To Encourage You

James 2:8-9 “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”

Do you love your neighbors?  ALL of them?  And so, we might ask, as did the lawyer in Luke 10, “And who is my neighbor?”  It was in response to this question that Jesus taught the parable of the Good Samaritan. This was the means Jesus used to tell us that our neighbor is anyone whom we come upon who is in need.  And He used a Samaritan in His parable to emphasize the fact that our “neighbor” includes ANYONE who is in need, not just those who are like us.  

We come across people in our journey of life that are of a different race than us, a different nationality, a different occupation, a different religion, a different political party, etc., etc. We have people in our lives that are younger and older than us, higher or lower on the income scale, more accomplished or less accomplished in some skill or ability, and younger or older in the faith.  The differences are endless, but herein lies one of our greatest temptations, i.e., the inclination to treat people differently in our lives depending on who they are.  If that wasn’t the case, God wouldn’t have spoken to us through James in the passage above about the problem of partiality.  

One of the attributes of God is that He is impartial (Romans 2:11).  He doesn’t judge one group of people by one set of standards and another group by a different set. He isn’t impressed by our wealth, intellect, or outward appearance.  He loves the child as much as the parent.  He loves the invalid in the nursing home the same as those who are living it up in the prime of their life.  And He loves the refugee as much as those who have never known such need.  

“But it sure doesn’t look like it,” you might say, for if God is so impartial, why are so many in dire straits in the world well others are at relative ease?   A better question might be “Why am I so blessed when so many around me don’t seem to be?”  And then this question, based on James’ words above, “What am I doing about it?  Am I loving those around me who are in need, no matter who they are, like God has commanded me to?” Our answer to that is very likely a good gauge of just how impartial we are.  

Everyone loves someone, even if that someone is only their own self.  Most of us have been given the ability to meet our own needs, and when we do that, it’s an example of how we love ourselves, for the royal law of love that James is talking about is all about meeting people’s needs.  But most of us also have the ability to help meet the needs of others in some way, perhaps by gifts of material wealth, a listening ear, an encouraging word, or a helping hand.  But if we are more likely to give such gifts to some more than others because of who they are it’s called partiality, and God calls that a sin.  It’s particularly sinful within the church where all outward distinctions become meaningless in the context of each person’s standing as a child of God.  

But is that how we treat one another? Is that how we see one another? When we look at another Christian, do we judge them on the basis of externals, which is what the world does, or do we recognize that that person is God’s son or daughter? Do we see them as the apple of His eye? If we do, it will affect the way we think and act toward them. And the fact of the matter is that the way we think and act toward them is an indication of how we are thinking and acting toward Jesus, for hasn’t He told us in His Word, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40)?