James 2:1-18 (selected verses)
1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.
How Do You Prove that Your Faith Is Not Dead?
Is your faith alive? How can you tell?
I have a stethoscope here. Where could I put it to hear your faith’s heartbeat? Or maybe we take a trip up the road to the medical imaging center and borrow their MRI machine. Where could we see what your faith looks like?
It’s not that simple, is it? There is no body part that makes your faith function. But faith is a part of your life, and faith itself can be alive or dead. The question is, how can we tell the difference?
James gives us a few ways to know whether faith is alive or dead, and they might not be the first things you would have thought of. The two proofs that James mentions in chapter 2 that a person’s faith may be dead, or at least deathly ill, are snobbery and insincerity.
I don’t know about you, but those seem like rather minor things, don’t they? I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re not good; I wouldn’t advocate for you being an elitist hypocrite, but are those really mortal sins?
James says so, and he reminds us that every sin is a mortal sin. You might have heard the way that Paul puts it in Romans 6:
For the wages of sin is death.[1]
This is the way that James puts it in the verses we read a moment ago:
If you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as law breakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.[2]
All it takes is one sin to make a person a sinner. All it takes is one hole in a balloon for that balloon to be totally useless. It’s not going to hold any air no matter how big or many holes it has. All it takes is one sin to make a person a sinner. And so, while the “big ticket” sins, like murder and adultery, may have greater consequences than snobbery and insincerity, they carry the same guilt.
A sin is a sin, and all it takes is one to make you a sinner.
But James mentions two and warns us against these two in particular because of how fatal they can be to your faith.
First, James says:
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.[3]
Can you imagine making a poor person sit on the floor at church because they are “less than” some other more important person? I’ve seen Christians come up who in church and excited to hear about Jesus for the very first time – I’ve seen Christians come up to them and say, “You’re in my seat.” What does that say about who is more or less important?
I’ve heard church leaders – men who serve on church councils – talk about budgets and when the projected income is less than the expected expense, they say, “I guess we’ll just have to start doing more evangelism so that we get more people to give more money so we can pay our bills.”
Have your eyes ever gotten big when someone new comes to church – they have kids to support our Sunday School, they musical talents that can be used in worship, they have property on a lake you’d like to visit. That’s favoritism.
It’s not as rare as you might think, and it’s more serious than you might like to imagine.
Favoritism goes against everything that Christianity stands for. Favoritism forgets the forgiveness that God has given to you. God didn’t choose you because of your status, because you belong to his favourite segment of society, because of what you could offer him. James says:
Listen, my brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?[4]
God didn’t choose you because of how wonderful you are. He chose you because of how wonderful he is. He didn’t choose you because of how rich in worldly wealth or earthly ability you are. He chose you because of how rich in mercy he is. And in the riches of his compassion on sinners like you and me, who commit many more than this one sin of favoritism, he chose you to be his heirs, to make you members of his family by sending his Son to become one with you – to share flesh and blood with a sinner like you, to live and die for a sinner like you, so that a sinner like you could see the kingdom he promised as your eternal inheritance.
You don’t earn inheritances. They’re given to you because someone loves you. And God didn’t love you because of who you are. He loved you because of who he is.
You could be recovering from an addiction to alcohol, drugs or pornography. You could be a lifelong Christian or brand-new to the faith. You could young, old, male, female, rich or poor. God didn’t choose you because of who you are. He chose you because of who he is – a God who loves sinners of every shape and size, who doesn’t show favoritism, but who loves all of us equally.
That’s why favoritism is so fatal to faith, because it works in cross purposes to God’s unconditional mercy and grace.
But favoritism is not the only thing that can make your faith flat-line. The other mortal sin that James mentions is insincerity. Again, it’s not as rare as you might think, and it’s more serious than you might like to imagine.
That’s why James paints this picture of a homeless person without food or clothes. It’s preposterous to think that the “Christian thing to do” would be to say, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,”[5] but not do anything to help him.
And yet, don’t we do that? Don’t we sometimes say all the right things but then fail to do anything? James warns us that if your faith is not active, then it could be dead, or at the very least deathly ill.
Now, you don’t have to rake the leaves. That doesn’t have to be your expression of faith. You don’t have to give a monetary gift to a person in need. You don’t have to serve on the Refugee Committee, the Sunday School program, a service team, the altar guild, as an AV technician. You don’t have to install a speaker in the library, contribute to the new hymnals, sing in choir or play for worship. You don’t have to do any of those things to have a faith that’s alive.
But if you have a readymade list of literally dozens of various options for people of every talent level and time commitment, options that directly serve other people’s needs, and you don’t do any of them, what does that say about the vitality of your faith?
Now, I want to be clear about this – and this is James’ whole point – we cannot critique other Christians according to how much they contribute. Our contributions, our time, our money are not measuring sticks to compare Christians with each other.
But they can be a self-diagnostic tool, i.e. a way for me to judge myself – to try to put a stethoscope on my heart of faith, if that were a thing. How faint – or strong – is your faith’s heartbeat? Of course, you don’t have an organ in your body that you can measure. But you can look at what you do. Do I claim to have faith but don’t follow through? Do you say the right things, but don’t actually do them?
Looking at your own works, then, can be a way for you to do some self-reflection. And again, “works” does not necessarily mean volunteering at church. Church is not the center of the universe. You can show that your faith is alive by what you do at home, at school, at work, on the bus. You can show your faith by loving your spouse and caring for your children; by being a good employee at work or student at school. You can show your faith by the kindness you show to strangers, and not just lip service or when other people are looking. James’ whole point goes back to his first verse:
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ...[6]
James appeals to your identity as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk, all the way to his cross on Calvary. He did everything he said he would in his love for you. He won that inheritance for you by swapping places with you so that God could have mercy on you. He took the punishment you deserved for your fatal sins and gave you the right to be called children of God, just like he, your brother, is the one and only Son of God.
That’s why James calls him our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.[7] And that’s why James starts this section of Scripture reminding you who are in Christ. Your worth and value doesn’t come from what you do; it comes from what Christ has done for you. But it does matter what you do, because every action is a reflection and confession of your faith in Jesus.
So, go. Show that your faith is alive. Love your neighbour, not only as you love yourself, but as Jesus loved you – without prejudice or partiality, with sincerity and action. Be who James calls you – a brother or sister in faith, but especially a believer in our glorious Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Be who God has made you and show that your faith is alive by what you do, because of what he has done for you. Amen.
[1] Romans 6:23
[2] James 2:9,10
[3] James 2:1
[4] James 2:5
[5] James 2:16
[6] James 2:1
[7] Ibid