Active Faith (Part Ten): Free to Obey

Transcript

JRNT 10
01/22/2023
Active Faith (Part Ten): Free to Obey
James 2:8-13
Jesse Randolph


Well, good morning. It is great to be back with you this morning. There are some passages of Scripture which are so basic in what they say and so simple to understand. Yet at the same time they can be so difficult, so hard to live out. Ephesians 4:26, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit.” Romans 12:9, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” Romans 12:17, “Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “in everything give thanks.” Titus 3:1, “be subject to rulers, to authorities.” Hebrews 13:5, “Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have.” I could go on and on but I believe I have made the point, which is that there are innumerable passages in Scripture that are easy enough for us to intellectually understand and comprehend. But in practice they prove themselves to be difficult to obey. To which we should say, thank the Lord for the grace that He has shown us through His Son, Jesus Christ. And thank the Lord that He has indwelt us and filled us and empowered us by His Spirit who helps us as we strive to obey and follow those commands.

Well, the last time we were in James which was a few weeks ago now, we encountered another such passage of Scripture, one that is easy enough to understand, simple enough to grasp in concept. But one that can be, experience shows, difficult to obey. And the passage I'm referring to is James 2:1-7. In fact, go ahead and turn there with me if you would to James 2, starting in verse 1. And James here, as we saw last time, just lets us have it. He hits us square between the eyes with this command here in James 2:1 when he says, “My brethren,” (that term of endearment before he lays it on us) “do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.” Now as we saw last time the major point that James is making here is that while favoritism and croneyism and bias might be prevalent out there in the world, they have no place in the church of Jesus Christ.

You recall that James gave this vivid illustration in James 2:2-3 of this wealthy man coming into this assembly of early Jewish Christians with his fingers decked out in gold rings and with finely appointed clothing, likely some sort of dazzling, white linen. And this man is immediately ushered up to the front of the assembly, this place of prominence, this place with the best view, and this place to be best viewed by others as they gawk at him, impressed with the wealth that he wears all over his body. But then there is this second man, the poor man who is not experiencing first world poverty, this wasn't the guy who had to cut down on the number of Carmelicious drinks he ordered at Scooters. No, he was experiencing third world poverty. His only worldly possessions were probably the clothes he had on his back as he lived from meal to meal, from hand to mouth, wholly dependent upon the good graces of others. And this second man, this poor man wasn't given the same treatment, was he? No, in fact, he was given the opposite treatment. He wasn't given a front row seat, instead he is told to stand “over there.” What a contrast. One is here, the other is over there; one is told that he can sit, the other is told he must stand. Or if he prefers to sit, he can sit down by the usher's nasty, crusty feet.

And in our passage last time James tells his original audience, and by extension us, “these things should not be.” In verse 1 he identifies the issue, the sin of personal favoritism; in verses 2-3 he gives this illustration that I have just mentioned of this rich man and this poor man to highlight his point; and then in verses 4-7 as a way to drive his point home, he offers these four rhetorical questions or inquiries. “Have you not made distinctions among yourselves,” James says, “and become judges with evil motives?” “Did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” “Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court?” “Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?” And as we saw last time, with these questions James is layering and stacking accusation upon accusation, indictment upon indictment as he shows how favoritism in the church and in his context, favoritism based on one's economic position is foolish, is irrational, is unreasonable, is contrary to God's design, is disloyal to the Master Jesus Christ who has bought them, is evil, is wicked and is sin.

Well, this has all been front porch time so far here this morning as we walk into the house of today's text. Having called out favoritism between rich and poor for what it is in the church, James continues to build on this thought in the verses we'll be in today which you'll find in James 2:8-13. Let's read it together as a church. God's Word reads, “If, however,” James 2:8, “you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 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. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

Now there are words in our text for today that are undoubtedly familiar to many of you. James 2:10 stands out to me, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point he has become guilty of all.” There are words in our text today that are repeated, namely, the word “law” over and over and over. And there are words in our text today which have been contested and debated. What is the royal law that James is referring to? What is the law of liberty? And how does that relate, if at all, to the royal law? What is the relationship between the royal law and the law of liberty to the Mosaic Law if there is one at all? Each is an important question and I'm going to do my best this morning as I preach to cover them as we work through this. But I want to make sure that we are keeping our feet in the original context of this letter, which James is addressing to this early gathering of Jewish believers. This gathering in which distinctions were apparently being made and drawn between rich and poor, and this gathering in which favoritism was being shown to the rich at the expense of the poor. I want to stay as much as possible in the original context so that we can handle this text as faithfully as possible and then we can extract from the text the ideas and the principles that God wants us to grab onto and live by in our context for today.

