- 2 days ago
Jay Carper discusses James 2:1-13. The Way (early Christianity) was different from all other religions of the Greco-Roman world in that it welcomed people of all social strata and wealth, putting them all on parity as equal members of the body of Christ. Plus the Torah as the Law of Liberty.
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
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From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Send me a friend request on The Torah Network: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
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LearningTranscript
00:00Welcome back to Common Sense Bible Study and our study of the Epistle of James.
00:08We are in James chapter 2, verses 1 to 13, and this is the third pericope within the letter of James.
00:17So the first thing I'm going to do is just read through the book and follow along with me.
00:22And as I'm reading, take notes of any important words, any phrases, any important ideas that James seems to be focusing on, anything that stands out to you in this text.
00:36Starting in verse 1.
00:39My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
00:45For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in,
00:51and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say,
00:56You sit here in a good place while you say to the poor man, You stand over there or sit down at my feet,
01:02have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
01:09Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom,
01:16which he has promised to those who love him?
01:17But you have dishonored the poor man.
01:20Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?
01:24Are they not the ones who blaspheme the name, the honorable name, by which you were called?
01:29If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture,
01:33you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.
01:36But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
01:41For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
01:47For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder.
01:52If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
01:56So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty.
02:01For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.
02:05Mercy triumphs over judgment.
02:06Some of the words and phrases and ideas that stood out to me.
02:11First, James is talking about partiality.
02:15Rich man and a poor man.
02:19Fine clothing.
02:22Shabby clothing.
02:24Making distinctions.
02:27And being an evil judge.
02:29The rich, oppressing.
02:35Blaspheming the name.
02:37And that's the name by which you were called.
02:39So that would be the name of Yeshua.
02:42He talks about the law.
02:45And he talks about two specific laws.
02:48The law that says, Love your neighbor as yourself.
02:50And then he talks about the Ten Commandments.
02:54The specific ones from the Ten Commandments that he talked about are murder.
03:00And adultery.
03:03See, he mentioned the law of the royal law.
03:08That was the Love your neighbor as yourself verse.
03:12And the law of liberty.
03:15And finally, he talked about mercy and judgment.
03:22All of these ideas are important.
03:23So we're going to focus on these things because this will really help us understand what James is talking about.
03:31Well, let's move on to the first few verses here.
03:35We'll look at verses 1 through 4.
03:36First thing I want to mention here is just a matter of translation.
03:44In that first verse, it says, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
03:50Interesting point here is that the Greek doesn't say Lord of glory.
03:53It says, Our Lord Jesus Christ of glory.
03:56So the English Standard Version is inserting Lord here.
04:01Look at this in a couple of other translations.
04:06King James says, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
04:10But it does put it in italics so that you know it's added by the translators.
04:15And I wish the ESV would do that more.
04:17I think every translation really needs to do that when they add something to the text that could potentially change the meaning.
04:25The literal standard version says, The faith of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
04:32Which is kind of turning it around a little bit and definitely changing the meaning.
04:36I don't think that's really quite as literal as they want it to sound.
04:41TLV has essentially the same meaning.
04:44The faith of our glorious Lord Yeshua, the Messiah.
04:47Well, that's not really the same meaning.
04:48So we've got three different meanings here.
04:50We have one that says, The faith of the glory.
04:54One that says, The faith of our glorious Lord.
04:58And one that says, The faith of our Lord, who is the Lord of glory.
05:02I'm pretty sure that the literal translation is, that should say, The faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory.
05:11I'm pretty sure that's the most literal translation.
05:15Even Young's literal turns it around and says, The faith of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
05:21And I know that's two literal, very literal translations that word it that way.
05:25And they certainly know better than I do.
05:28But a couple of online sources I checked translated it as, The glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
05:35Or rather, The faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory.
05:40Neither one of these makes a whole lot of sense to me in this literal form.
05:45What does the faith of the glory mean?
05:47What does the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory mean?
05:52Well, he is glorious.
05:57He is the glory of the Father.
05:59But I'm not really sure what James was trying to say.
06:02And so when the ESV adds, Lord of glory, I don't think it's necessarily wrong.
06:07I think that's a reasonable interpretation.
06:11Maybe it would have been better to say, Faith of our Lord of glory, comma, Jesus Christ.
06:16And that way they're not adding any words or anything in.
06:19But I think no matter how you word this, it doesn't really change the meaning in any significant way.
