Favoritism (Part 5 of 6)

Showing favoritism isn't simply unfair.

It's a sin. In fact, we break God's greatest commandment when we discriminate on the basis of things like wealth or race or social status. So how can we treat others in a way that pleases God?

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg unpacks the core principle that can help us resist our own inclination to show favoritism. I invite you to turn to James and chapter 2 at verse 8. If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture—love your neighbor as yourself—you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, Do not commit adultery also said, Do not murder.

If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Amen. Just a prayer together as we look to the Scriptures. Father, we thank you that we have a Bible to which we're able to turn. We thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit to illumine the pages of the Bible to us, to conduct that divine dialogue in our lives, whereby beyond the voice of a mere man we sense that this is none other than God himself knocking at our door, speaking to us words of caution and challenge and comfort. Accomplish your purposes, we pray, in this study so that we might love Jesus and serve him. For we pray in his name.

Amen. Well, just one simple phrase has allowed James to, as it were, set the cat among the pigeons. And that phrase is back in verse 1—"Don't show favoritism." It's one of those phrases where we're quite honest in recognizing that there is no part of it that we do not understand.

James is clear, he's concise, he is candid, and he is actually pretty courageous. Because for him to challenge favoritism was to challenge something very close to home. And for us to open our Bibles this morning and look at this particular section of Scripture is, once again, to be confronted by something that we find pretty close to home in, if we're honest, a little closer than we would be prepared, perhaps, to admit. Because while all of us, without exception, would be unwilling to endorse the practice of discrimination, none of us are able to deny the presence of discrimination, the presence of partiality. Indeed, we might argue that our whole culture is put together on the basis of choosing favorites and establishing ourselves in ways that disengage us from the people around us. And the prevalence of discrimination is among us as it relates to nationality, to social status, to race, and that's all just for starters. And it would be one thing if this was simply a secular problem, but it is not. It is a religious problem. It is, more significantly, a Christian problem.

It is a personal problem. That's why I say to you that when we look down at the Scriptures here, we find them looking back up at us, and we realize, as we've done so many times before, that although we are trying to understand the Bible, the Bible is a book that understands us. James, I think, without question, must have had in mind the story that Jesus told of the good Samaritan. But on one occasion, a man came up to Jesus, and he asked him what he had to do to receive eternal life. And Jesus said, Well, how do you read the Bible?

What do you know about the law? And he gave back to him the law. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and your mind and your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said to the man, Well, go ahead and do that, and you will live. Interestingly, the man comes back by saying this, Who is my neighbor?

Who is my neighbor? In fact, the King James Version, if I recall it, reads, But the man seeking to justify himself said, Who is my neighbor? What was he trying to do? He was trying to discriminate. It was customary for the Jews or the Essenes or the Pharisees to draw little circles around themselves when it came to the fulfilling of the law of God.

And so the law is perfectly clear. Love God in his entirety and with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. The man says to Jesus, Could you please just tell me who my neighbor is? What's he trying to do? He's trying to limit the number of people that are in his circle so that he can disregard all the people that are outside his circle.

And I say to you again, that man is not an unusual man. That is why the challenge here in James chapter 2 reverberates through our congregation and, indeed, through our lives. I haven't found these verses the easiest to get a handle on, and so I've gathered my thoughts under four words.

I'll tell you what the words are so that you can know that we're making progress. The first word is if, the second word is but, the third word is so, and the final word is because. If, but, so, because. You recognize that there is a progression in this, and it's the progression that James provides for us here. Verse 8 begins with our first word, if. If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, which is love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing right.

And we'll stop right there, because the next verse, verse 9, takes us to our second word, but. What James has done back up in verse 5 is remind his readers that they are the inheritors of the kingdom—a kingdom that God has promised to those who love him. And Jesus is the King in his kingdom. And because he is the King, he decides what happens in his kingdom. And the royal law that he has established is summarized—all of God's moral law—summarized, essentially, in the words of Jesus, in love God with your totality and love your neighbor as yourself.

And it is this royal law found in Scripture which bears all of the testimony to the kingly rule of Jesus. Love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said, is a summary of the second table of the Ten Commandments. Some of us grew up in churches where the Ten Commandments were recited every Sunday.

Not a bad practice. It takes time, but it's purposeful. Others of us grew up in churches where the Ten Commandments appeared before us on the wall. And it meant that we were immediately, at least through our eye gaze, confronted by the fact that God has certain standards that he has designed and desires for us. And when we get to the second tablet of the law, it says that there should be no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no lying, and no coveting.

Well, how do we summarize that? Love your neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you're not gonna commit adultery, you're not gonna lie to them, steal from them, covet.

