Show No Partiality

We all say people matter more than status, but our instincts often tell a different story. James 2 puts a spotlight on favoritism and asks what happens when a “gold ring” guest and a poor, shabby visitor walk into the same church. Do we offer equal welcome, equal attention, and equal dignity, or do we quietly start doing spiritual math based on money, influence, and appearance?

We walk through the passage line by line and tie it to real life, starting with a fundraising story that exposed how unreliable our assumptions can be. From there we unpack three practical commitments: be hospitable to all, be slow to honor, and expect the unexpected. Along the way we talk about why preferential treatment is more than a social faux pas, how churches can drift from serving Jesus to protecting themselves, and why Scripture urges patience before giving someone “weight” through leadership or public influence.

James also flips our cultural obsession with success. Worldly advantage is a notoriously bad measure of spiritual maturity, and God often works most powerfully through people the world overlooks. We close by looking to Jesus, the Lord of glory, who came in humility and was rejected, reminding us what real honor and real riches in faith actually look like.

If this challenged you, share it with a friend, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What’s one place you’ve caught yourself judging by appearances?

Transcript

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Scripture Reading From James 2

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And as they make their way down for the rest of us, I will invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word. This morning it comes from James chapter 2, beginning in verse 1, the Word of God reads this way. My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, You sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, You stand over there or sit down at my feet? Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, 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? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated, and may God bless this reading and preaching of his word.

A Fundraising Lesson On Assumptions

SPEAKER_00 1:18

My first job out of college was in campus ministry. And being a campus minister is like being a missionary in the sense that you have to fundraise and you have to raise your own support. And I had no experience with fundraising before I got into that job, but they put me through a pretty comprehensive training and they had me come up with a list of 300 people that I would ask for money to support our ministry. Even coming up with a list of 300 people that I knew was difficult. It would be difficult for you if you had to come up with 300 people that you know. But I did it, and then I sent out letters and I started making phone calls and setting up meetings. On that list were very wealthy Christians with whom I had good rapport, and also Christians who lived more modestly and more ordinary lives, and I felt certain that I knew who would give and who would support our ministry. I knew who would give a lot and who would give a little. And I did this kind of fundraising for about six years before a church hired me, and then I didn't have to do it anymore. And every year, each one of those six years, I found that my assumptions were always wrong. And then I just began to get used to not making any assumptions at all. The Christians who appeared the most wealthy and who I assumed had the most ability to give often gave nothing or gave very little. And the Christians who seemed to have nothing and who I thought had really no capacity to support our ministry, and I assumed had very little ability to give, often surprised me with very large or very generous gifts and ongoing support. And this experience was one of the first experiences that taught me that I should not judge by appearances, that I should not prejudge. In

Partiality And The Metrics We Trust

SPEAKER_00 3:21

our study in James today, we've been going through James, we've just started it. James wants to make a very similar point. He calls it partiality. He says, do not show partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. But what he means by that is judging by appearances, judging the value of a person based on external factors about them. And his point is this. And what does that mean? Well, worldly value can, what I mean by that, that can be measured in terms of wealth and influence, power and authority, uh, positions of influence and of and of authority, worldly advantage. And spiritual value or spiritual advantage is measured in terms of dependence upon God, love for God, knowledge of God, depth of character, moral and spiritual depth. And there is no necessary relationship between those two things. A person can have very little in terms of worldly advantage, very little money, very little influence, very little power, and yet have a deep knowledge of God and a deep love for God and a deep moral and spiritual character and worth. And likewise a person can have very much going for them in the world, money and influence and notoriety, and yet have no knowledge of God, no relationship with God, no moral or spiritual substance. There is no necessary relationship. And so we must be very careful never to judge by appearances. So what does this mean? We're going to look at three aspects of that this morning. Be hospitable to all, be slow to honor, and expect the unexpected. So be hospitable to all, be slow to honor, and expect the unexpected. So