All right, with that I have outlined our text. As always I've tried to alliterate. I tried to keep them to three points but I couldn't do it, I have four points this morning. In verse 8 we have “A Command Elevated,” in verses 9-11 we have “A Contrast Expressed,” in verse 12 we have “A Control Established,” and in verse 13 we have “A Caution Extended.” For sake of time I won't repeat that right now but I will as I go through each one of these points.

Let's start with verse 8, “A Command Elevated.” Look at verse 8, “If, however,” James says, “you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.” If I haven't already persuaded you that today's text is directly connected to the first seven verses of chapter 2, the first words of verse 8 here, “If, however,” ought to seal the deal because those words clearly indicate that James is building on something he said previously. That's how human speech and human communication and human writing work. If I walked up to you after the service this morning and said, “If, however,” you'd be confused if not a little bit taken aback. So it is with James here. This is a letter and it is intended in its original context to be read out loud in one sitting to a gathered group of early Jewish Christians. So when this letter was first read out loud in the gathering of those early believers, this particular section of the letter which starts with the words, “If, however,” would not be read in isolation. Instead they would be naturally viewed on building on what James has immediately said before. And as we've seen already in James 2:1-7, what immediately precedes this is James calling out this attitude of personal favoritism which he evidently had started to see creeping into the early church. And what James is about to say in verses 8-13 is set against the sin of partiality in verses 1-7 through this use of this phraseology, “If, however.” If, however what? Well, James tells us. He says, “If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.”

I can't even begin to explain for you how many sentences and paragraphs and chapters have been written, how much ink has been spilled, how many trees have been felled in an effort to explain the meaning of those words, “the royal law.” I'm all for academic study, I'm all for theological rigor, I'm all for exegetical precision… I mean, that is my job. But the key that turns the lock in understanding what the royal law is here in verse 8 is Scripture itself. Look at what James says. He says, “If you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture.” In other words, the royal law isn't what you want it to be. The royal law is not what the theological academy thinks it should be. The royal law is not what kings and nations declare it to be. No, the royal law, whatever it is, is defined by Scripture.

Let's take a step back for just a second and make sure we are on the same page about something. Those words, “according to the Scripture,” ought to be the anchor, the ballast for every definition that any one of us comes up with in this room. Those words, “according to the Scripture,” ought to be the anchor and the ballast for every presupposition we hold and every practice that we engage in. You've decided to take a perpetual number of gap years to figure out what you want to do with your life? Great. Show me where you find that according to the Scripture. You think it's only the practice of homosexuality, not homosexual desires that is sinful? Great. Show me where it says that according to the Scripture. You think modern psychological and philosophical concepts ought to accompany or inform our Bible reading? Awesome. Show me where you find that according to the Scripture. You think Roman Catholics are fellow believers? You think you received a personal angelic visitation? You think that there are instances in which abortion is permissible? Great. Show me where you find that according to the Scripture.

Back to our text. This idea of the royal law (these words given to us here by James) like anything has to be defined according to the Scripture. Well, thankfully James not only tells us that we need to go to the Scripture to understand what the royal law is, he gives us chapter and verse. Look at what he says in verse 8, he says, “You are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture.” And by the way, that is a first class conditional statement, meaning an obedient response is both expected and anticipated. So “if” here in James 2:8 could actually be rendered “since” or “because.” Since “you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture,” or because “you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture.” And then look at this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Those words should sound familiar to you.

Let's actually do a little bit of tracing, a little bit of exegetical carbon dating as we go back in our Bibles to the book of Leviticus. Turn with me if you would to Leviticus 19. The human author here is Moses who under the guidance of the Holy Spirit took down these words directly from Yahweh to give to the ancient Israelites while they wandered around the peninsula there at Sinai before they entered the Promised Land. And here in Leviticus 19 Moses gives the Israelites this laundry list of laws they were to follow as God's kingdom of priests, as His holy nation, as the ones who had been set apart to model to the surrounding and watching nations the holiness of the God they worshiped. In fact, we see this call on the Israelites to be holy as God is holy right at the beginning of Leviticus 19. Look at verse 1. It says, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” ’ ”

And then Yahweh through Moses went on to give the Israelites this list of laws they were to follow as His designated people, as His representatives. Let's pick it up in verse 11, Leviticus 19:11, as he lays out this list of laws for the people of Israel. It says, “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the Lord. You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning. You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the Lord. 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. You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the Lord. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him.” And then look at what it says in verse 18, “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” There it is, “You shall love your neighbor,” verse 18, “as yourself.” The Israelites, the initial people God set His love upon, were to love their neighbors as themselves.