You're certainly not going to kill them. That's what Jesus has made clear in the Gospels, and that's what his brother now is driving home in this letter—the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, love is the ruling principle at the core of God's moral demands, a ruling principle which is then worked out in our everyday lives. It would be one thing if the call to love was a call to some emotional experience, whereby we went away in a corner and tried to engender it.

But it is not that. If you keep the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you do right. In other words, it's like a coin. On the one side of the coin, it says love, and on the other side of the coin, it says righteousness. To love your neighbor as yourself, says James, is to do the right thing. To do the right thing is to love your neighbor as yourself. So it's not a question of feelings. It's a question of doing what is right. We often think of that completely upside down, don't we? A topsy-turvy way of thinking. And yet we're helped when we come to the marriage service, because in the marriage service there's no question about how anybody's feeling. Not in any sensible marriage service there isn't. Not in the ones that have stood the test of time over hundreds of years. The minister never asks the person, How do you feel about her? How do you feel about him?

Because the answers would be multivarious. No, the question is all directed to the will. Do you take her? Will you love her? Will you keep yourself only to her?

Will you promise to do this, and do you promise to do that? And all of these promises are an expression of the royal law found in Scripture. Love your wife as yourself.

Love your husband as yourself. Love is revealed in obedience, and obedience expresses itself in love. Now, when we move into anything that talks about the law, some Christians immediately get very fidgety, because they have grown up with a misunderstanding of the place of the law in the Christian life, and they have completely set it aside by using a particular phrase, which is a biblical phrase, We are not under law, we are under grace. Well, of course we are. That's exactly what the Bible says. We're not under law as a means of justification. We're not under law as the dynamic of our sanctification. But the fact of the matter is, the law—this perfect law that gives liberty—has an abiding place in the life of the Christian. Otherwise, how do we know what we're supposed to do?

If we're supposed to just sit around and wait until our feelings move us, how well have most of us been doing on that? How many have felt that it would be a good time if they just felt as though they ought to buy a Harley-Davidson and run away to somewhere in the deep south or the far west? And if they'd been sitting around for long enough, they may be able to add to that, and the Lord told me. No, he did not. There's nothing about Harley-Davidson's in the Bible, I can guarantee you that.

There is something about triumphs, but not Harley-Davidson's. You see how dangerous it is? And it happens all the time. Well, I'm feeling this, and I'm sensing that, and I believe the Lord is saying this, and the next thing. Stop most of that nonsense. The abiding rule of God's law is whereby we find the basis for determining what we're doing. And that is not legalism. That is not legalism. Legalism is an approach to the law whereby we use it as a mechanism for putting ourselves in a right standing with God.

We know that we cannot do that. Legalism, says Graham Goldsworthy, is a subtle thing. Those who do not place the same emphasis on the law will be branded as antinomian, as against law, even lawless. But it needs to be emphasized that recognizing that God requires us to honor his law and to be lawful is not the same as being legalistic.

Do you get that? The fact that God requires us to honor his law and be lawful cannot be equated with being legalistic. If you really keep the royal law founded, Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself… It's interesting that as yourself is in there, isn't it? Just being love your neighbor, you say, well, okay, how do you want me to do that?

So the word is love your neighbor as yourself. How do you love yourself? Do you love yourself? Did you wake up this morning and say, oh, I love me, I love me, I love me?

I hope not. I was greatly helped by this quote. If we want to know how we're to love our neighbor, then we must ask a prior question, how do we love ourselves? Never, it is to be hoped, with an emotional thrill. Rarely, as a matter of fact, with much sense of satisfaction—mostly with pretty wholesale disapproval, often with complete loathing, but always with concern, care, and attention. When we catch sight of our faces in the mirror first thing in the morning, the word ah! comes spontaneously to the lips. Yet at once we take that revolting face into the bathroom, we wash it and tend it and make it as presentable as nature will allow.

And so it goes on through the day. Loving ourselves means providing loving care and attention. This is the model in which we're to base our relationships to all to whom we owe neighborly duty. Everything conspires today to define love primarily in emotional terms. Scripturally, love is to be defined in caring terms, for the love that is owed to our neighbor is the love we expend on ourselves. So that love is not the victim of our emotions but the servant of our wills.

See what he's saying? If—and it's a pretty big if—if you keep the royal law found in Scripture and love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing right. Why are you doing this? Because it's right. How do you feel? I don't know how I feel. But I'm doing this because it's right.

This is quite staggering, isn't it? Because we are at the end of a period of a couple of decades, twenty-five years, really, in which, within the framework of evangelicalism, there's such a shift away from any notion of duty, any notion of obligation. Anybody who does anything out of duty or obligation clearly doesn't understand Christianity, so we're told. I think that's wrong.

I think the Bible says it's wrong. You see, if we operate simply on the basis of the stimulation of our hearts or our emotional drifts, there's no saying where we're going to end up. Yesterday I did something that was right. I think it was an expression of love.

