did his duty, and looked to a world beyond, where all inequalities would be made even. 

Alfred did not seem disposed to argue the question with me, or to combat my logic, but he quietly looked up into my face and popped this question at me: ‘How would you like to be a slave?’ 

It is needless to say I backed out as gracefully as I could, but I have never yet found an answer to the argument embodied in that question.”

(Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, pp. 303-304)

That’s a pretty piercing question, isn’t it? “How would YOU like it?” That’s a powerful and easy way to test ourselves about anything we might feel led to do: “How would YOU like to be treated that way?” That should show us whether something is right or wrong. And it applies to any issue we face with other people:

— how would YOU like to be greeted that way?

— how would YOU like that decision to be made about YOU?

— how would you like for that to be said about YOU?

— how would YOU like to receive that punishment?

— how would YOU like to get the raise that you’re suggesting?

— how would YOU like to be told something in that way?

The Bible says, we don’t need to look up a whole bunch of “rules” to help us know how to do the right thing in every different situation. Instead, just think, “How would I like to be treated in this situation?” — and then do that!  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Treat them the way that YOU would want to be treated. James says, if you will just keep this “King’s Law,” like Jesus said, then you don’t have anything to worry about. You’ll be good. You’ll do the right thing. That’s the standard. 

There’s only one problem with that.  We can’t do it. 

And that’s what we see in the next section:

II. The Failure: One sin does you in! 

:9 “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”

The word “if” here in this verse introduces what grammarians call a “first class condition” in Greek: the “if” is assumed to be a reality; in other words, it’s not really “if,” so much, as “since.” So he’s saying “SINCE” you ARE showing partiality, you are committing sin.

So James says, the Royal Law of our King is simple: love everyone. Just treat them the way that you would want to be treated. It’s easy. But, he says, unfortunately, you aren’t DOING that! He tells these early Christians that they were indeed showing partiality, and he says that’s a sin. In fact, he flat out SAYS it, doesn’t he? He says “You are committing sin.” And he says “And you are convicted by the Law as transgressors.” 

Now, perhaps some of those early church members were tempted to say, “Well, that’s not such a ‘bad’ sin, is it? Just showing a little favoritism to some people; it’s not like I killed somebody or anything, right?”

And we do this a lot, don’t we? We try to justify ourselves, and say things like, “Well, at least I didn’t commit some BIG sin,” and things like that. We are very adept, as human beings, at trying to justify ourselves and make excuses for ourselves, by comparing ourselves with others. Think of the Pharisee in Luke 18; he says, “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, even this tax collector.” What was he doing? He was COMPARING himself to other people. And in his mind, he came off a lot better than them, because he hadn’t done things as badly as they had.

People do this all the time, right? They compare themselves with others.

In May of 1777, during the early part of American Revolution, John Adams wrote to wife Abigail and said:

“I believe there is no one Principle, which predominates in human Nature so much in every stage of Life, from the Cradle to the Grave, Males and females, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, and low, as this Passion for Superiority. Every human Being, compares itself in its own Imagination, with every other round about and will find some Superiority over every other, real or imaginary,” or it will die of grief and vexation. He says:  “I have seen, it among Boys and Girls at school, among Lads at Colledge, among Practicers at the Bar, among the Clergy in their Associations, among Clubbs of Friends, among the People in Town Meetings, among the Members of an House of Reps …” 

(John Adams to Abigail Adams, My Dearest Friend, Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor, ed., p. 177)

Adams had it right. People do this all the time, right? They try to justify themselves by comparing themselves favorably with others.

— From the child, who says, “At least my room is cleaner than Johnny’s”,

— To the adult, who says, “Well, I’m not a Hitler or anything,”

— To the church member who looks at someone else at work, or their neighborhood, or even at church and thinks, “Man, they’re really a sinner”!

Adams says he even saw it at the Congress of the Founding Fathers who led our American Revolution!

Our sin nature leads us to try to minimize and excuse our own sin, by comparing it to something that someone ELSE did or does, that we consider to be much worse. 