And then our Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, had something to say about this very topic, did He not, during His earthly ministry. Turn with me, if you would, to Matthew 22 where we have Jesus having this heated and spirited interaction with the Sadducees. And I'm going to direct your attention to Matthew 22:34. We'll cut to the heart of the interaction here. Matthew 22:34 says, “But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing Him, ‘Teacher, what is the great commandment in the Law?’ ” And Jesus gives this lawyer His answer in verses 37-38. It says, “And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment.” But then our Lord goes on in verses 39-40 to say this, “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

These words from Jesus, specifically about that second aspect of the commandment is what James in James 2:8 is calling the royal law. And we can turn back to James now. Why does James call it the royal law? Well, he calls it that because it is the supreme and sovereign edict that our King, the King of Kings, has given to us as His followers. This is how Christians are to live in light of this royal law. There is no escaping it, there is no appealing from it, there is no way around it. Which brings us now full circle to what James is saying. James, the half-brother of the King who gave us this royal law is saying in James 2:8, “If… you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.”

So what is going on here? Again, we can't lose sight of the original context. We can't fail to consider what James has just immediately said in James 2:1-7 about the evils of favoritism and preferential treatment in the local church. And what James is doing here is setting this contrast between what he has just articulated in the first seven verses of chapter 2 about the evils of favoritism and how we are actually to live as followers of Christ. And how we are actually to live as followers of Christ is to love our neighbors as ourselves, whether they are rich or poor, whether they are privileged or underprivileged, whether they are poorly dressed or well-dressed, whether they are powdered and perfumed or unbathed and unkempt.

Now does this royal law extend beyond the immediate context given to us here in James of this distinction between rich and poor? Most definitely. The command to love one's neighbor extends beyond the realms of riches and poverty. It reaches beyond distinctions that we draw between the “haves” and the “have nots.” We know this from the context of the passage we just looked at, Matthew 22. What Jesus had to say there as He gave those two great commandments, He wasn't limiting His speech to matters of wealth and poverty. We also know that from other places of Scripture where we see similar commands being given to love our neighbor without restricting those commands to whether our neighbor is rich or poor. In Romans 13:8-10 Paul says, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the Law. 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.’ ” The Apostle John said something very similar in 1 John 4:7. He says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” The chief and greatest command as our Lord stated there in Matthew 22 is to love God supremely. But the second is like unto it, and it was given to us not only by Jesus, it was given to us first by Jesus, but it was reaffirmed by the apostles Paul, John, and James. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Now a brief word about those last two words, “as ourselves.” You can imagine the damage that has been done when people run roughshod over those words. Is James here promoting a concept of self-love? Is he saying that we should love our neighbor and ourselves? Is he saying that love of self is some sort of virtue that is somehow to be pursued or cherished or embraced? Absolutely not. You will never find a passage in Scripture that commends us to love ourselves, or to use the modern vernacular, to just be ourselves. Far from it. The Scriptures instead tell us that we need to examine ourselves and discipline ourselves and put to death the sin that remains within ourselves because we can't trust ourselves. Love of self isn't promoted in Scripture, it's outright warned against in Scripture. What does Paul say at the beginning of 2 Timothy 3 as he is rattling off what the last days will look like? He says at the very top of his list in terms of characteristics of the people in the last days, “in the last days,” 2 Timothy 3:1-2, “difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self.”