06:27Exactly what James means by of the glory is a little ambiguous here.
06:32And I think your guess is as good as mine.
06:34I really don't have a solid idea on that.
06:38Anyways, I just thought that was an important point to bring out.
06:40Another linguistic translation thing here is the word that's translated as respect of persons or partiality, depending on your translation.
06:52And the Greek word is prosopalepsia.
06:58Yeah, big word.
06:59Sounds like some kind of disorder.
07:01Literally, it means face-taking.
07:03There's a fallacy that I can't remember if we talked about in our Bible study essentials, but it's called the etymological fallacy.
07:11The etymological fallacy is where you take the roots or the origin of a word and assume that those roots or the origin are still define the meaning of the word now.
07:25Trying to think of a good example of that.
07:27Let me look one up here real quick.
07:28Okay, so here's one.
07:32The word nice.
07:34It comes from a Latin word, nescius or nescius.
07:39It means ignorant or unaware.
07:41And then later on, when it was adopted into English, it had the meaning of precise or refined.
07:49Whereas today, we used the word nice to mean pleasant or agreeable or not mean.
07:59And that's nothing like the original meaning of the word.
08:04The etymological fallacy would say, like somebody a thousand years from now says, well, this English word nice, it came from this old Latin word that meant ignorant or unaware.
08:16So when American writers said that somebody was nice, it was really an insult.
08:23They were saying, that person is an ignorant.
08:26But that's not what we mean at all because the language has changed over time.
08:31So prosopalepsia doesn't have to mean face taking.
08:36I mean, you're not literally taking somebody's face away, but it could lead you to say that it means taking somebody at face value.
08:45How do they present themselves?
08:47That must be the way that they are.
08:49It doesn't exactly mean that.
08:51That could give you the wrong idea.
08:53On the other hand, that's not really all that far off either, because what James is talking about here is somebody who presents themselves as being wealthy and powerful.
09:08You take them as being wealthy and powerful, and then you ascribe those characteristics, you know, the things associated with wealth and power to the person's actual character.
09:18And you say, well, this person has money, you know, they're decked out in fine clothes and jewelry, and so they must be a fine person, you know, worth lots as a good moral character.
09:34And so in Greek literature, this term meant maybe ascribing better quality to somebody based on how they presented themselves.
09:47So the etymology of the word isn't too far from what it really means, but it's also not exactly the same.
09:55It doesn't mean taking somebody at face value, like they are what you see, because a rich person is a rich person.
10:02And you can tell that they are what it really means in this context is ascribing better quality or more credibility to the person based on their outward appearance.
10:14Somebody is rich.
10:15Oh, they must be noble.
10:17They must have great character.
10:18They must be really smart and wise.
10:21Well, we know from history that kings are not always very wise people, but, you know, they dress in the best clothes and they wear crowns.
10:28There's foolishness at every level of society and every class.
10:34Now, there are some things that you could derive from somebody's wealth, depending on how your culture is structured.
10:42You could possibly derive that somebody is good at business or they are good at managing money.
10:50It's not necessarily true because a lot of rich people inherited their wealth.
10:55And this is especially true in a culture like ancient Greece, where it wasn't necessarily good business sense that got people money.
11:02Now, it did.
11:03You could get wealthy doing good business, but wealth was tied to land in almost all ancient cultures.
11:12So if you had land, then you had wealth.
11:17You could be great at business and, you know, have all the great financial sense in the world.
11:22But if you don't own land and the resources to generate wealth, you would never get wealthy from it, or at least not on the scale of somebody who owns, you know, thousands of acres of productive farmland.
11:34All right, so what James is really getting at here is giving preference to the wealthy and powerful over other people simply because they are wealthy and powerful.
11:47The point, of course, isn't that we shouldn't show any partiality for any reason at all because we are commanded to, but that we shouldn't judge a person based on outward factors that don't really tell us anything substantial about his character.
12:00So, you know, if you're looking for a business executive, if you're looking for somebody to manage your resources, well, maybe the way he dresses and presents himself is one of the many factors that you're going to consider.
12:13Certainly not the only one, as we just discussed, but it is going to be a factor.
12:19That's not the context in which James is talking.
12:21If you are gathering with other members of the body of Christ, there is nothing about a person's wealth or business acumen or physical attractiveness or anything on the outside like that that should make any difference in how we treat them.
