James 2:1-13: Teaching Notes

James 2:1-13 A New Way to See

Last week we ended by looking at how true religion, a true relationship with God, expresses itself through purity in our speech, through social concern, and moral purity. I hope all of you had the chance to visit the RL exhibit, and hear Joel’s message this weekend– This week James takes this idea and brings it a little closer to home, in fact he brings it really to our very doorstep.

Becauseh before we can deal with this issue of social concern, we must have God give us a new way to see. Before we can love people, serve people, give to people, share the love of Christ and the truth of the gospel with people, we must have new eyes—we must see them as God sees. Our belief is what fuels our actions, always. To change the way we act we must change the way we see. The reason we don’t take up the cause of the poor? Because we don’t believe they are worth it. If we are to have God light a fire in our hearts for loving people, we must believe that they are worth loving. We must have new eyes to see them as God sees. Let’s jump into the text.

James 2:1-4 Read 1. Straightforward, ok. Partiality comes through Poor perspective. Now James brings it right to the doorstep of our church. Read v. 2-4.

Now, from the perspective of our main character, what is the difference between these two men—what does it say? Exactly what data does he have as his criteria for his judgment. What is the only difference between the two? Clothes and accessories. Clothes. The difference between the two men was the clothes they were wearing.

1. Seeing as God sees means looking past appearances.

The Bible doesn’t talk all that much about clothes. We do. Don’t we? We have subscriptions to entire magazines devoted to clothes. Fashion in a multi-BILLION dollar industry. Meaning we spend millions of millions, billions and billions of dollars every year on pieces of fabric that we hang on our bodies and pieces of metal that hang from our ears, or bags we use to carry our gum. We have closets the size of some people’s homes, just to hold all of our clothes. And most of us store our out-of-season clothes in other closets! Now believe me I like clothes just as much as the next girl, and I too have a walk-in closet. We’re not saying today that you can’t wear nice clothes or take care of your appearance—in fact, we’re going to take a quick look at what the Bible does say about clothes and appearance. But part of being doers of the Word means that we what: Hold up God’s Word like a mirror (remember last week!), and take a good long look at what we’re wearing and why. Because we do everything that we do for a reason. There’s always a reason behind your actions, from what you ate for breakfast to what you wear to what car you drive to why you’re here, right? And if we’re going to be doers of the Word we first have to hold up that mirror of God’s Word and take a look. So let’s do that.

Now, when we get ourselves dressed and we do whatever we do to ourselves (and I’m certainly not advocating that we don’t do anything to ourselves!), we do so to take care of our… appearance. We want to be sure that our appearance is ok. Nothing wrong with that. But, would you agree that our world has become absolutely consumed with appearances. We will spend hundreds of dollars on jeans that make us look 3 ounces thinner. We will spend hundreds of dollars on shoes that are horrid to walk in! Why? Make our legs look longer. We will spend hundreds of dollars on a bag of all things, by a certain designer. Why? I don’t know, I still haven’t figured that one out. I’m really not trying to be snarky I’m just saying we gotta take a step back and say, “What on earth am I doing?!”

Poor perspective. When we live in this fallen world we are so prone to becoming engulfed in its world view, we don’t even realize our minds have been taken caprtive. And we never step back and say, “What on earth am I doing?” Our obsession with appearance is one of the areas where we are gotten so out of control, and history tells us that we will go to ridiculous lengths. And, I hope you will let me try to convince you that this epidemic obsession with appearnces is absolutely related to our topic of partiality today. Let me illustrate.

Chinese feet binding? For a THOUSAND years this was a trend. We talk about “classic” styles lasting a decade. This was a classic style. And, it began with the elite class, the rich, who emulated the beautiful tiny feet of these certain dancers in the Southern Tang dynasty. So women began binding their feet to make them appear smaller. Did they get smaller? No of course not. The result, women were crippled. The very feet that God gave us so we can walk, they ruined by vanity. Vanity knows no bounds. (Show x-ray.) We look at this and say that’s ridiculous. Which proves that fashion is arbitrary. Now again, please hear my heart. I think there is a place for fashion. Beauty is from God. The problem is that we’ve allowed this to take over our world, and next thing you know you’re got feet like that.