So James here, bringing you back to James 2:8, is not saying love your neighbor as yourself in a way that is to promote love of self as some sort of virtue. Rather, he is highlighting the fact as Jesus did in the original context that love of self is natural for us as pride-sick, glory robbers. And just as we show on a daily basis how apt we are and able we are to love ourselves, we at the very least ought to do the same for others. Now note, this royal law that James speaks of here in verse 8 is not a law that condemns in the same way that the Old Testament law did. Nor is the law ultimately a law that leads unto salvation. One does not merit salvation before a holy God by being considerate of other people. If that's the case, Mother Teresa would be in heaven. No. Salvation comes only by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Rather, the idea of the royal law and the idea of fulfilling the royal law is that for us who have been renewed and restored and regenerated, for us who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, for us who have been saved by Jesus Christ, we fulfill His royal law as a dutiful and joyful act of obedience as His royal subjects. And that means refusing to, and in James' context here, look with contempt upon or otherwise discriminate against anyone who enters our assembly on the basis of their economic status, and instead, choosing to love our neighbors in all things as ourselves. And when we do that, when we fulfill the royal law we can be encouraged. Look at the last few words of verse 8. James says that if you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “you are doing well,” which could be translated you are doing excellently, you are living consistent with God's will, you are honoring His Son, you are obeying His Word. And if we are willing as Christians to fulfill this royal law by loving our neighbors as ourselves and in the context of the local church to show no partiality, we can know and find peace in the fact that our Master is pleased with our service. Here in James we are assured and comforted with these words, “you are doing well.” And one day when we stand before this same Master we will hear the words, well done, good and faithful slave [servant, Matthew 25:21].

So that's our first point for this morning, “A Command Elevated,” that command being the royal law articulated by our Lord Himself, that we love our neighbor as ourselves. As we turn to verses 9-11 we come to our next point which is this, “A Contrast Expressed.” Let's look at verses 9-11. He says, “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole Law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 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.”

Now there are two aspects of this text that I want to highlight for you right away. First of all we have this major shift again in James' flow of thought. Back in James 2:1 we had that command, “Do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.” And then as we just saw in James 2:8, James with the same scene in mind is now saying, but “if… you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture you are doing well. But now in verse 9 he swings the pendulum back over and takes us in another direction, as he goes from this positive example in verse 8 of fulfilling the royal law to what he says in verse 9, “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as transgressors.” In other words, James' tone here in verse 9 once again has turned negative. So just hold that in the file.

The second thing I want to draw your attention to here is that James' tone has turned negative in a very specific way. As he is spelling out for his audience -- this collection of early Jewish converts, people who were culturally and ethnically Jewish but had recently come to faith in Christ -- that if they disregard the warnings he is giving them here, that is, if they refuse to abide by the royal law, what they are in effect doing through their actions is choosing to reject the light and easy burden of Jesus. Who came to fulfill the Law, Matthew 5:17, the Mosaic Law, and who in doing so, gave His followers instead the much simpler royal law to live by, to love our neighbors as ourselves. And instead what they are choosing to do through their conduct is now place back on their own shoulders the heavy and rigorous and ultimately impossible demands of the Mosaic Law.

And if you think about it for a bit, you can understand the concern he has here, you can understand what he is driving at here. We have to remember that James himself was a Jew. He was a leader in the early church, specifically a leader to the earliest Jewish converts. He presided over the Jerusalem Council where matters of whether we need to comply with the Mosaic Law were debated. He, of all people, understood how world-view shattering a concept it was that as a Christian, even if one had a Jewish heritage, there was no longer a need to keep, adhere to, or line one's life up with the Law. James knew what it meant to abandon confidence in self and instead to trust in what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 about Him having fulfilled the Law. James knew how wild it sounded when Jesus said that the entirety of the Law could be boiled down to the two greatest commandments which the Lord gave us in Matthew 22. And James knew what a temptation it was for this early generation of Jewish converts to want to run back to the Law as some sort of spiritual checkpoint. As a way to make themselves feel good, like they were making spiritual progress as they checked off various boxes associated with the Torah. But James here, what he is doing through these verses is warning his readers, his listeners. He is telling them in effect, don't do it. He is telling them similar, I would say, to the author of Hebrews that the way of Christ is better, that Jesus is better, that the royal law is better. And as we'll see in verse 12 the law of liberty is better. Don't do it, says James. Don't yoke yourself up again under the rigorous strictures of the Law.

