In the society that James inhabited, the rich oppressed the poor. They dragged them to the law courts. No doubt this was for debt. At the bottom end of the social scale, people were so poor that they could hardly live, and money-lenders were plentiful and well practised in extortion. In the ancient world, there was a custom of instant arrest. If a creditor met a debtor on the street, he could seize him by the neck of his robe, nearly throttling him, and literally drag him to the law courts. That is what the rich did to the poor. They had no sympathy; all they wanted was every last penny, every last cent. It is not riches that James is condemning; it is the management of riches without sympathy.
It is the rich who abuse the name by which the Christians are called. It may be the name Christian by which the followers of Christ were called first of all at Antioch and which was given initially as a jest. It may be the name of Christ, which was pronounced over a Christian at baptism. The word James uses for called (epikaleisthai) is the word used for a wife taking her husband’s name in marriage or for children being called after their father. Christians take the name of Christ; they are called after Christ. It is as if they were married to Christ, or born and christened into the family of Christ.
The rich and the masters would have many reasons for insulting the name Christian. Slaves who became Christians would have a new independence; they would no longer cringe at their master’s power, punishment would cease to terrorize them and they would meet their master with a new strength and confidence. They would have a new honesty. That would make them better slaves, but it would also mean they could no longer be their master’s instruments in sharp practice and petty dishonesty as once they might have been. They would have a new sense of worship, and on the Lord’s Day they would insist on putting work aside in order that they might worship with the people of God. There would be ample opportunity for a master to find reasons for insulting the name of Christian and cursing the name of Christ.
THE ROYAL LAW
James 2:8–11
If you perfectly keep the royal law, as the Scripture has it: ‘You must love your neighbour as yourself’, you do well. But if you treat people with respect of persons, such conduct is sin and you stand convicted by the law as transgressors. For, if a man keeps the whole law and yet fails to keep it in one point, he becomes guilty of transgressing the law as a whole. For he who said ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said ‘Do not kill’. If you do not commit adultery but kill, you become a transgressor of the law.
THE connection of thought with the previous passage is this. James has been condemning those who pay special attention to the rich man who enters the church. ‘But’, they might answer, ‘the law tells me to love my neighbour as myself. Therefore we are duty-bound to welcome this man when he comes to church.’ ‘Very well,’ answers James, ‘if you are really welcoming the man because you love him as you do yourself, and you wish to give him the welcome you yourself would wish to receive, that is fine. But, if you are giving him this special welcome because he is rich, that is favouritism and that is wrong – and, far from keeping the law, you are in fact breaking it. You don’t love your neighbour, or you would not neglect the poor man. What you love is wealth – and that is not what the law commands.’
James calls the great commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves the royal law. There can be various meanings of the phrase. It may mean the law which is of supreme excellence; it may mean the law which is given by the King of Kings; it may mean the supreme law; it may mean the law that gives the regal quality to people and is fit for royalty. To keep that greatest law is to become king of oneself and a king among others. It is a law fit for those who are royal, and able to make others royal.
James goes on to lay down a great principle about the law of God. To break any part of it is to become a transgressor. The Jews were very apt to regard the law as a series of detached commandments. To keep one was to gain credit; to break one was to incur debt. People could add up the ones they kept and subtract the ones they broke and so emerge with a credit or a debit balance. There was a Rabbinic saying: ‘Whoever fulfils only one law, good is appointed to him; his days are prolonged and he will inherit the land.’ Again, many of the Rabbis held that ‘the Sabbath weighs against all precepts’, and to keep it was to keep the law.
As James saw it, the whole law was the will of God; to break any part of it was to infringe that will and therefore to be guilty of sin. That is perfectly true. To break any part of the law is to become a transgressor in principle. Even under human justice, people become criminals when they have broken one law. So James argues: ‘No matter how good you may be in other directions, if you treat people with favouritism, you have acted against the will of God and you are a transgressor.’
There is a great truth here which is both relevant and practical. We may put it much more simply. Men and women may be in nearly all respects good people, and yet they may spoil themselves by one fault. They may be moral in their action, pure in their speech, meticulous in their devotion. But they may be hard and self-righteous, rigid and unsympathetic, and, if so, their goodness is spoiled.
We do well to remember that, though we may claim to have done many good things and to have resisted many evil things, there may be something in us by which everything is spoiled.
THE LAW OF LIBERTY AND THE LAW OF MERCY
James 2:12–13
So speak and so act as those who are going to be judged under the law of liberty. For he who acts without mercy will have judgment without mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
AS he comes to the end of a section, James reminds his readers of two great facts of the Christian life.
(1) Christians live under the law of liberty, and it is by the law of liberty that they will be judged. What he means is this. Unlike the Pharisees and the orthodox Jews, Christians are not men and women whose lives are governed by the external pressure of a whole series of rules and regulations imposed on them from outside. They are governed by the inner compulsion of love. They follow the right way, the way of love to God and love to other people, not because any external law compels them to do so nor because any threat of punishment frightens them into doing so, but because the love of Christ within their hearts makes them want to do so.
(2) Christians must always remember that only those who show mercy will find mercy. This is a principle which runs through all Scripture. Ben Sirach wrote: ‘Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray. Does anyone harbour anger against another, and expect healing from the Lord? If one has no mercy to another like himself, can he then seek pardon for his own sins?’ (Sirach 28:2–5). Jesus said: ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy’ (Matthew 5:7). ‘If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matthew 6:14–15). ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged’ (Matthew 7:1–2). He tells of the condemnation which fell upon the unforgiving servant, and ends the parable by saying: ‘So, my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart’ (cf. Matthew 18:23–35).
Scripture teaching is agreed that those who would find mercy must themselves be merciful. And James goes even further, for in the end he says that mercy triumphs over judgment – by which he means that in the day of judgment those who have shown mercy will find that their mercy has even blotted out their own