12:36It's not wrong to discriminate against people who exhibit traits that, say, make them dangerous or disruptive or malicious in any other way, you know, especially in a culture like ancient Greece where not everybody could.
12:52Most people didn't bathe on a daily basis like people in America do.
12:56So if someone showed up, they were dirty, wearing raggedy clothes, maybe they just came from working, worked in a field or they worked in a foundry or something, and that's all they've got.
13:07So you can't necessarily judge somebody on those things until you get to know them.
13:14So in short, you have to look deeper than what's on the outside.
13:17Having fine clothes and jewelry and all the trappings of wealth doesn't mean that the person underneath is any better or worse than somebody who comes in dirty and wearing old and warm clothes.
13:30If you look at verses two and three here, where he actually mentions the gold ring and fine clothing, I think this reinforces the idea that James's partiality is based on inappropriate metrics such as wealth, as opposed to more appropriate ones, which would be a person's character.
13:50You want to discriminate against dishonest people and in favor of honest people.
13:55You want to discriminate against the violence and the drunkards and the sexually immoral and discriminate in favor of people who are peaceful and well-intentioned and upright in character.
14:12So discrimination itself is not the problem.
14:15It's the basis on which you are discriminating that is the problem.
14:18Are you discriminating based on things that don't matter or the things that matter to God?
14:23And that's what's really important.
14:25Say in verse four, he says, have you then, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
14:35Now, James is probably actually thinking about judges as in people who sit in a court and pass judgment on people who are accused of crimes.
14:46And I say that because as we've talked about before, all of James's letter is tied to Leviticus 19.
14:54This passage in particular is tied to Leviticus 19, verses 15 to 18.
15:01And I think verse four specifically is talking about verse 15.
15:06So verse 15 in Leviticus 19 says,
15:09This passage here is talking about actually going to court.
15:22As you can see from verse 16, don't go about as a slanderer among your people.
15:26In other words, don't lie, make false accusations, those kinds of things.
15:29If you have something against your neighbor, be fair, don't automatically take him to court, try to give him the benefit of the doubt, try to work it out with him.
15:40But this verse, verse 15, is saying, if you go to court, don't try to win favor with rich and powerful people by giving them favorable testimony.
15:48Don't try to go easy on poor people simply because they're poor.
15:55Your job as a witness or as a judge in a court of law is to find the truth and enact justice.
16:02That's your job.
16:04So if you're partial to the poor because you think the poor in general are oppressed and abused and they need a break, that's a sin.
16:14You're not allowed to do that.
16:16God says don't do it.
16:17If you defer to the wealthy because maybe they're going to do you a favor later on, or maybe you defer to the wealthy because you think, well, this person looks respectable.
16:29You know, his hair is well done.
16:32He doesn't smell funny.
16:33He's clean.
16:34He's wearing a nice suit and a tie.
16:35So he respects me because of the way that he's presented himself in court.
16:39So I'm going to give him a favorable ruling because he looks like an honest guy.
16:47You don't get to do that either.
16:49You have to judge based on the facts of the case.
16:52And what James is talking about here is a person's character as a member of the body of Christ.
16:58That's the criteria that we're supposed to judge our fellow believers on.
17:02And so when James says that you are, you have become judges with evil thoughts, he's saying that you are, you are judging somebody according to criteria that God does not allow.
17:16If your thoughts are not in alignment with God's, your thoughts are evil.
17:22This was the whole point of Paul in Romans when he says that God has a plan to transform us into the image of his son.
17:30And we are to Romans 12, 2, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
17:45And part of this is studying God's law and his word and internalizing the things that God has told us.
17:53Making sure that what God said is right, we say is right, and then believing it, meditating on it, trying to understand it, applying it in the real world.
18:06This helps us conform our thoughts to God's thoughts so that when we are in a position to judge another person, whether it's in an actual court or simply trying to judge someone's character so we know how to treat them,
18:19that we will be able to judge them by God's standards and not by the world's standards.
18:27Verses 5-7
18:29Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?
18:39But you have dishonored the poor man.
18:41Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court?
18:45Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
18:49James doesn't mean that God chose the poor alone to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom.
18:58He's not saying that God rejected the rich.
19:00He's saying that God included the poor in his call to faith and to be heirs of the kingdom.
19:06If you consider how people operate in a very class-based society, a very class-conscious society, rich people are considered deserving.