And with that as our background, let's again look at verses 9-11. He says, “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 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.” We're going to unpack that now and look at these, word by word. He says, “But if you show partiality.” The root word there for ‘partiality’ is the same word for ‘favoritism’ that we see in James 2:1. And this isn't occasional partiality or favoritism that is being described here. The verb form here is highlighting this continual practice of partiality. This is blatant activity, this is intentional, habitual activity. And what James is saying here is that if you are going to go ahead and reject the royal law, if you are going to reject Christ the King's royal command that you love your neighbor as yourself, what you are doing is consciously exempting yourself, as though you could, from the lesser burdens of the royal law and you instead have opted for the more severe demands and burdens of the Mosaic Law. He freed you, Jesus freed you, from the burden of the Law but you voluntarily opted to put the shackles back on. Thinking that you can pick and choose which rules and standards of the Mosaic Law that you like to follow. Thinking that you can customize the Mosaic Law to fit your needs and preferences and whims.

Well, it doesn't work that way because if you reject the royal law and if you hitch your wagon selectively to the old Mosaic Law which Christ came to fulfill in total, look at what James says here in James 2:9. He says, “you are committing sin.” That's about as straightforward as it gets. You wanted the Law? All right, you got it. Give it your best shot. And your best shot didn't work, you failed. And in James' words, “you are committing sin.” The word there for sin is “hamartia” and it means to miss the mark, the way an archer's arrows fall short or fly left or fly right from their target. But here the failure is not in the accuracy or inaccuracy of an arrow, it's in the failure of one who claims to be a follower of Christ deciding to do things his way and to go his own way rather than going Christ's way.

James doesn't stop there though, he doubles down. After telling the person who shows partiality you are committing sin, he next says, “You… are convicted by the law as transgressors.” See, partiality is not merely being inconsiderate or discourteous, it's a serious sin. The person who openly demonstrates partiality or favoritism is not only missing the mark of God's holy standards, he is also a transgressor. And the word ‘transgressor’ there is this compound term which means to step over, as in stepping over the line, which is just such a great picture of sin. Sin is stepping over the line. God establishes the line and when we sin, we step over that line. And as the transgressors described here step over that line, James says they are “convicted by the law,” the Mosaic Law, the Old Testament Law because they are running back to that Law as their standard.

Now hear me. James here is not saying at all that Christians are bound to follow the Law. He is not saying that it is a good thing when a Christian tries to follow the Law. He is not suggesting as many do today that we ought to divide up the Mosaic Law and that Christians don't need to follow the civil and ceremonial aspects of the Law, but we do still need to follow the moral dimensions of the Law. No. James isn't saying, suggesting, or hinting at any of that. Christians are not subject to nor bound by the Law in any sense. The Law was for Israel, the Law is not for the church; but what Christians can do is what some in James' audience apparently were doing. They can, through their life and their conduct, reject the royal law, reject Christ's statements about the two greatest commandments, reject the law of liberty (that we'll get into in verse 12), and usually on account of a faulty hermeneutic, unwittingly place themselves back under the yoke of the Law which Christ came to remove.

Well, the ones James speaks of here were unable to keep the Law perfectly. Surprise, surprise. It's true of every human on this planet, save one. And the result is, as James says here at the end of verse 9, they “are convicted by the law as transgressors.” Now in their context that transgression had to do with showing sinful favoritism in their gatherings of worship. That's what we studied last time. But this concept of being “convicted by the law as transgressors,” it applies more broadly to any attempt to lay a burden on oneself that goes beyond the royal law by importing certain requirements of the Old Testament Law into our current church age context. We see this in the Seventh Day Adventist movement, right? Which seeks to carry over Sabbath keeping and certain Levitical dietary restrictions into their version of so-called Christianity. We see this in this popularized theonomy movement which holds that certain aspects of the judicial Law from the Old Testament ought to be imposed upon and followed in modern day society as we seek to Christianize and somehow usher in the kingdom as we take over the nations for Christ. We see this in various strands of Messianic Judaism which fold back in with purported faith in Christ. The point is when we start pulling Old Testament Law into the New Testament church age we run the risk of placing ourself back under the Law, which is the very thing that Christ came to spare us from. And it's not just James here, by the way. The Apostle Paul warned us about this very thing, did he not, in the book of Galatians. Galatians 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” He's talking about the Law.

Back to James. He drives his point home further with these words in verse 10. He says, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” James was aware that there would be some who would tend to dismiss their prejudicial behavior, their favoritism in the church, as some sort of trivial fault. There would be some who were displaying this sort of sinful favoritism who would hardly consider themselves to be lawbreakers. And James here has some very jarring words for them, verse 10, “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” It's clear from the context that the person that James is describing here is trying, striving, to keep the whole Law. To them it is Jesus plus Law-keeping. And there is a temptation to that even in our day, is there not? To add something, to seek to add something to the finished work of Christ on the cross as somehow meriting our salvation.