The Chinese aren’t the only ones, right? What about neck-rings? Many women from Asia and Africa begin putting neck rings on little girls as young as 2 years old to begin gradually lengthening one’s neck because they have one ideal of beauty—an elongated neck. These rings tilt the collarbone, and they can be very dangerous to remove because the neck muscles atrophy to such an extent that the weight of their heads can collapse their necks. They can’t drink from cups, only straws, cannot look at the sky.

Again, crazy. We’re far more subtle in our tummy tucks and face lifts and control spanx and push-up bras. Or, the fashion industry realizes they can’t actually mame and destroy women’s bodies with crushing feet or stretching necks, so we just do it all digitally, right? We’ll spend billions of dollars in the advertising industry to photoshop everything to sell an image, an appearance, that is false, so nobody gets hurt, right? The only people who get hurt are the millions of pre-teen and teen girls and women who believe that in order for them to be beautiful and accepted and lovely they have to look like that. And now we’re facing a new frightening trend. Eating disorder experts say they seeing a startling increase in cases of young girls as young as 5-6 years old. Instead of destroying girls’ feet and necks we’re destroying their hearts. Our hearts.

And when we continue to invest loads of time and energy and resources into appearances we are perpetuating a culture which is DRIVEN by—partiality. The word partiality, the Greek word prosopolepsia literally means, “receiving the face.” To “receive the face” is to make judgments and distinctions based on external considerations such as physical appearance, social status, or race. We might say that we shouldn’t judge by appearances but then we spend billions of dollars a year making sure that our appearance send the right message because deep down we know that we judge by appearances. And what does Jesus say about that? “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”(John 7:24) Judgment isn’t wrong, judging by appearances is wrong.

But when we invest billions of dollars into our appearance, we perpetuate the problem. (like shopping for old houses…)

The reason that all this appearance is important to us is that often appearance, fashion and appearance are status symbols, right? We live in world where physical beauty + wealth = value. We have designs on our purses, initials on our jeans, signature style of certain designers. In America, our display of status is more subtle, but it’s there. Oh it’s there.

So, Kari what’s this rant and rave about? So what if my jeans are designer and so what if I do like to wear a little status symbol on my back pocket? Look at the indictment of verse 4: have you not then made distinctions among yourselves.

The problem lies in that often the root of fashion, and the root of our obsession with appearance is to, what was it in verse 4? Make distinctions. We have sought to distinguish ourselves by the clothes that we wear. Distinguish simply means to mark as different of distinct. We’d like to set ourselves apart, or more specifically set ourselves into a certain group of people who wear these same exclusive items. Why do we flock after the styles of the celebrities? We want to distinguish ourselves into the same sphere of status, beauty that they are. We use appearances to make distinctions. Another intresting tidbit is that the Greek verb for make distinctions is DIAKRINO, and it is the same Greek word used in James 1:6 where it said the man who DOUBTS (DIAKRINO) is double-minded, unstable, tossed to and fro. Same word. Remember we said that to doubt there was to have a division of loyalties, same word as to make distinctions, or quite literally—to discriminate. Now it’s good when we are discriminating or discerning based on Godly judgment, right? But when we make distinctions or discriminate based on appearance, we are unstable, tossed to and fro, double-minded (Don’t be dipsychos!) In short, we make distinctions based on appearances so much because we value appearances so much. We have become foolish in our judgments. Instead of judging rightly, we have become consumed with making judgments based on appearance, based—like the man we read about in James 2—on clothing.