So James addresses this next! He says in :10 “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”

This addresses a serious mistake that many of us make. We look at some sins in our lives and we think “Oh, that’s a little thing; it’s really no big deal.” But we need to realize that all sin is sin in the eyes of God. All sin separates us from fellowship with God. All sin is serious to Him.  AND James says here, it doesn’t take a whole truckload of sins to condemn you before God; it only takes ONE! “Whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” 

And that sin doesn’t have to be some “great” sin, either. Any sin or disobedience against God is serious, no matter what it is. it’s not the “heinousness” of the sin, but the Person we have sinned against, that is the issue. We have disobeyed God. We knew what God wanted us to do, and we disobeyed Him. That’s enough. 

So How many sins does it take to separate you from God and make you a sinner? ONE.   Think about it: how many sins did Adam & Eve have to commit, to make them sinners, to cause them to hide from God, to incur His judgment, and to get them thrown out of the Garden of Eden? ONE, right? It was ONE sin.

And James says the same thing is true for us, too. How many sins does it take to separate you from God? ONE. And it doesn’t matter what commandment you break: if you’ve broken ANY, you are guilty before God.

Verse 11 emphasizes that. It says: “For He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.” He says, it doesn’t matter which law you’ve broken; it doesn’t matter what sin you commit. If you disobey God’s word, “You have become A TRANSGRESSOR of the Law.” And that’s the only thing that matters. 

C.S. Lewis wrote to his friend Shelden Vanauken and said: “Have you read the Analects of Confucius? He ends up by saying, ‘This is the Tao (ie, the doctrines and principles of life) I do not know if any one has ever kept it.’ That’s significant: one can really go direct from there to the Epistle to the Romans.”(C.S. Lewis, Yours, Jack, p. 154)

Yes, you could go right from there to Romans, which says, “For have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” — OR you could go right to James here, which says we have all become “a transgressor of the Law.”

See, there’s only two kinds of people in the world: people who have perfectly obeyed God in everything, and those who have sinned against Him; those who have always obeyed every command, and those who haven’t.  Now WE like to break it down more than that, and say: “Well, there’s REALY bad sinners; and then there’s PRETTY bad sinners — and then there’s ME … I’m hardly a ‘BAD’ sinner. I haven’t done that much.” But James says, that’s not the question. The only question that matters is, in which category are you: sinner, or non-sinner? Law keeper, or Law breaker? And what’s our answer to that? Of course the answer is, I am a sinner. We are all sinners. We are all Law breakers. We have all broken God’s Law, and we are all guilty before Him.  THERE IS NOT ONE PERSON IN THIS ROOM WHO CAN SAY WE ARE NOT A SINNER. NONE OF US. We are all guilty before God. End of story.  God’s Law is simple, when you boil it down — but the fact is, we’ve all broken it. 

So what do we do? This leads us to our last point:

III. The Solution: “The King’s Law” of Mercy

He starts :12 by saying, “SO …” — in other words, because of all this; because we have a clear and easy standard, but none of us have kept it, what do we do? He says, :12-13 “So speak and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. (:13) For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” 

So what’s the solution to all this? James says because all this is true, we need to speak and act as those who will be judged by “the law of liberty.”  What is this “law of liberty”? James 1:25 referred to “the law of liberty” which we find in the word of God. The Bible word “liberty” here means “freedom.” It’s talking about the “freedom” we receive from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Law of Liberty is the Gospel!

See, the Law, with all its commandments, is a law of slavery. It keeps us in daily slavery, trying to keep all these relentless commandments that we can never keep. But as Romans 8:1-2 says “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”

When we repent of our sins, and put our faith in Jesus as our Lord & Savior, He “sets us free from the Law” as Romans says. We are no longer judged by how well we keep the commandments of God (thankfully, because we couldn’t keep them!) and now we are NOT slaves, who will be judged by our (dis)obedience) to the Law, but we’re free, forgiven because of Jesus’ perfect life and His death on the cross, which has become our righteousness.  This is what II Corinthians 5:21 says: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Now we don’t have to try to “be” righteous; JESUS is our righteousness. We’re not getting into heaven because WE are so good, but because JESUS was so good FOR us!  For Christians, this is the “new law,” “the law of liberty,” the Gospel, that has set us free! 

And the key is, this is all of God’s mercy, right? Did we do anything to deserve all this? NO! All of this is possible for us, ONLY by the grace and mercy of God. We don’t deserve it; it’s just like I Peter 2 says, we have received God’s MERCY in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2 says it’s God’s MERCY that gave us His grace in Christ Jesus. 