Hospitality Without Self Interest

SPEAKER_00 5:40

first, be hospitable to all. Because we are servants of the Lord, we ought to be hospitable to all. One of James' concerns here is that the church is careful to welcome and to show hospitality to all who enter her assembly, and not to give special treatment to those who seem important or who seem wealthy or who seem to have advantage. He says in verse 2, for if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabbing in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, You sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, you stand over there, or sit down at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? The two issues at play here are who gets the church's attention and who gets the church's honor. And we're going to look at those one at a time, but the first issue is attention. The church might be tempted to pay attention or to give more attention to the impressive, well-dressed, wealthy-looking, healthy-looking man or woman who visits on a Sunday, and perhaps to ignore or to not pay much mind to the guy that looks like me, the shabby-looking man who visits, especially if they both visit on the same Sunday. Which one is more likely to be greeted, to be welcomed by the pastor, to be invited to come back? More than likely, it will be the rich man because of one crucially mistaken assumption. And that assumption is that the rich man, because he is rich, has more to offer the church than the poor man. That is a crucially mistaken assumption. But we assume that because after all, which one of them is more likely to give money? Well, which one of them has money to give? Which one of them is more likely to invite their other rich friends who also have money and influence, or to use their influence and their power to benefit the church? So we assume all of that, and because of this assumption, churches are much more likely to show preferential treatment to the people in this world who seem to have the most advantage. But James says that this assumption is not only mistaken, but that it is evil. He says, you have become, quote, judges with evil thoughts, James says. And why why would it be evil and not just mistaken? Well, it's evil because when we operate this way, which is part of our human fallen nature to do this, it's evil because it reveals that the church is not primarily concerned with serving the Lord, but has instead become concerned with benefiting itself. Not concerned with serving the Lord, but benefiting itself. And this is a very subtle but very important difference, and I'll give you an illustration. I just finished Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, and it's like a 700-page book. So I should get a badge for finishing that book. But one of the key points that he makes throughout the book, and especially toward the end of the book, is the perennial problem of government, any kind of government. And hang with me for just a moment here. The main concern of the government of any nation ought to be to serve the best interest of the people. That's the idea behind government. We elect our representatives so that they will go to Washington and fight for the interests of their constituents. That's what we want. Isn't that the idea of representative government? Isn't that what Israel wanted a king to do for them? To go out and to fight their battles and to win their wars and to defend them against their enemies, to be concerned about the interests of the people. But that's not how it often goes. No matter who is in power, whether it's Republicans or Democrats or someone else, once they come into office, it is clear that governments tend not to primarily serve the interests of the people, but to serve their own interests. Their greatest goal, of course, is to be re-elected. If you're in power, your your greatest incentive is to stay there and to be re-elected no matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat or no matter what, that's your goal, even if it means promising things that they can never deliver upon, or enacting policies that might please people in the short term, but they know will have disastrous consequences down the road when they're no longer in office. That's not their problem. Their main goal is to stay in their position. The perennial problem of governments is that they do not serve the interests of the people, but like all human institutions, they serve their own interests. Well, the church is the servant of the Lord. And our purpose is to serve Jesus Christ. And he commands that we would show hospitality to all people, to rich and poor alike, and work to bless all people in the hopes that some might be saved. That's what our purpose is. But our fallen nature is inclined to corrupt this mission, and it is very easy for churches to shift their attention instead of serving the Lord to benefiting and to preserving themselves. And so we will be likely to attend to those who are wealthy and influential, those who seem to be most likely to have something to offer to the church, and this, brothers and sisters, is evil. James calls this evil. And so the best thing that we can do as a church and just collectively and also individually out in the world, is to show hospitality to all. When we first planted St. John, I had a certain idea of the kind of person that we might reach. But I continue to be surprised by who the Lord brings into our path and who chooses to walk through our doors. It's often not the people that I envisioned that I would be preaching to. Our job is not to curate our congregation, but our job is to show the Lord's welcome to any whom he would bring, and to any whom he brings into our path during the week. A young man in my gym approached me after class just the other week, and he apologized that he had not been at the gym in a few weeks, and he shared that someone very close to him, a young person very close to him, had unexpectedly passed away. And that just kind of sent him into a spiral. And I didn't really know what else to say to that. I was listening to him, and I said, Well, would you like to come to church with me? And he's thinking about it. He's not here yet, but he's thinking about it. Whether or not the people that we encounter seem to have resources or seem to have something to offer to the church should not factor into our thinking in terms of our extending welcome to them. Rather, we should be thinking like this: how can I extend the Lord's welcome to all whom he presents to me, and not to show partiality as I hold the faith in our Lord Jesus.

