in the purity of one’s own personal life. It is perfectly possible for a church to be so taken up with the beauty of its buildings and the splendour of its liturgy that it has neither the time nor the money for practical Christian service – and that is what James is condemning.
In fact, James is condemning only what the prophets had condemned long ago. God, said the psalmist, is ‘father of orphans and protector of widows’ (Psalm 68:5). It was Zechariah’s complaint that the people pulled away their shoulders and made their hearts as unyielding as stone at the demand to render true justice, to show mercy and compassion to one another, not to oppress the widow, the fatherless, the stranger and the poor, and not to entertain evil thoughts against another within the heart (cf. Zechariah 7:6–10). It was Micah’s complaint that all ritual sacrifices were useless if the people did not do justice and love kindness and walk humbly before God (cf. Micah 6:6–8).
All through history, people have tried to make ritual and liturgy a substitute for sacrifice and service. They have made religion splendid within the church at the expense of neglecting it outside the church. This is by no means to say that it is wrong to seek to offer the noblest and the most splendid worship within God’s house, but it is to say that all such worship is empty and idle unless it sends people out to love God by loving one another and to walk more purely in the tempting ways of the world.
FAVOURITISM
James 2:1
My brothers, you cannot really believe that you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, and yet continue to have respect of persons.
‘RESPECT of persons’ is the New Testament phrase for undue and unfair favouritism; it means pandering to others because they are rich or influential or popular. It is a fault which the New Testament consistently condemns. It is a fault of which the orthodox Jewish leaders completely acquitted Jesus. Even they were bound to admit that there was no favouritism with him (Luke 20:21; Mark 12:14; Matthew 22:16). After his vision of the sheet with the clean and unclean animals upon it, the lesson that Peter learned was that with God there is no partiality (Acts 10:34). It was Paul’s conviction that both Gentiles and Jews stand under the same judgment in the sight of God, for with God there is no favouritism (Romans 2:11). This is a truth which Paul urges on his people again and again (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25).
The word itself is curious – prosōpolēmpsia. The noun comes from the expression prosōpon lambanein. Prosōpon is the face, and lambanein here means to lift up. The expression in Greek is a literal translation of a Hebrew phrase. To lift up someone’s countenance was to regard that person with favour, in contrast perhaps to casting down the person’s countenance.
Originally, it was not a bad word at all; it simply meant to accept a person with favour. Malachi asks if the governor will be pleased with the people and will accept their persons, will show them favour, if they bring him blemished offerings (Malachi 1:8–9). But the word rapidly acquired a bad sense. It soon began to mean not so much to favour a person as to show favouritism, to allow oneself to be unduly influenced by a person’s social status or prestige or power or wealth. Malachi goes on to condemn that very sin when God accuses the people of not keeping his ways and of showing partiality (Malachi 2:9). The great characteristic of God is his complete impartiality. In the law, it was written: ‘You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour’ (Leviticus 19:15). There is a necessary emphasis here. A person may be unjust because of the snobbery which flatters and panders to the rich, and may be equally unjust because of the inverted snobbery which glorifies the poor. ‘The Lord’, said Ben Sirach, ‘is the judge and with him there is no partiality’ (Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 35:15).
The Old and New Testaments unite in condemning that partiality of judgment and favouritism of treatment which comes from giving undue weight to a person’s social standing, wealth or worldly influence. And it is a fault to which everyone has a tendency in some degree. ‘The rich and the poor have this in common:’ says Proverbs, ‘the Lord is the maker of them all’ (Proverbs 22:2). ‘It is not right’, says Ben Sirach, ‘to despise one who is intelligent but poor, and it is not proper to honour one who is sinful’ (Sirach 10:23). We do well to remember that it is just as much a sign of favouritism to pander to the mob as it is to flatter a tyrant.
THE PERIL OF SNOBBERY WITHIN THE CHURCH
James 2:2–4
For, if a man comes into your assembly with his fingers covered with gold rings and dressed in elegant clothes and a poor man comes in dressed in shabby clothes, and you pay special attention to the man who is dressed in elegant clothes and you say to him: ‘Will you sit here, please?’ and you say to the poor man: ‘You stand there!’ or ‘Squat on the floor beside my footstool!’ have you not drawn distinctions within your minds, and have you not become judges whose thoughts are evil?’
IT is James’ fear that snobbery may invade the Church. He draws a picture of two men entering the Christian assembly. The one is well dressed, and his fingers are covered with gold rings. In the ancient world, the more ostentatious people wore rings on every finger except the middle one, and wore far more than one on each finger. ‘We adorn our fingers with rings,’ said Seneca, ‘and we distribute gems over every joint.’ The early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria recommends that Christians should wear only one ring, and that it should be worn on the little finger. It ought to have on it a religious emblem, such as a dove, a fish or an anchor, and the justification for wearing it is that it might be used as a seal.
So, into the Christian assembly comes an elegantly dressed man wearing many rings. The other is a poor man dressed in poor clothes because he has no others to wear, and unadorned by any jewels. The rich man is ushered to a special seat with all ceremony and respect, while the poor man is told to stand, or to squat on the floor, beside the footstool of the well-to-do.
That the picture is not exaggerated is seen from certain instructions in some early service order books. In his commentary, J. H. Ropes quotes a typical passage from the Ethiopic Statutes of the Apostles: ‘If any other man or woman enters in fine clothes, either a man of the district or from other districts, being brethren, thou, presbyter, while thou speakest the word which is concerning God, or while thou hearest or readest, thou shalt not respect persons, nor leave thy ministering to command places for them, but remain quiet, for the brethren shall receive them, and if they have no place for them, the lover of brothers and sisters, will rise, and leave a place for them . . . And if a poor man or woman of the district or of other districts should come in and there is no place for them, thou, presbyter, make place for such with all thy heart, even if thou wilt sit on the ground, that there should not be the respecting of the person of man but of God.’ Here is an identical picture. It is even suggested that, when a rich man entered, the leader of the service might stop the service and escort the man to a special seat.
There is no doubt that there must have been social problems in the early Church. The Church was the only place in the ancient world where social distinctions did not exist. There must have been a certain initial awkwardness when a master found himself sitting next to his slave or when a master arrived at a service in which his slave was actually the leader and the dispenser of the sacrament. The gap between the slave, who in law was nothing more than a living tool, and the master was so wide as to cause problems of approach on either side. Further, in its early days the Church was predominantly poor and humble, and therefore if a rich man was converted and came to the Christian fellowship, there must have been a very real temptation to make a fuss of him and treat him as a special trophy for Christ.
The Church must be the
