Faith’s True Measure: Mercy over Judgement

James 2:8 – 13

 

I came across a short video on Facebook the other day about the difference between boys and girls. Girls will play sweet games like pretending that their dolls and stuffed animals are babies, meanwhile boys play games that usually result in injuring one another. This video made me think back to my own childhood and some of the not so intelligent games we used to play or situations we got ourselves into.

 

We didn’t have a pool growing up, unless you counted the lagoon, so instead, we dairy kids would go swimming in the canal. Yes, I know there were signs prohibiting that. After finding dead things in the canal and after TID stopped treating water to control the growth of whatever that green stuff was I decided I shouldn’t swim in there anymore.

 

We also would play games like slug bug and bloody knuckles and give each other rug burns on our arms and do other pain inflicting games with one another. If you had a trampoline or had a friend who did, you likely played “crack the egg.” Another one that comes to mind is the game of mercy. Bending back a finger or hand or arm for the sole purpose of causing the other person pain until they cried uncle.

 

However, I never would’ve imagined that the game of mercy could connect with faith in Jesus Christ, yet oddly enough it does. It illustrates our journey of faith quite well actually.

 

How much pain do we allow ourselves to endure in this life before we cry out, but instead of crying out uncle we cry out to Jesus? How grieved are we by our own sin before we recognize the punishment that awaits us and that we need Jesus to rescue us?

 

In today’s passage, James continues talking about partiality and judgement and he paints a clear picture about what they mean, and it’s not pretty. But it’s not hopeless either, because there is something greater than judgement, mercy. Let’s read God’s Word together: James 2:8 – 13.

 

James really doesn’t mince words, does he? Genuine faith must be evident in the lives of believers, and that evidence is most readily seen in how believers live with and love one another.

• Love for one another is evidence of genuine faith and fulfills the law.

 

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” James directly quotes Leviticus 19:18 and commends believers if they indeed follow it. Under this law there should be no acts of favoritism toward anyone. Everyone around you at home, at church, at work, and at play should receive the love that is due to them, without distinction.

 

You’ve likely read this commandment somewhere else in the NT before. This is the same command that Jesus referred to when asked by the teachers of the law what the greatest commandment was.

 

This point in the teaching of Jesus was meant as the supreme antidote to favoritism and hypocrisy. No one is outside the boundary of neighbor love. When a teacher of the law responded to Jesus’ question about the law by citing Lev. 19:18, he then asked who is my neighbor? Jesus answered him with the parable of the Good Samaritan. There is no limit to loving your neighbor, not even the poor and needy, especially not them.

 

Here, James made no reference to the massive collection of Levitical laws for ritual purity and political order. As with Jesus, for James loving your neighbor along with love for God summed up and fulfilled the whole law. James is emphatic here, if you really fulfill the royal law.

 

When this is obeyed, James says you are doing well. In this actively loving way, the rich believers and those who enjoy life above poverty line can overcome the stumbling blocks to their faith and demonstrate their faith by their actions.

 

It’s human nature to get distracted by wealth and good health, by what many would call blessings. We treasure them and we may even be grateful to God for them, but do we ever ask ourselves why has God blessed me so?

 

God loves to bless His children, yes, but He also wants us to do something with His blessings, mainly He wants us to love one another with the love He’s poured out on us. There is a very real, tangible, and practical aspect to blessing others out of the abundance God has given us, to loving one another.

When believers, especially those with the means, take care of the least of these they are indeed loving their neighbor as themselves. When this command directs what is meant by being a “doer of the word,” every other command of the word is effectively fulfilled.

 

• Breaking one law is the same as breaking all the law.

 

James goes on to show what is so wrong about the world’s wealth, it’s system of honor, how it shows love. To play favorites like James describes is to commit sin. In chapter 1, sin was born from evil desire, and it gave birth to death. Here, sin is action that offends God, the Lawgiver, and favoritism is sin that breaks the royal law.

 

People commit sin in numerous ways; if you want to see human creativity used for bad, just look at how creative people can get with their sin. It’s like our fallen world keeps finding new ways to sin. But at the root of it however, all sin has the same basic truth about it. It’s all rebellion against God and stems from humanity’s evil desires. There really is nothing new under the sun.

 

We live in an age of relativism. We pick and choose which of our civil laws we follow. Perhaps we refrain from committing felony tax fraud, but we find ourselves conveniently ignoring the speed limit sign on the freeway. (Emma Watson illustration). What if speeding carried with it the same punishment as committing tax fraud? Or murder?

 

James makes no bones about it though, sinning in any one of the many ways to sin amounts to breaking the whole law. To break a command of God is to fall under the condemnation of the whole law and of the one who judges those who break even one of these commands.

 

Sin delivers the sinner into transgression of the whole law. The sin of favoritism does this, it turns the one who showed partiality into a transgressor of the whole law, a law breaker.

 

Lawbreakers are those who are obligated to keep the whole law but have failed to do so. Implied here by James, however, are two kinds of law keepers: those who must keep the law in all its specifics because they will be judged by the law on all its specifics and those who keep the law by faith in Jesus Christ and demonstrate the genuineness of that faith in acts of Christian love.

The first kind of law keeper is the kind who thinks they can earn their way into heaven, that they live as perfectly as they can and do as much good as they can to earn their way into eternal life. The person who thinks they can do enough good to earn salvation already stands condemned by the very law they attempt to keep.

 

James illustrates his point by referring to the ten commandments. For he who said, do not commit adultery also said do not murder. Who said not to do those things? Man? Did Moses come up with that himself and write them down on stone tablets? No, God said that.