Slow To Give Honor And Power

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So we must be hospitable to all, but we also must be slow to honor. Because appearances can be deceiving, we ought to be slow to honor. The issue is not only who gets attention, but also who gets honor. And again in verse 3, James says, if you pay attention to the one who wears fine clothing and say, You sit here in a good place, a place of honor, while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet. James is talking about giving the rich man a seat of honor in the church, while brushing the poor man or the shabby-looking man off into a corner. And he says in verse 6 that you have dishonored the poor man. The rich man, because he is rich, is treated like he's important and valuable, while the poor man, because he is poor, is not treated special. He's treated like he's common and expendable. So what does it mean to honor? Well, there are many ways that churches show honor, and it should first be said that we owe everyone a basic honor as image bearers of God. Paul says that we ought to outdo one another in showing honor. We ought always to be honoring one another as image bearers of God. But this can be taken even further because to honor someone means also to give them weight. To give them weight. This could mean to value their opinion more highly than others. It could mean to give them more of a voice or more control than we would give to others, to honor your father and mother, after all, one of the Ten Commandments. In part, that means to listen to them and to do what they say more than we would to others, and to give them a powerful voice in our lives. The ultimate way that a church can honor someone is by giving them a position of leadership or even ordaining them as an elder or as a deacon. It's not that we should never honor the rich, that's not what James is saying, nor that we should always honor the poor. But the problem that James has in view is that the church is very quick to dismiss or to ignore the poor man and very quick to give a place of honor to the rich man, and to give the rich man much more weight and much more control, much more quickly than we should. In 1 Timothy 5, Paul gives Timothy instructions on how to ordain and how to install leaders in the church, and he says, Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands. He goes on to say, the sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden. The laying on of hands, among other things, means to publicly recognize and to invest with authority, to ordain to leadership, and Paul says that Timothy should not do this hastily, because time must reveal the true character of these men. So, while we should treat everyone with a basic honor and dignity, we must be careful not to be so impressed with worldly success that we prematurely give voice and power and authority to those who seem like they have a lot going for them and seem like they can really benefit the church. Years ago, we had a young man show up at church who seemed to have a lot going for him. He was well dressed, he looked good, he had a nice haircut, he was very charismatic and friendly, he drove expensive cars, he seemed rich and successful. He attended regularly and he joined as a member and he got along well with everybody, and he even started working on business deals with other businessmen in the church, and by all appearances it seemed that we had hit the jackpot, and that this young man was just a great addition to our church. When nominations were opened for office, this was years ago, when nominations were opened for office, he was nominated as a deacon. No surprise, so well thought of was he by everyone. And then one day, maybe about six months later, he just stopped coming to church. And then it was difficult to get a hold of him, and we were just trying to figure out what happened to him. We we did a little bit of digging, we were wondering like, did he like get arrested and end up in the clink and we gotta go bail him out? We were just concerned about him. So, but a simple Google search revealed the truth, and we discovered that this young man was not at all who we thought that he was, and it turns out he had a very serious criminal history that he never told us about, a very serious pattern of evading responsibility, and we quickly realized that those in our church with whom he had become entangled were in some very serious danger. So we informed all of the relevant parties and we confronted him, the elders confronted him and asked him to meet, and he promptly disappeared, and no one has seen him since. Because appearances can be deceiving, we ought to be very slow and very careful to give people honor and weight and voice, in the sense of giving them leadership and authority and voice. It's often the case in churches that the people that end up being elders or deacons, or the people who are given the most respect and reverence, are the people who are wealthy or who are successful in business. Doctors and lawyers and businessmen, these are the people that end up being in church leadership. This is not always bad. There is a relationship between success in business and spiritual depth, because if we apply the wisdom found in the Bible to business, we should not be surprised if we end up being successful. There is some relationship there. It's just important to recognize that there is no necessary relationship. Someone can be very successful in a worldly sense, and that does not mean that they have any knowledge of God. Don't be impressed with people because they appear wealthy or successful. Be impressed with people when they prove themselves to be faithful, when they prove themselves to be sacrificial and to be Christ-like. Sometime in the next year we will open up nominations for office again and look at training new elders and deacons. And I can tell you that I've got my eye on a few men in our midst that I think would make fantastic elders, and I can tell you that they are not the wealthiest men in our church, nor are they the most successful in business. In fact, some of them have had business struggles. But what impresses me about them is their faithfulness, their love for the Lord, their consistency and their love for the church, their humility, their sacrificial nature. These are the men whom we want to honor. Whether they are successful in a worldly sense is immaterial. We're looking for men and women who resemble Jesus and who love Jesus, and these are the ones that we want to lift up and we say, you should follow this person as they follow Christ. You should be like this person. So we must be slow to honor.