Think of the millions of Roman Catholics who believe that it is Jesus plus His mother Mary who serve as our mediator before God. Think of the people who think that it is Jesus plus their baptism or Jesus plus their service on a Christian school board, or Jesus plus their Bible reading, or Jesus plus their theology studies that is going to get them to heaven. We're all tempted to do it, we're all prone to fall prey to it, to in some subtle way through this modern form of religious do-goodism to hitch ourselves back to some form of laws or moralism or regulations that we read about sometime as we did our Old Testament Bible reading, to these laws that were meant for Israel and not for us. And look at what James says to such a person here in verse 10, you can try to keep the whole Law, but “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”

I think Paul was even stronger with his language about this sort of behavior, this sort of tendency to drift back into legalism, in the book of Galatians, in Galatians 5:4 where he is addressing those who think that it is Jesus plus circumcision that results in one being secure in the family of God. In Galatians 5:4 Paul says this. “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.” Strong words, terrifying words, for a person who attempts to live a Law-governed life as opposed to a Christ-directed life. And when they stumble in their futile attempts to do so… And they will stumble, by the way. How do I know that? James 3:2, “we all stumble in many ways.” When that happens, when such a person who seeks to go back to the Law stumbles, look at what it says at the end of verse 10, “he has become guilty of all.” Or as other translations have rendered it, He has “become answerable for the whole,” He has through his conduct re-assumed the burden of the Law for himself, he has re-subjected himself to the penalty of the Law through his inability to keep it.

Which now takes us to the next part of the argument of James in verse 11 where he 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.” James here is illustrating in verse 11 the principle he has articulated in verse 10. And when he says, “He who said” in verse 11, that's of course a reference to God, to Yahweh, who first gave the Law to Moses and who first gave those two commands listed here, do not commit adultery and do not commit murder. But here in James' letter the mic-drop moment happens at the end of verse 11 where he says, “Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.” In other words, just because you didn't commit one violation doesn't mean you didn't commit another.

I mean, we see this in our parenting all the time, right? Mom, I didn't -- okay, maybe I did stick my tongue out at my brother but I didn't hit him with the baseball bat. Mom, I did lie about eating that last cookie but I did take out the trash earlier today. We do it as adults. Yes, boss, I did fraudulently add that time to my timesheet but I did volunteer at a nursing home earlier this week. Yes, I did get drunk and drive home last night, but I wasn't using cocaine like everybody else. It happens in the church. Yes, I am sinfully angry with another member of our church, but I did give this week. Or yes, I gave in to lustful thoughts and looked at online pornography this week, but I did my Bible reading. James here is saying give me a break, cut it out. He is highlighting here the absurdity of inconsistent obedience. He does it in verse 10, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” And he does it in verse 11, “Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.” He is saying here you have crossed over the line, you are a sinner, you are a law-breaker; and because you have rejected Christ's way of adhering to His royal law and because you've instead opted to do it your way by yoking yourself again under the Mosaic or God's Law, when you violate that Law, you will stand condemned, you will stand judged. And the judgment that you will face will not be only for that one incident or that one violation or that one transgression. Rather, the entire weight of the Law will come crushing down on your head.

And to James' point that's because the Law, the Mosaic Law, a law of death ultimately, is unified. It all hangs together. One violation results in violation of all. I like how one commentator put it. He said, God's law, speaking of the Mosaic Law in this context, is not like a setup of ten bowling pins which we knock down one at a time. It more resembles a pane of glass in which a break at one point means that the entire pane is broken. It takes the breaking of one commandment, any commandment. Here in James' case it is committing the sin of partiality to become a transgressor of the Law. You say you are not an adulterer. Great. You are not a murderer. Wonderful. You are not a thief or a liar. Fantastic. Have you been partial toward others? Have you shown favoritism toward others? Have you neglected the royal law as laid down by Christ Himself?

To wrap this all up, on the one hand, when you show no partiality and no favoritism, you fulfill the royal law of Christ. And verse 8 says you do well. But on the other hand, when you demonstrate habitual favoritism and partiality, you show yourself at best to be inconsistently obedient and inconsistent obedience is ultimately not obedience at all. Rather, it is lawbreaking, it is sin. And sin is not to have a foothold in the life of any believer.