So briefly, how does God want us to be clothed? Let’s look briefly:

• 1 Peter 5:5 “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.” Now here’s another topic all to itself. Do we dress humbly? Do we put on humility or do we put on pride?
• Col. 3:14 “Above all these things put on love.”
• Specifically, we learned last year in 1 Peter 3:3-4 that we are to adorn ourselves not externally, with costly designer clothes, fancy jewelry, obsessing over our hair, but to adorn ourselves internally. And all the scriptures we just read are saying juts that, if you’re wondering how to beautify yourself, here it is. If you’re wondering what to wear, here you go. Using the language of our passage, we’re not to spend all of our time judging ourselves externally, we need to spend some time judging internally. Not judging appearances, but as Jesus said, judging rightly. When we become women who judge ourselves internally rather than externally, we will become godly women who just others rightly rather than externally.
• Fascinatingly, the last passage which talks about adorning externally also ties in the major theme that we covered last week, that we’ll cover next week, and that is the thrust of the enter book of James—good works. 1 timothy 2:9 says that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with fancy hair and gold and pearls or costly designer clothing, but what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. There it is. Since we do have to get dressed—dress modestly. But adornment? Let your good works adorn you. That’s what makes someone truly beautiful.
• Proverbs 31 woman of course is our beautiful example and we see these remarks: v.17: She dresses herself with strength, v.20 she opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hand to the needy, v. 22 her clothing is fine linen and purple, v.25 strength and dignity are her clothing. We are to dress with dignity because we are created in the image of God and our value and worth and beauty comes from him. We are not to dress in pride. (Another whole study there)

Looking back at our passage. The person’s sin was two fold. 1) made a judgment based on appearances. 2) He showed partiality, gave preferential treatment to the one whom he has judged (by appearances!) to be of higher status.

1. Seeing as God sees means refusing preferential treatment.

He made the poor man sit on the floor and gave the rich man the seat of honor. So the outward sin was that he gave preferential treatment to one man and disrespected the other man. But that was merely the result of an inward sin that had already occurred. It all started with judging by appearances.

Christ modeled in that He was not a respecter of persons (Matthew 22:16) as the King James says, which literally means “He does not look at people’s faces.” In my version it reads that Jesus is did not care about anyone’s opinion, for he was not “swayed by appearances.” This echoes what we know of God the Father who, in the OT, we read in 1 Samuel 16:7 “The Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” Those of you familiar with the stories of King Saul and King David know that Saul was all about appearances, David was a man after God’s own heart. We looked up these verses in our homework:

• • Romans 2:11: God shows no partiality.
  • Ephesians 6:9: he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.
  • Colossians 3:25: 25For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

And in those we learned that God doesn’t show partiality. And this theme of partiality, and especially toward the poor, is intimately related to what we studied last week—our social concern for the orphan, the widow, the poor, the needy. Deuteronomy 10:17-18 connects these as well. We read “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome god, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.” If we are people given to partiality, we will never learn to love those who give us nothing in return. If we think a person’s value comes from their appearance, wealth, status, good personality—we will never be able to truly love people and see them as God sees. A person is valuable because he or she is made in the image of God. A person has dignity, worth, value, because they are image-bearers of our great and glorious God. If we don’t get that, we will never have our hearts broken for the poor, we will never be moved with compassion to truly help them, because the bottom line is we just do not think they are worth it. Instead, we have been perverted by the belief that the beautiful and successful are who really matter. We will never make any progress showing the world the love of Christ until we see people as God sees them.

[We will never be able to love, serve, give, take up the cause of the poor, until we learn to see them as God sees them, to quit making judgments based on appearances, to quit showing partiality to the rich and famous. A culture that is obsessed with success, fame, beauty, riches, wealth WILL NEVER REACH THE WORLD THAT GOD LOVES. If we are so star-struck we will never look down to see the poor, the needy, the broken. We’re too busy trying to make sure we set ourselves apart into the distinguished group of the world.