Expect God In Unlikely People

SPEAKER_00 21:33

But also we must expect the unexpected. God is often at work most powerfully in the most unexpected places. When considering what's most important in this world, our eyes are very often in the wrong place. We consider those important who are well known or who are wealthy and successful, or who have large followings, or who have much influence. We have We just have an enchantment with the rich and successful. But James challenges us to think carefully about this. He says in verse 6 Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and who drag you into court? Are not they the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? In James' day, the people in power were the ones who were most opposed to the purposes of God, or most likely to ignore the purposes of God. After all, it was the leadership in Jerusalem that condemned Jesus to be crucified. They were not on the right team. It was the same leadership who ultimately had James beheaded. It is the wealthy who had the resources to harass church members with endless lawsuits, and most of the prominent people in James' day denied Jesus and blasphemed God. So James asks this sensible question. He asks, why are you so enchanted with the rich when the rich are so opposed to the purposes of God? And the same is still true in our day. Very few of the most influential and celebrated people in our world are Christians and give glory to God. On the other hand, it is often the most simple people and the people of the most modest income who are the richest in faith and knowledge of God. James says in verse 5, he says, Listen, 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? It's not that the lowly in this world are automatically spiritual, and that to be poor means to be close to God. But James is saying the same thing that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, 26 and 20 through 29, Paul says, For consider your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. That doesn't mean that none were, but not many were. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. We know that faith does not come from ourselves, but it is a gift of God. No amount of money can buy it, and no amount of study and scholarship and PhDs can develop it. It is given by God, and God is pleased to reveal himself to the little children of this world, to the simple and to the humble and the uneducated, and he is pleased to hide himself from the so-called wise and rich and educated. The disciples of Jesus, the ones who shook the foundations of the world, were humble fishermen and tax collectors and former prostitutes. God was delighted to choose the most unlikely people to shake the foundations of the world to shame the wise, the so-called wise and knowledgeable and powerful. The point here is not that wealth is bad. Wealth is not bad. And the point is not that poverty is good, poverty is not good, or that God prefers one or the other. The point is that worldly success is a notoriously unreliable indicator of richness in faith. There is no necessary relationship. And oftentimes it is those who have the least in the world who are the richest in faith and dependence upon God, and who have the most to offer the Church of God. In 2008, a couple in Winnipeg received an unusual visitor. A taxi pulled up, and a disheveled man emerged wearing dirty boots and ill-fitted leather pants. And the husband was at home and the wife was out grocery shopping, and the man approached the husband and he said, I understand that this house was Neil Young's childhood home. Is that right? And the man knew that this was the truth, and so he said, Yes. And he said, Well, do you mind if I come inside and see his bedroom? Of course, sir, by all means. The disheveled man came inside and he saw the bedroom, and he stood staring out the window for some time, imagining what it must have been like to be Neil Young in his youth, pondering in silence. And as he was leaving, the wife came home and she saw the man exiting her house, and she asked her husband what happened. Well, he wanted to see Neil Young's bedroom. And you let that dirty man in our house, are you crazy? He could have robbed you or murdered you. And he said, Sweetie, that was Bob Dylan. That man was Bob Dylan. Dylan was on tour in Winnipeg and paid this home a surprise visit that they will always remember. We can never be certain who we're dealing with when we encounter people in the world. The author of Hebrews says, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels. Even Bob Dylan, unawares. God is often at work in the most powerful and in the most unexpected, sorry, God is often at work most powerfully in the most unexpected places. And so we must learn to stop expecting. We must learn to expect the unexpected. Can anything good come from Nazareth? Surely the Messiah would come from Bethlehem or from Jerusalem or from some important place. They were looking for a warrior king, but Isaiah tells us that actually he had no form or majesty that we should look at him. He had no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Man of sorrows. What a name for the Son of God who came. Often the things in this world that are the most celebrated and the most embraced and the most impressive are the very things that God has rejected. The very things that the Lord has passed over. And the things that people, and the things and the people that have been rejected and despised and discarded by this world are the very ones that God has in his great love chosen and placed his name upon to make a name for himself. Jesus Christ, after all, is the stone that the builders rejected, that has become the cornerstone. The cornerstone of a new temple and a new creation. And so we must get used to expecting the unexpected and looking for the work of God in the most unlikely places and in the most unlikely of people.

Final Exhortation And Prayer

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So, brothers and sisters, this is James' admonishment to us this morning. Be careful. Show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. Welcome all with the hospitality of the Lord. Be slow to honor, aside from the basic honor that we owe to everyone, and expect the unexpected. To these ends, let us pray. Our Father, we we give you thanks for these words from James, the brother of Jesus. And we pray that you would help us to hear them well and to listen to them and to understand that we cannot trust appearances, that we should not look to worldly advantage in order to tell us where you are at work or who is worthy of our attention and worthy of our honor. Lord, if we were to do that, we would totally have missed the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, who was clothed in humility, the most glorious being in all of creation, clothed as the carpenter's son from Nazareth. So we pray that you would help us to learn from our Lord and Master and to look for faithfulness and look for the signs of your kingdom everywhere that we go and to show hospitality to all. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Let us stand and give glory to God.