All right, in verse 8 we've seen “A Command Elevated,” in verses 9-11 we've seen “A Contrast Expressed,” next in verse 12 we're going to see “A Control Established.” Look at what he says in verse 12, he says, “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” So here again James pivots. After encouraging his audience to “fulfill[] the royal law according to the Scripture,” to love their neighbors as themselves -- and after issuing the various warnings (that we have just gone over) about the one who refuses to obey the royal law and instead chooses to selectively comply with certain aspects of the Mosaic Law, for instance, by not committing murder or not committing adultery -- James now gives this positively-worded command. “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” “So speak and so act,” those are action words. They describe the comprehensive obedience that God requires of His subjects from their head to their hands.

But comprehensive obedience to what? He tells us. “The law of liberty,” obedience to the law of liberty. What is the law of liberty? I'm glad you asked. Let's go back to James 1 which we covered just a few months ago actually. Look at James 1, starting in verse 22, James 1:22, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.” And now look at verse 25, “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.” Did you catch it? The law of liberty which James also calls the perfect law is mentioned first here in James 1:25, but then it is mentioned again as we've just seen, in James 2:12.

So using Scripture to interpret Scripture (which is how we should always interpret Scripture) how are we to understand what James means when he uses these words in James 2:12, the law of liberty? Well, as I mentioned when I went through James 1:25 a few weeks ago, I take these words, “the law of liberty,” to be a reference to God's Word. The perfect law is one which gives Christians the experience of freedom. It's a law which gives us liberty as we seek to heed it, understand it, follow it, obey it. That's an apt description of God's Word for the believer. The truth of God's Word initially, because it contains the gospel of God, is what set us free. It liberates us when we were brought forth, James 1:18, “by the word of truth.” The shackles of sin at that point fell off, we were set free from our enslavement to our old ways, we were liberated. John 8:36, “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

But that does not mean that because we've been set free salvifically, meaning that we now have access to God because of the freedom that we have now in Christ, it doesn't mean that we don't have an obligation to obey. We do. Though we have been set free from the bondage of sin and though we have been purchased and redeemed by the blood of Christ, we still have a Master. And as Romans 6 puts it, we were once slaves to sin but now we are slaves to righteousness. We have traded masters and we've been freed. But ultimately we've been freed to be slaves, freed to obey our new Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And where is it that we go to see what He wants us to do or where He wants us to go or what it means to obey Him and what it means to follow Him? We go to His Word, the perfect law, the law of liberty. And now we are, as James 2:12 puts it, to “so speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” I mean, we can't live up to the standards of the old Mosaic Law. To do so would be futile. It's a law of death, it would only condemn us as we've just seen in verses 9-11. But we are called to strive as Spirit-indwelt followers of the Lord Jesus Christ to “look[] intently into the perfect law” as James says in James 1:25, meaning the Word of God. And then to “abide[] by it,” it says, “not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer.” And when we do so it says, “this man will be blessed in what he does.”

Now before we move on I do need to note that James here at the end of James 2:12 says that we will “be judged by the law of liberty.” And what does that mean? We need to remember that James here is writing to believers, he is writing to followers of Christ. So we know what he is not referring to the Great White Throne judgment that unbelievers face one day. Rather, this refers to the judgment seat of Christ, the Bema seat, which all Christians will stand before one day, as 2 Corinthians 5:10 puts it, to give an account to our Lord for the deeds we have done within the body. For we who have trusted in Christ, of course, our eternal destiny has been forever settled and secured. Romans 8:1, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That doesn't mean we won't one day be still judged by our Lord, the very Lord who saved us; it's just a different type of judgment. We're going to be judged based not on how faithful we were to the Mosaic Law that was given to Israel, instead we're going to be judged based on how faithful we were to learn, to honor and to live out God's Word. We're going to be evaluated and judged by our Lord based on how faithful we were to Him in every area of our life—in our marriages, in our parenting, in our vocations, in our thought life, in our hearts, what we do when the lights are out and no one is watching. And bringing it back to James here, in the church and whether we in the church demonstrated sinful partiality or favoritism.

