The Sin of Favoritism
1 My brothers and sisters, do not show favoritism as you hold on to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. y 2 For if someone comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and a poor person dressed in filthy clothes also comes in, 3 if you look with favor on the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Sit here in a good place,” and yet you say to the poor person, “Stand over there,” or “Sit here on the floor by my footstool,” 4 haven’t you made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Didn’t God choose the poor in this world z to be rich in faith a and heirs b of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? 6 Yet you have dishonored the poor. c Don’t the rich oppress you and drag d you into court? 7 Don’t they blaspheme the good name that was invoked over you? e
8 Indeed, if you fulfill the royal law prescribed in the Scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself, ,f you are doing well. 9 If, however, you show favoritism, g you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the entire law, and yet stumbles at one point, is guilty of breaking it all. h 11 For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder. ,i So if you do not commit adultery, but you murder, you are a lawbreaker.
12 Speak and act as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom. j 13 For judgment is without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy. k Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Faith and Works
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? l 17 In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works. m 19 You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder. n
20 Senseless person! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? 21 Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works in offering Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was made complete, o 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, ,p and he was called God’s friend. q 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works in receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route? r 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
C. The sin of favoritism (2:1–13). 2:1–4. “Favoritism” (2:1) translates a rare word that is used by the NT writers to render the OT Hebrew expression “receiving the face.” It connotes the treatment of any person on the basis of an external consideration—be it race, nationality, wealth, or manner of dress. Such favoritism is foreign to the nature of God (cf. Rm 2:11) and should also be unknown among believers in Christ. The illustration James uses in 2:2–3 implies that poor people were being discriminated against; and in doing so, James says, the believers manifest their evil thoughts (2:4).
2:5–7. James gives several reasons for his condemnation of favoritism against the poor. The first is that it stands in contradiction to God’s own attitude and actions. He has chosen the poor in the world to receive the blessings of his kingdom (2:5), as most of the early Christians were, in fact, poor (1 Co 1:26).
2:8–9. The third basis on which favoritism is criticized is also the most important: it violates the “royal law” of love for the neighbor (2:8). Jesus himself cited Lv 19:18, along with the requirement to love God, when asked to give a summary of the law (Mt 22:34–40), and it is probably for this reason that James calls it the royal law: it was highlighted by Jesus, the King, as a crucial law for the kingdom of God (Jms 2:5). Favoritism, then, by mistreating “your neighbor,” involves a clear violation of the law (2:9). Significantly, favoritism at the expense of the poor is also condemned in the context of Lv 19:18 (cf. Lv 19:15).
2:10–13. The following verses (2:10–11) support the conclusion reached in 2:9, that those who show favoritism are convicted as lawbreakers, by arguing that the infringement of any one law incurs the penalty for the breaking of the whole law. Therefore, James concludes, we had better speak and act with the realization that our conduct will be measured by the standard of “the law of freedom” (2:12). The OT law, which was fulfilled by Christ (Mt 5:17), can no longer condemn the believer (Rm 8:1–3). The “royal law” will, however, judge the believer in the sense that we will appear before Christ for an evaluation of our behavior (cf. 2 Co 5:10). On that day, mercy will be an important evidence of the reality of our relationship to God (2:13; cf. Mt 18:21–35).
2:14–17. In a teaching style James frequently uses, he broaches the issue with a question, or, to be more precise, two questions (2:14). In the Greek, it is clear that the assumed answer to these questions is no—this faith, the faith that certain people claim to have but that is without deeds, cannot save them from the judgment of God. The illustration in 2:15–16 drives home this point. What good have we done the fellow Christian who lacks the essentials of life if we simply dismiss him or her with words? Thus, James draws the conclusion (2:17): faith by itself is “dead”—not just in the sense that it is not doing what it should but that it is not even really what it claims to be.
2:18–19. James next quotes his interlocutor (who may be hypothetical or real) as saying, “You have faith, and I have works” (2:18a). The force of this objection is to argue, Why cannot one believer be especially gifted with faith while another has the ability to perform good deeds? James answers this objection with a challenge (2:18b–19), which boils down to this: how is faith demonstrated apart from activity? James says it is not. Having the right beliefs about God without the proper behavioral responses is not faith, for even the demons would qualify as faithful!
2:20–23. This “senseless person” (2:20), the interlocutor James uses to make his point, is now given evidence from the OT that faith without works is not faith at all. James cites two very different people to make his point: Abraham, the honored father of the Jewish people, and Rahab, the immoral pagan. Abraham, James claims, illustrates the intimate relationship of faith and works. In going so far as to offer his son Isaac in obedience to the Lord (Gn 22), Abraham showed that his faith was alive (2:21; see also Heb 11:17–19). His faith “was active together” with his actions (2:22). Indeed, it was the exercise of his trust through works that demonstrated his faith. But James goes even further than this. It was on the basis of his works that it was “credited to him as righteousness” (2:23). And although God declared Abraham righteous by faith (cf. Gn 15:6), James argues this was in conjunction with his activity.
2:24. These statements of James about being justified by works present a potential problem to the person who is aware that Paul claimed that a person is “not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Gl 2:16; cf. Rm 3:28). Indeed, Paul even quotes the same passage that James has cited in 2:23 (Gn 15:6) in favor of his point of view (see Gl 3:6). To be sure, the problems being dealt with are quite different—Paul is attacking Jews who think that Gentile salvation is tied to doing the Jewish “works of the law”; James addresses Jewish Christians who treat the poor unjustly (see the article “Faith and Works in James 2:24 and Galatians 2:15–16”).
2:25–26. James’s second OT example is set forth in close parallelism to the first (2:25; cf. 2:21). Rahab too was “justified” because of her actions. On the basis of reports about the power of the Lord, she committed the fate of herself and her family to him by helping the Israelite spies (Jos 2), showing them hospitality. Rahab’s example is particularly noteworthy as she was both a pagan and likely poor. James’s underlying point seems to have been that if Rahab the pagan prostitute demonstrated care for others, how much more should James’s Jewish Christian audience! The main point of the paragraph is reiterated in its concluding verse (2:26): just as a body without the invigorating spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead—barren and useless and not faith at all.