19:22You have money because you deserve money.
19:24God has given you the resources that he believes you are capable of handling and will use wisely.
19:32Obviously, we know that's not always true.
19:36Pharaoh was a very wealthy man and he did not use his resources wisely.
19:40And he used them to oppress the children of Israel.
19:45And this is probably one of the very things that James has in mind because Leviticus 19 even references this.
19:52You're supposed to treat each other well because you were slaves in Egypt.
19:56And we'll come back to that because it's a little bit more important later on.
19:59What James is saying by God has chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom is that the world sees the poor people as people that God has rejected.
20:15They're poor because God wants them to be poor.
20:17They must have done something evil.
20:19You know, whether you believe in reincarnation and they did something terrible in a past life.
20:24So they're getting what they deserve.
20:26They need to be poor so that then they can learn to behave themselves better and overcome all their evil inclinations.
20:33And in their next incarnation, they'll be wealthier because they'll be improved.
20:39That's that's not what James is saying.
20:42Well, James is saying the opposite of that, that poor people aren't necessarily poor because they deserve to be poor and rich people aren't necessarily rich because they deserve to be rich.
20:51God has called us all rich or poor, Jew and Gentile, men and women.
20:55And he has called us all to faith and to be heirs in the kingdom.
20:59And we don't get to discriminate in the kingdom based on those factors.
21:05Now, this isn't to say that God doesn't consider birth or status for any purpose at all.
21:13I mean, think about the kingship of Israel.
21:17Yeshua had to come as a son of David because only a son of David is authorized to sit on the throne of Israel.
21:27God didn't choose somebody from the tribe of Ephraim to be king of Israel because he had already determined that the tribe of Judah is going to fill that role.
21:37So anybody who's a king of Israel has to be a Jew from the tribe of Judah.
21:44Only a son of Aaron is qualified to serve as a high priest or any priest in the tabernacle on earth.
21:50Book of Hebrews talks about this, that how if Yeshua were on earth today, he would not be qualified to serve as a priest at the temple.
21:59And in fact, the law would say if he tried, he should be killed.
22:03That would be a mortal sin.
22:05God often chose very wealthy men for specific purposes in history.
22:11If you think about all the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these were all very wealthy men.
22:16David and Solomon.
22:19And he did so because they needed those resources for their task or they were rewarded for something they did.
22:27The problem isn't nobility or wealth or the lack of it.
22:31The problem is the relevance of those things to the circumstances and the calling to which somebody is called.
22:39In the context of what James is saying, you're calling into faith and to be heirs in a kingdom.
22:47Your wealth has no relevance there.
22:49It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor or you're born to a noble family, if you're born to one of the 12 tribes of Israel, or you're born to a pagan tribe on the other side of the world.
23:02It doesn't matter.
23:03You are still called to be one of God's people.
23:06You are called to have faith in Yeshua, to be an heir of the kingdom.
23:12So you can't judge somebody as an heir of the kingdom based on their material wealth or the status of their birth or their race or anything like that.
23:23James says that you have dishonored the poor man by asking him to take a lower position and giving the rich person the best seat in the house because in the body of Christ, their wealth is irrelevant.
23:39So Yeshua, the king of everything, has chosen to honor that poor man with a call to be one of his people, to be a son of God alongside him, to be an active part of the body of Christ.
23:55So if you demote him whom God has promoted in Yeshua's name, you are dishonoring that man.
24:04You're taking away the honor that Yeshua has given him.
24:06And you're not only dishonoring him, but you're dishonoring Yeshua.
24:09You're saying, Yeshua, you don't know what you're doing by calling this guy the same as this other guy.
24:14This guy is rich and, you know, he's smart.
24:17He looks so much nicer than this other one.
24:20So you should have done this differently.
24:23And that's what we're doing when we elevate somebody who looks better above someone who is just as called, who is just as saved, but maybe doesn't have as nice clothes.
24:34James goes on to say, are not the rich, the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court.
24:42Now, James is not saying that all rich people oppress all poor people.
24:45That's not the point.
24:46He is specifically addressing the 12 tribes in Diaspora.
24:52So he's not talking to.
24:56Well, looking at verse seven, when he says, are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
25:01This means that he's probably not talking about unsaved or pagans, people like that.
25:08He's talking about wealthy Jews who are oppressing their fellow Jews or wealthy believers of all kinds.
25:17Or maybe I should put double quotes around believers there.