With that we come to our final verse and our final point for today, verse 13, where we see “A Caution Extended.” Look at verse 13, he says, “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment.” Now at first glance James' words here seem like they are coming out of left field. He has been addressing these subjects of partiality and favoritism and he has been toggling between the concepts of the royal law and then the Mosaic Law and now the law of liberty. And then all of a sudden he brings up these twin topics of mercy and judgment. What's that all about? Here is what is happening. As he is coming out of verse 12 and his reference to the Bema seat judgment that followers of Christ will face for the deeds they perform within the body, James now in verse 13 is contrasting the judgment that believers will face with the judgment that unbelievers will eventually face. And I get to that conclusion with the words “judgment will be merciless.” That can only describe one thing and one place—eternal hell. There is only one place here or elsewhere, now or in the future where people will experience judgment without mercy, and that's in the flames of hell.

That's what James is describing here, a merciless judgment in hell for those who have shown no mercy. And mercilessness, when you think about it, refusal to show mercy, is truly a mark of lack of faith or unbelief. Think of the unbeliever, their lives are characterized, they are marked, by partiality and hardness of heart and selfishness and lack of concern for other people. They reflect nothing of the love of God, nothing in caring for the people that God has made in His image. They reflect instead the character of the unforgiving slave in the parable Jesus gives in Matthew 18. And the partiality in James' context and the favoritism in James' context that was being demonstrated in this early gathering was the very opposite of mercy. These individuals were showing by refusing to show mercy to others, specifically to those in need, that they had not rightly responded to the mercy of God offered to them through Christ. And as a result, James is saying here, they themselves would not be blessed, they themselves would not receive mercy. In fact, they would receive the opposite—merciless judgment.

But then James closes out this section with these positive words of encouragement for the Christian. The last words of verse 13, “mercy triumphs over judgment.” What a wonderful truth and what a truth with such clear echoes of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:7 when He says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” True faith is merciful faith, trusting faith is merciful faith, abiding faith is merciful faith. And if your life is characterized by mercy toward others as a right response to the mercy that you've been shown by God through Christ, what James is saying here is that you will triumph over judgment. “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” You will escape the ultimate judgment that faces the unbeliever. Brings back to mind Titus 3:5, “He saved us,” God saved us, “not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy.”

Well, as we wrap up for this morning I want to kind of give you a preview of where we are going to go next week and we're going to go to James 2:14-17. No surprise there, we're going to keep marching on. It's a familiar section of Scripture and it deals with that inseparable link between faith and works in the life of the believer. “Faith, if it has no works,” James says, “is dead.” But I also want you to not lose sight of the context of those same verses, those verses we will get into next week, because the context of those verses is the same context of the verses we've been studying today and two weeks ago, which is the ugly sin of favoritism and partiality rearing its ugly head into the church. And of course, as we take on those verses next week we will have to address and take on the objections and the arguments that have been floated around for centuries about Paul and James somehow being in conflict. That Paul in places like Ephesians 2:8-9 is promoting a faith-based religion while James here in James 2 is promoting a works-based religion. But as we're going to see James and Paul aren't in conflict at all, they're making the same point, albeit from different angles. But that's also not the only point at which James and Paul agree, because Paul also affirms what James has been saying in this section of James 2 that we've been in today.

I already read it earlier, but why don't you turn with me to Romans 13 as we close. Romans 13, picking it up in verse 8, and see if you can pick up traces of James here in Paul's writing. Romans 13:8, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 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.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Amen. The royal law came initially in Leviticus, it was formally announced by our Lord, we just saw it was recognized by both James and Paul, and now we as followers of Christ, it's on us now to live it out. Let's remember that though we are free indeed through Christ, that freedom is to now lead to obedience, obedience to this royal law and obedience to the law of liberty, the Word of God.

Let's pray. Lord God, we again thank You for our time in the study of Your precious Word. Thank You for Your Son, Jesus, the King of Kings and the Author of this royal law. Thank You that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Thank You that for we who have been washed and renewed by the blood of the Lamb, we have our great commandments to live out—to love You supremely and to love our neighbor greatly. May that be the mark of everyone in this room here this morning. And God, if there is anybody here this morning who has not given their life to the Lord, I pray that as they do the evaluation, measuring up their life against Your Word, that they would get real, they would truly take inventory, take stock of what their life looks like, and how that measures up to the royal law, and that they would see that they have a great need for a great Savior. And that He stands ready to embrace them and usher them into His family if they would just bow the knee to Him in repentance and faith. So God, I pray that there would be many this morning that would get real with You and bow the knee to Christ and be saved. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.