 

God is the law giver AND the judge. And so, James makes it clear, if you don’t commit adultery but you commit murder, you’ve become a transgressor of the law just the same, a law breaker. And there’s a judgement that comes with that, IF you’re under the law.

 

The problem of self-deception rears its ugly head in the first kind of law keeping. The person who believes they’ve kept the whole law of God but doesn’t love their neighbor as themselves assumes they are free of judgement because the law kept in every other respect has been fulfilled.

 

James makes the same argument here that Paul makes in Galatians. To be condemned under the law at any point is to be condemned by the whole law. James says that to break one law is to be convicted of breaking the whole law. For them, and for believers, there is no relativism in relation to the law. Romans 3:23

 

James’ basic words are clear, the entire law in all its parts is to be fulfilled, someone somewhere had to suffer the punishment of our lawbreaking. Paul follows what he says in Romans 3:23 with “and (all) are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:24 – 25).

 

There is no doubt that Jesus fulfilled the whole law bit by bit, and we’ll intimately recall that sacrifice and fulfillment as we partake in the Lord’s Supper later this morning. Jesus, however, also fulfilled the law in the sense that He perfectly and impartially loved those around Him (even washing Judas’ feet). Jesus’ example of loving His neighbors was essential to the faith of James’ hearers’ because faith in Jesus is the required path to fulfilling the law.

• Show others the mercy that is readily available through genuine faith in Christ.

 

James exhorts his hearers to speak and act, to live, as those who are judged by the law that makes them free, the law of liberty. Words and actions are inseparably related and are both key to demonstrating faith. This is the second kind of law keeper James had in mind.

 

The law of liberty does not condemn but sets free. This law sets free those who obey it through genuine faith in Jesus Christ, a genuinely visible faith in how they love one another. This then sets others free when believers help others rise above their oppression and their poverty both by practical means and by sharing the gospel.

 

Partiality, favoritism, is based on false judgement and turns believers into unjust, unmerciful, judges, and so believers needed to remember that they too would be judged. Believers will stand before God in the last day; the question becomes by which law will they be judged.

 

The exhortation by James to show no partiality implies that the problem of hard-heartedness will finally be rooted out by the judging function of God’s law. The importance of mercy in human relationships is so essential because mercy is a direct indicator of repentance toward God.

 

Genuine repentance and faith in Jesus results in an outpouring of God’s mercy on the sinner, so much so that the genuine believer then pours out mercy on those around them who need it most, those who offended them and those in need.

 

Jesus said that blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. James makes it clear, by reversing that beatitude of Jesus, that judgement is without mercy to the one who shows no mercy.

 

That’s the nature of the kind of judgement that condemns us for every offense; there is no mercy shown to the one who shows no mercy. The recipient of God’s mercy who doesn’t in turn show mercy to others must not have fully embraced the mercy God has poured out on him.

 

Because you have received the gift of God’s mercy through faith in Jesus Christ, living out that faith must include you showing mercy toward others without partiality.

I love how James sums up what happens to our judgement once we submit our lives to Christ. Mercy triumphs over judgement.

 

We will all stand in judgement before God on the last day. What that judgement looks like is entirely and solely dependent upon our faith in Jesus Christ. When the list of charges is read, is Jesus going to stand up and say, “I have paid the price for his sins, in blood,” or is he going to remain silent?

 

In the face of the judgement that was set to come on us for every offense against God, mercy will be greater than judgement to those who’s faith is evidenced by showing mercy to others. Merciful judgement that acquits awaits the genuine believer and stands in contrast to the judgement that condemns.

 

The inseparable relationship between faith and action in James is clear. Once faith understands the salvation God works, that His divine mercy has taken the place of His divine judgement, faith must include mercy toward others.

 

Make no mistake either, James is not advocating for some kind of legalistic faith here. Consistent faith is the core concern of James’ teaching. Faith in God in no way causes God to be merciful. Rather, faith is made possible because God is merciful.

 

Faith trusts in this merciful God. Genuine faith acts consistently with God’s mercy. King David wrote in Psalm 51, his psalm about his sin with Bathsheba, that his sin is ever before him. Our sin is ever before us, yet God’s mercy has triumphed over that sin. To be proved genuine, our faith must include mercy.

 

Merciful faith reflects God’s mercy in giving money to the poor, helping to meet their needs, helping them find their place in the church among the larger body of believers, and in exhorting rich believers to live humbly and modestly before the church and God in the world.

 

There is nothing anyone could ever do to earn salvation, to earn the forgiveness of sins. It’s not because any of us are worthy, it’s all because of mercy. Just as Christ’s atonement turns away God’s wrath, God’s mercy turns away condemnation.

 

James wasn’t the only one addressing and rebuking partiality within the church. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul rebuked them for having divisions among the church when they came together for the Lord’s Supper.

 

He rebuked for not taking it seriously, for everyone eating their own meal while some go hungry and others get drunk. Paul asks the Corinthians if they don’t have their own houses to eat and drink in, or if they despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing. After commending the Corinthians for the good they have done, he tells them that he doesn’t commend them for this behavior.

 

He then reminds them of how Jesus taught him about the Lord’s Supper, which is how we remember and observe the Lord’s Supper today. This begins with an inward look, a look into the mirror that is the Word of God to examine ourselves.

 

The victory of God is seen in His just judgement when everyone gets what they deserve, and yet the greater glory of God is made clear when anyone is spared what they deserve because of their genuine faith in Jesus Christ, who bore the judgement for our sin on the cross, that is evidenced by their love and mercy for one another. Judgement is swallowed up in mercy.

 

Let’s pray.