25:20He's saying that these people are abusing you.
25:25They are oppressing you.
25:26And like I said, not all rich people, because we even know a number of wealthy people from the New Testament who are great, faithful servants of God.
25:37Priscilla and Aquila were probably very wealthy.
25:39They had homes in multiple cities.
25:42And you don't have a home in a big city where you can house lots of other people, which they did, unless you had money.
25:48Phoebe was also wealthy.
25:51She was a patroness of Paul.
25:53She had a house church at her house.
25:55She gave Paul and his ministry team a place to stay for months on end.
26:02She provided for them.
26:04She financed missionary journeys.
26:07So wealthy people aren't always the ones who are doing the oppressing.
26:11And that's not what James is trying to say.
26:13He's not trying to draw more class distinctions between rich and poor.
26:17James is saying that there are rich people who oppress you.
26:22And if you use a little common sense, you can see that there are no poor people out there.
26:28There's no poor individual out there who is oppressing lots of other people.
26:33They just don't have the ability to do it.
26:35They don't have the resources.
26:37It takes somebody with lots of resources to oppress lots of people.
26:40You think about things that happen today.
26:44You know, it takes money to sway courts.
26:46If you want to sue people, well, you need lawyers.
26:51And lots of people sue each other in small claims courts.
26:53And, you know, that's a bad thing.
26:55And that's people that is frequently poor people oppressing poor people.
26:59That happens all the time, too.
27:00But the scale of oppression that the rich can enact is exponentially larger.
27:11If you think about people who use the legal system or lobby the government to enact regulations that favor their multinational corporation.
27:25Poor people can't fight that.
27:26We have no say in those things.
27:28There is nothing that a poor man can do to fight billionaires in the legal system.
27:35Poor people don't lobby city councils to use eminent domain to take their neighbor's property so that they can build a strip mall or an apartment complex or a road that's going to benefit this business park that they're planning to build down on the south side of town.
27:52Poor people just don't have those concerns.
27:54They're not able to do it.
27:55Poor people don't lobby Congress to manipulate regulations to benefit those multinational corporations.
28:03One of the things that I think everybody is aware of is that somebody will work for, say, a big pharmaceutical company.
28:15And when they retire from there, they'll go to work in the government agency like the FDA or something like that that regulates the company they used to work for.
28:26And so now, of course, they're creating regulations and governing the exercise of those regulations in ways that benefit their former employers.
28:36And they're probably getting some kickbacks from that and it works the other way around where somebody who works for a regulatory body will then be hired by a company in the industry that they were supposed to be regulating.
28:49These kinds of oppression are not available to poor people, these are things that only rich people can do, and that's why James is focusing on that, because it's just not possible for poor people to oppress rich people at that scale.
29:03So it only makes sense.
29:05And when he says that, are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
29:12Frequently, these people are abusing their positions and abusing their power under cover of morality, saying, I am doing this for your own good.
29:26You know, I am making sure that the government enacts these laws that make me even more of a billionaire because I know what's good for everybody else.
29:36Well, maybe that person is trying to do the right thing, maybe they're not, but the temptation to use that power to your own enrichment and to skew your judgment about what is really good for everybody else is powerful.
29:51And it's also extremely dangerous.
29:55C.S. Lewis said something really wise one time.
29:58I don't know where this came from, but I'm going to read you the quote.
30:01I'm sure it was in one of his books or one of his radio broadcasts.
30:04He said,
30:34So doing, that's the end of the quote, but in oppressing people for their own good, they are blaspheming the very name under which they do these things.
30:45Say, because I love you all and I want you to know Yeshua and to be his people.
30:53Uh, I want you to be saved.
30:55I want you to have eternal life.
30:56I am going to, uh, take your children away and send them to a school miles away so that they can learn English.
31:05And I am going to, um, put you in forced labor camps and where you are going to get religious indoctrination and you're going to be baptized or you will be banned from doing business or, uh, some, whatever terrible thing will happen to you.
31:26Uh, that sounds crazy, but I'm not exaggerating.
31:29This, this is, these are real things that happened in history in the name of doing good.
31:35People with wealth and power abused millions of poor people for their own good, at least, you know, for their own good.
31:45Um, but it was never for their own good.
31:48And what they really did was blasphemed the name of God and Yeshua because they did terrible things in his name.
31:56And we don't ever want to be in that kind of position.