First of all, make sure that this is what you have. Make sure that you’re not here in church trying to get “points” that will get you into heaven; make sure that you have come to a time in your life when you repented of your sin, and put your trust in what Jesus did to save you. Make sure you’ve really received the mercy of God, and that you’re under the “law of liberty.”

And if you know you DO have this, then thank God for His mercy, right? We’d be lost without it! But that is not the end of here, James says. He says if you have received God’s mercy and grace, then he says “so SPEAK, and so ACT as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” In other words, since WE have received God’s mercy and grace in Jesus, this should affect our attitude towards other people, right? Because we’re all sinners, who are only forgiven by the grace of God, we should NEVER look at someone else in the church or anywhere else and think, “Oh, they are a sinner.” Well maybe they are, BUT WE ARE TOO, right?!  So we should “speak and act” towards others like people who who realize that we ourselves need mercy. It really does make a difference when you realize that.

A pastor friend of mine (John White) posted on Facebook recently that he’s noticed that often people who have failed in some area of their life, are often much more compassionate and sympathetic to others who have failed in some way.  I think there’s a lot of truth to what he said. But that attitude should be even more prevalent among us than it is — you know why? Because ALL OF US HAVE FAILED IN SOME AREA IN OUR LIVES! Who hasn’t failed? Anybody here who hasn’t failed? No, we have all failed. Consequently, ALL of us should have this same attitude of sympathy for sinners that my friend talked about — because ALL of us are sinners ourselves! 

This is what James is talking about: “So speak, and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” And then he adds: “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy”!  This is what Jesus warned us about in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “By your standard of measurement, it will be measured to YOU!” (Mt. 7:2)  In other words, if you are gracious and merciful, then YOU will be shown grace and mercy. But if you do NOT show grace and mercy — then you will not be given grace & mercy YOURSELF, either! (Now, does that mean that we somehow “earn” our salvation by being merciful to other people? NO! But if we don’t show mercy to others, it demonstrates that we really don’t understand Biblical mercy, and what Jesus did for us, at all.  So James says here that we should show others the very same kind of mercy which WE ourselves have received from Jesus.

“The Merchant of Venice” is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. In it, a Jewish merchant demands justice against a man who was indebted to him. Despite everyone imploring him to show mercy, he refused, and demanded immediate justice The character Portia then speaks to him in what have become immortal words:

“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown …
It is an attribute to God himself …
Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.”

THAT is exactly what James is saying here. What is our hope of heaven? Is it how good we are, or how well we have kept God’s laws? NO! Our only hope of heaven is the MERCY God shows us in Christ Jesus. So, as Shakespeare said, since we have prayed for mercy ourselves, let’s show that we understand what that really means, and “so speak and so act” towards others with that same mercy God has shown us. That’s what James is saying here.

Some time ago an individual was acting in a very judgmental way towards someone who had failed, and an onlooker said, “How self-righteous must they be? Do they think that they have never sinned, that they would treat someone that harshly?” That’s a good question, right?

And it applies to US! Do you know that you have sinned? Do you really understand that your only hope of heaven is God’s mercy in Jesus? Then James says, “So speak and so act” like those who know that they have been shown mercy — and show that same mercy to others. And he ends this passage by saying, if you don’t show mercy to others, then YOUR judgment will be just as merciless, as what you are showing that other person — and that should be a terrifying thought for us all!

INVITATION

— Are you living by the King’s Law? Is there anyone you are treating in a certain way right now, that is not “love;” that is not the way that you would want to be treated? Maybe the King is laying somebody/some situation on your mind right now, that you need to treat differently than you are, because He is your King, and He wants you to live by that law …

— Maybe you’d say, “I know I’ve failed …”. Ask His forgiveness, and ask Him to help you live by that “law of love” in your future decisions. Maybe you’re making some kind of decision right now, that His “law of love” will help you to make a better decision.

— Is there someone in your life that you are treating harshly; unforgiving — almost as if you yourself had never failed? God may be showing you today: listen, stop this; you start showing them the same mercy that YOU require from Me! 

— And do you realize that you need mercy from God? Do you know that you’ve broken His commandments? Maybe you’ve been trying to justify yourself by comparing yourself with other people, and God says, that won’t work. The only way you can be saved is to trust what Jesus did for your on the cross. If you’ve trusted HIM as your Lord & Savior, you need to do that today!