I didn't feel any emotion in it at all. I did it because it was right. I went over to see some people who were leaving, and I thought, I need to go and see them because they're leaving. Half of me said, Forget it. They're leaving.

They won't care. And then I said, Yeah, but that wouldn't be right. And so because it was right and because the rest would be wrong, I did what was right. I went over and loved them. I loved them. How did I feel?

I don't really know. I prayed with them. Gave them a hug.

But if anyone keeps the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as himself. Herself. Yourself.

They do what's right. Second word, but. It's been too long on the first. I apologize.

We'll catch up. But if you show favoritism—James still hasn't let go of this, you see. He's back at favoritism again.

The contrast is clear. If you keep this royal law, you do right. If you show favoritism, you sin. Now, remember what James has introduced as his illustration, back up in verses 2 and 3. Suppose, he says—this is a supposition—imagine a man comes in, and he wears a gold ring and has fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in.

If you show particular attention to the man wearing the fine clothes, give him a nice seat, and you disregard the poor man, then you have become judges with evil thoughts. In other words, you violated the royal law found in Scripture. Now, I find it very interesting that he comes back to favoritism not on account of the fact that it was mentioned previously, but in light of what he then goes to in verses 10 and 11 to make his other point. He goes to murder and to adultery. Nobody can say that because they did one or failed to do one that they're clear in the other. But the interesting thing to me is that he doesn't say, Love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing right, but if you murder, you sin and are convicted by the law as a lawbreaker. Or if you steal, or if you covet. He doesn't actually go to one of the commandments, per se.

He goes back to favoritism, which makes it all the tougher. Because some of us are tempted to think that provided we haven't done any of the Big Ten, as it were—or not the main ones in the Big Ten—that we can somehow or another just go quite merrily along with a little bit of slander and a little bit of gossip and a little bit of favoritism and a little bit of a judgmental spirit and so on. Because after all, you know, we're not breaking anything here, really, of significance. James lays the axe to that notion.

No. It's not multiple choice. It's not six out of ten to be attempted.

Because look at what he says. Whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking all of it. The fact of our breaking God's law is significant and serious, because God's law is an expression of his character and his nature. The reason we have the law of God is because it says to us, if you like, verbally, what God is ontologically. God does not reveal himself to the people in the Old Testament. Let me just show you this, if you want, in Deuteronomy 4.

In Deuteronomy chapter 4, when God reveals himself—and this great call for obedience is the hallmark of the chapter, and then the forbidding of idolatry—Deuteronomy 4, if you just look down at verse 11, you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while it blazed with fire, to the very heavens with black clouds and deep darkness. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form.

There was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, the ten commandments, which he commanded you to follow, and he wrote them down. Verse 15, he comes back to the same thing. You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt, and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, and so on. The fact is that God revealed himself in what he said. He revealed himself in what he said. And what he says is expressive of his character and of his nature. Therefore, if I look at the law of God and say, I don't have to deal with this one, what I'm saying is that the number one, that my love for God is deficient, but also at the same time that there are aspects of God's nature which actually don't matter.

And that cannot be. To say that one of the commands has less of an impact on me than another, to break God's law, to show favoritism, is to be a law breaker. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.

Love is revealed in obedience, in doing the right thing, regardless of how we feel. We're listening to Alistair beg on Truth for Life. If you're enjoying Alistair's sermons from the book of James, you can hear his entire teaching through all five chapters. Listen for free at truthforlife.org or search for the series on the mobile app.

You can also purchase the teaching on a USB for just five dollars when you visit truthforlife.org slash store. Now along with Alistair's messages, we choose books that we can recommend to you and we choose them with great care. The book we're recommending today is a book for children. It's titled Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2. This is a story drawn from the sequel to the classic book The Pilgrim's Progress written by John Bunyan. In this fictional story, the main character is a girl, Christiana. That might be particularly encouraging for the young girls who will read the book.

Christiana embarks on an adventurous journey to the celestial city and along the way she meets many who try to divert her. The story is an allegory of the Christian life and it teaches young children how to stay on the path that leads to eternity. Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2 is split into short chapters, perfect for reading at bedtime. Your children or grandchildren will learn that God is with them always, even when they encounter difficulty or doubt or danger.

Each chapter finishes with a summary to help clarify the meaning of the story and it provides you with questions for additional discussion. Request your copy of Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2 when you give a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate or you can call us at 888-588-7884. Now did you know that you can access nearly 3,000 of Alistair's audio or video messages free on our website or that you can read articles that are taken from Alistair's teaching? We post new articles each week that cover a wide variety of topics and just like Alistair's sermons they're free for you to read or to share. You'll find the most recent articles at truthforlife.org slash articles. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy your weekend and are able to worship at your local church, a good solid Bible teaching church, and then join us Monday for the conclusion of today's message as we'll find out how God's law actually grants us freedom. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.