32:00It is equally possible for a poor person to behave in this way too.
32:04It's just that the scale of, of their evil is limited by their resources.
32:09You don't treat your neighbor the way that those people treated millions of people.
32:14Just because it's one person doesn't mean that it's less evil than when you treated millions of people.
32:21I mean, it's less evil and that there's more people being hurt.
32:25But as far as your own self, your own soul, it's not less evil for you to treat people that way.
32:32So don't ever be, don't ever allow yourself to get in a position where you are abusing other people in the name of Yeshua.
32:40I don't think he's going to take kindly to that.
32:44Verses 8-11
32:47Alright, lots of things to talk about here.
33:18First, what is the royal law?
33:21You know, in context, it really seems that James is pointing to this commandment,
33:25you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
33:26And this comes from Leviticus 19-18.
33:29You know, if you were to go to somebody on the street and say,
33:32hey, who said you love your neighbor as yourself?
33:35Everybody would say Jesus.
33:38If you're in a Torah group, maybe they'd say Yeshua.
33:40But Yeshua was quoting Moses.
33:44Moses was the one who said that first.
33:47And Yeshua said that this was the second greatest commandment.
33:49The first commandment was to love the Lord your God.
33:52The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
33:54And James says, if you do that, you're doing well.
33:58Which kind of puts the lie to the idea that the law of Moses is done away with.
34:04People will say, well, the Ten Commandments still applies, but all that other stuff, that's been done away with.
34:09Yeshua did away with that at the cross.
34:10Well, here James is, long decades after the cross, referring back to Leviticus 19 as the royal law.
34:19So what does the royal law mean exactly?
34:23I think there are three ways to interpret that phrase.
34:27One is, it's the law that rules all the other laws.
34:31You know how Yeshua said, love your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment.
34:35And on that one and the first one, the greatest commandment, hang all of the other commandments, whatever commandments there are.
34:43They all depend on those.
34:45And what he meant by that was that, well, he meant two things.
34:49First, if you are obeying any commandment in the law, but you're not doing it because you love God or love your neighbor, then you're really not doing it.
34:57You're just going through the motions.
34:58But also, it means that all the commandments that are, are actually an expression of how to love.
35:08The two greatest commandments, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor.
35:13Everything else tells you how to do that.
35:17Do not murder, because by murdering, you are showing contempt for the image of God and for your neighbor.
35:23However, do not commit adultery, because by committing adultery, you are showing contempt for marriage that God created and for your neighbor's marriage, his household.
35:34You know, do not steal, do not bear false witness.
35:38Don't yoke an ox and a donkey together to plow a field.
35:42These things are instruction in how to love.
35:46And so, love your neighbor as yourself is a royal law, because it rules all the other laws.
35:53So, that's one way to interpret that phrase.
35:56Another is that this is the king's law.
35:59This is the law of your sovereign.
36:01And this is true, too, because Yeshua is our king.
36:04And he has told us that this is the second greatest commandment.
36:10So, this is a royal law, because the king repeated it as really important to him.
36:16And it's also the law that is probably most clearly exemplified in his life and teachings.
36:24You know, he did everything he did for the glory of the Father.
36:27So, in that, and he obeyed the Father.
36:30He told us only what the Father told him to tell us.
36:34So, in that, he loved God with all his heart, mind, and soul.
36:38And, but then, he said, you know, I give a new commandment to you.
36:44That you love one another, even as I have loved you.
36:47Now, obviously, this wasn't really a new commandment.
36:49Yeshua was kind of being, I think maybe he was being a little sarcastic.
36:55Like, hey, I know that you guys have all these rules, but let me tell you a new commandment.
37:00Maybe you haven't heard this one.
37:01Love your neighbor as yourself.
37:02But, he was also saying, I'm showing you how to do it.
37:07Love one another, even as I have loved you.
37:11Look at me.
37:11I am showing you how to do this commandment.
37:14This is the new instruction.
37:16As I'm doing this, you do it too.
37:18So, we're supposed to copy Yeshua, and this is, he's our king.
37:23So, the king lives this way.
37:25This is the royal law.
37:27And so, we do it too, because we are citizens of the kingdom.
37:30So, a third way is that this is the law of the kingdom.
37:36So, that doesn't, in that sense, it wouldn't refer to just love your neighbor as yourself, but to the entire law.
37:42The entire law is the law of the kingdom.