Again, back to our scenario in James. What’s happening is partiality. Now, this happens in the world, doesn’t it? I mean, in some ways it’s the basis of our airline seating, our season tickets to the Blazers! Those who are affluent get the best seats. Now that’s fine in the world of commerce, but what if that creeps into our churches? Church is general admission. But do think this can still happen, subtly, even in church?

And I would venture to say that if one of the Blazers walked into church, and right behind him came a frumpy short and squatty mom with unwashed hair, I would dare to say that they would be treated differently. We all are vulnerable to being star-struck or name-dropping or simply, as the King James puts it, being a “respecter of persons.” We behold the face, the clothes—we behold the name and the fame. And James is saying, it’s sin.

3. Seeing as God sees means we value people as image-bearers, not idols.

James 2:5-7 Let’s finish the paragraph. Read vv.5-7. In this context the rich were the very ones who were exploiting them, and yet they still showed them partiality! More specifically, verse 7—they were the ones who blasphemed the honorable name by which you were called. Ok, we have to say this: There is nothing wrong with admiring or respecting certain people—if we respect them for their respectable qualities. However, if we are adoring fans—showing respect and partiality—for those famous celebrities who do not honor the name of Christ, we are, according to James—doing wrong. This means we must be very careful who we are venerating. Lady Gaga is not who we are to be emulating! Now my purpose here is not to stomp on toes, but when we support, praise, venerate, emulate celebrities who blaspheme the name of our God, James says we are in sin. Celebrity worship is sin. MOST celebrities do not honor the name of Christ. (Like talking to a friend and purposefully praising someone else who I know slanders my friend) There is one God, and if we are lauding and praising and spending GOD”S MONEY to go see and support and applaud celebrities who blaspheme the name of our God, or who oppose all that is pure and godly, we are wrong ladies. We must repent of this. We must refuse to just slide along in the slime of pop culture. “Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?” GOD’s NAME should be what we sing and shout and seek to make famous. Isaiah 26:8 says Yes, Lord … YOUR name and your renown are the desire of our hearts.

Let’s finish. Read. 8-9. Over all of this is love.

4. Seeing as God sees leads to loving as God loves.

When we love our neighbor as ourself we look past mere physical appearance or wealth, status. The world’s love says, I will love you as long as you are lovely, successful, as long as you make me feel good and you meet my standards. It’s a self-seeking love. True love, God’s love, seeks not its own (1 Cor. 13). True love, as we looked at last year, is desiring the greatest good for another person. True love shows no partiality.

Read 10-11. I believe James emphasizes the whole law because he is make a point that this little issue of partiality is not a little issue. It’s easy for us to think, “Oh I don’t steal or murder or gossip.” But yeah I reach out to the people who look successful, attractive, like they have their act together. But if we show partiality, we transgress the whole law. This places us all smack dab in the classification of “sinner.” DL Moody said it’s as if we are holding onto a 10-link chain, dangling over a precipice of doom below. It doesn’t matter if we break one link or 9 links, we fall to our destruction no matter what. And the purpose of this reminder is not to make us feel condemned, but to help us understand 1) the seriousness of the sin of partiality, and 2) the JOY of knowing that we are saved through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This passage reminds us that we’ve broken a link in the chain. We should be falling, plummeting to our eternal destruction. BUT GOD. Ephesians 2, but God, by grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

There’s no room for boasting at the end of this message is there?

James’ final exhortation: vv.12-13 Speak and act as those who are judged under the law of liberty. God’s law is a law which frees us to obey Him. It is an inner law which constrains us to follow Him, 2 Cor. 5:14. And while we will not be judged as unbelievers are judged, and while our eternal destination is secure—our works will be judged, when God gives rewards for what we have done here on earth. And Christians who’ve lived selfishly, showing no mercy to the needy but idolizing the rich and famous, will not receive mercy when rewards are given. Jesus said that with the “judgment you pronounce you will be judged, with the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2). In other words, quite simply, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

See the way God sees, love the way God loves.