37:45Everything from Genesis to Deuteronomy.
37:50I think all of those are valid.
37:51So, and if you do that, if you love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well, because if you love your neighbor as yourself, you are going to be doing all of the other commandments.
38:01And there's another verse that really underscores this.
38:05I probably quote this verse to people every single day.
38:08Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
38:17By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.
38:22And this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.
38:29This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.
38:32This is how we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.
38:39If you don't obey God's commandments, then you don't love God, and you don't love each other.
38:46It's really very clear and simple.
38:50So, if you love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing well, because you're keeping all of the commandments.
38:56And if you don't love your neighbor, you're not keeping the commandments.
39:00It works both ways.
39:01If you're not keeping the commandments, you don't love your neighbor, and you're not doing well.
39:07So, if you're showing partiality based on inconsequential things that don't matter within the body of Christ, then you're committing a sin.
39:15You are breaking this commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.
39:19You're breaking the commandment not to show partiality to the rich or the poor.
39:24Obviously, you're convicted by the law as a transgressor.
39:28I mean, that is the very definition of sin is transgressing the law.
39:35Verse 10 is one that people really get some twisted up ideas about.
39:41Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
39:46So, does that mean if you steal a dime that now you're also a murderer?
39:52Well, it's silly.
39:52Of course not.
39:54James is not saying that if you break some trivial matter, say that take a mother bird and its eggs or its young and eat them all on the same day.
40:08There's a command against that.
40:10James is not saying that if you do that, you are guilty of murder and you need to be executed.
40:14It's not what he's saying.
40:16We use this same phrase in modern English.
40:20If you break any law, you are a lawbreaker.
40:24You have broken the law.
40:26If you run a stop sign, you broke the law.
40:30That doesn't mean that you've broken every law that there is.
40:33It just means that you are guilty of breaking the law.
40:35And if you do it with total disregard because you don't care about the law, you are really a lawbreaker.
40:41And that's the kind of thing that James is saying here.
40:44All of these commandments are tied together.
40:45They all tie back to love your neighbor as yourself.
40:49So, if you steal a dime or you commit murder, you're showing unlove for your neighbor.
40:54Now, obviously to different degrees and there are different consequences.
40:57But you're still breaking that royal command to love your neighbor as yourself.
41:01No matter which commandment you broke.
41:02So, if you fail to keep the Sabbath, or not, let's say not fail.
41:08Let's say if you refuse to keep the Sabbath, you are violating the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.
41:15And I know that the Sabbath is one of those that people like to categorize as loving God.
41:19But the commandment is really specific.
41:22You are to do this because you are a slave in Egypt and you're going to treat your neighbor well.
41:26You're going to give him a day off.
41:28You're going to give all of your servants the day off, all of your animals.
41:31And you all have to do it on the same day or it doesn't count.
41:34You have to give everybody around you the opportunity to spend time with their families and their communities and with God the same as you get to.
41:43And so, deliberately breaking the Sabbath and not allowing other people to keep the Sabbath is showing disregard for your neighbor.
41:51If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will keep the Sabbath and allow him to keep the Sabbath too.
41:55All right, let's move on to the next one.
42:00So, speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty.
42:04For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy, and mercy triumphs over judgment.
42:11So, here's another phrase that we need to define.
42:13The law of liberty.
42:15What is this talking about?
42:17Let me go back to Leviticus 19.
42:19When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
42:26The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you are aliens in the land of Egypt.
42:34I am Yahweh your God.
42:37You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measurement of weight or capacity.
42:40You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hen.
42:44I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt.
42:49Thus, you shall thus observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them.
42:53I am Yahweh.
42:56In these commandments, God is emphasizing that the people have been brought out of Egypt.
43:01You were slaves in Egypt, and God has set you free.
43:05And so now, here is how you behave as free people.
43:08You treat each other as free people.
43:10You have been liberated by God, and he is giving you a law of liberty.
43:18God's commandments, all of it, the entire law of Moses, is the law of liberty.
43:24This is the law that God gives to people who have been liberated from slavery, and are now supposed to treat each other as people who have been liberated from slavery.
43:34Even if you, you know, Torah allows slavery in certain circumstances, and certainly not like anything we knew in America as chattel slavery.
43:46You know, in God's eyes, you can never own another person the same way that you can own your cattle.
43:52You don't get to treat people like animals in God's law.
43:55If you buy a Hebrew slave, you are essentially buying an indentured servant for up to seven years.
44:04And really, it's really like six years because you have to let him go in the seventh year.
44:09And you have to treat him well.
44:11You have to feed him.
44:12You have to clothe him.
44:13You have to educate him.
44:13And you have to send him out with gifts so that he can set himself up, so that he won't get back into poverty and have to sell himself into slavery again.
44:21It's really a very strict labor contract for a period of six to seven years.
44:27It's not like the slavery that we think of in our culture.
44:30I mean, we think of people in chains and stolen from their homelands.
44:35Well, God says that gets the death penalty.
44:37You're not allowed to steal people like that.
44:40And that's because his law is a law of liberty.
44:43It's a law for a free people who are willing to let other people be free, too.
44:48God's law isn't a law of oppression.
44:50It's not a burden.
44:51It's a tool to help us learn to love each other and to love God.
44:57It's a tool to help us live as free people under King Yeshua.
45:02That's the law of liberty.
45:04And so James goes on to say, judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.
45:09Since you're a free person, treat other people like free people.
45:13Since you used to be oppressed, treat other people the way you wanted to be treated.
45:20You didn't want to be oppressed, so don't oppress other people.
45:23And this verse, this last verse 13, very strong ties to some of the things that Yeshua said.
45:30Proverbs 3, especially, and Leviticus 19, both seem to be passages that James is basing his teachings on.
45:38But this is also true of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
45:44I'm going to go back to that one.
45:45Most Christian pastors will actually go to the Sermon on the Mount as James' source text.
45:50And I don't think that's correct.
45:51But it obviously has a lot of ties together.
45:55So in Matthew 5, 7, Yeshua says,
45:57Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
46:01And the corollary of that is if you're not willing to show mercy to people,
46:04then you won't receive mercy either.
46:09And Yeshua says this explicitly a couple of chapters later in Matthew 7, verses 1 to 5.
46:17He says,
46:18Do not judge so that you will not be judged.
46:21For in the way that you judge, you will be judged.
46:24And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.
46:27Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye,
46:29but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
46:32Or how can you say to your brother,
46:33Let me take the speck out of your eye,
46:35and behold, the log is in your own eye?
46:38You hypocrite!
46:39First take the log out of your own eye,
46:41and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
46:44Now, if you read this whole passage,
46:46you can see in that last verse that Yeshua was not saying that we should never judge each other,
46:51that we should never judge another person's character or behavior.
46:55Torah commands us to.
46:58Yeshua here says that this is a good thing to judge and help your neighbor fix their own bad behavior.
47:04But make sure you fix yours first.
47:06Don't judge other people more harshly than you're willing to be judged.
47:11Which is exactly what James is saying.
47:13Mercy triumphs over judgment.
47:16Show mercy whenever it's reasonable.
47:18Show mercy when it's not going to do harm to show mercy.
47:20Now, if you're on the jury of a murder trial,
47:24and this person is clearly guilty,
47:26well, the law says that that person is supposed to be punished.
47:29You know, God says that murderers get the death penalty.
47:33So, you don't have a lot of leeway there.
47:38But, there are cases where maybe he didn't intend to murder somebody,
47:43or maybe it's not a murder,
47:46and somebody did something wrong, but there were extenuating circumstances.
47:51It's good to show mercy when it's not going to do further harm.
47:57Yeshua also said that if you're not willing to forgive your brother,
48:00your father, our father in heaven won't forgive you either.
48:05Forgiveness is a prerequisite for forgiveness.
48:09You forgive other people, or God won't forgive you.
48:13And that's a pretty serious thing.
48:17I can't even think of anything more serious than that.
48:20So, it's like James says,
48:23for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.
48:26So, whenever you can, whenever it's not going to cause harm,
48:30show mercy to people.
48:32Give them the benefit of the doubt.
48:34Don't judge people more harshly than you want to be judged.
48:40James chapter 2, verses 14 to 26.
48:43That's our next pericope.
48:45Go ahead and read Proverbs 3, verses 27 to 35,
48:48and Leviticus 19, 9 to 20,
48:52along with this passage in James,
48:55chapter 2, verses 14 to 26.
48:57Look for the connections between those three passages.
49:00So, until then, be blessed.
49:03Go ahead and read Proverbs 3, verses 15,
49:06and grab a reference.
49:09Local coordinates in James,
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