8 The Evil of Favoritism in the Church—Part 1

(James 2:1–4)

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say,” You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man,” You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (2:1–4)

When we think of the attributes of God, His divine nature and characteristics, we usually think of such things as His holiness and righteousness and His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. We think of His immutability (changelessness), His eternality, His sovereignty, His justice, and His perfect grace, love, mercy, faithfulness, and goodness. But another attribute of God that is not thought or spoken of so often is His impartiality. Yet that is a serious and recurring theme throughout Scripture. God is absolutely impartial in His dealings with people. And in that way, as with His other attributes, He is unlike us. Human beings, even Christians, are not naturally inclined to be impartial. We tend to put people in pigeonholes, in predetermined, stratified categories, ranking them by their looks, their clothes, their race or ethnicity, their social status, their personality, their intelligence, their wealth and power, by the kind of car they drive, and by the type of house and neighborhood they live in.

But all of those things are nonissues with God, of no significance or meaning to Him whatever. Moses declared,” For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God.” He then added that this great and awesome God, who has the right to be however He wants to be,” does not show partiality nor take a bribe” (Deut. 10:17), and He expects his people to reflect that same impartiality. The great lawgiver warned,” You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it” (Deut. 1:17); and,

[if] there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks. Beware that there is no base thought in your heart, saying,” The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and your eye is hostile toward your poor brother, and you give him nothing; then he may cry to the Lord against you, and it will be a sin in you. You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings. For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying,” You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land” (Deut. 15:7–11; cf. 16:19; Lev 19:15)

King Jehoshaphat of Judah reminded the judges he had just appointed: “Now then let the fear of the Lord be upon you; be very careful what you do, for the Lord our God will have no part in unrighteousness or partiality or the taking of a bribe” (2 Chron. 19:7). The obvious implication was that the judges should carefully and reverently reflect the Lord’s holiness and impartiality.

The writer of Proverbs says,” These also are sayings of the wise. To show partiality in judgment is not good” (Prov. 24:23), and,” To show partiality is not good, because for a piece of bread a man will transgress” (28:21). Through Malachi, the Lord excoriated unfaithful Israel, saying,” So I also have made you despised and abased before all the people, just as you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in the instruction” (Mal. 2:9).

The New Testament is equally clear about the sin of partiality To the newly converted Gentile Cornelius and his believing household, Peter confessed that he finally shed Jewish animosity toward Gentiles when he understood that “in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him” (Acts 10:35). Paul makes clear that God’s impartiality extends to His judgment as well: “There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God” (Rom. 2:9–11). Every person will be judged entirely by the condition of his soul.

To a crowd of unbelievers in the temple, Jesus said,” Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24). Paul specifically emphasizes that God is impartial in regard to social status, occupation, or a person’s being free or enslaved. He told believers at Ephesus,

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him. (Eph. 6:5–9; cf. Col. 3:25; 4:1)

Like their Lord, believers should treat the lowest-paid laborer with the same basic respect as they do a bank president or the socially elite, and treat those who may work under them with the same impartiality and dignity as they give their boss.

Impartiality also is expressed in the way we give help to others, especially fellow believers. “We know love by this,” the apostle John says,

that He [Jesus] laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him. (1 John 3:16–19)

If we do not treat those in need the way God treats them, then His love is not in us. Later in that letter the apostle writes,” In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us” (4:10–12). “If someone says, ‘I love God, ‘ and hates his brother,” John goes on to say,” he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also” (vv. 20–21).

Church leaders and members alike are therefore to be disciplined according to Jesus instructions in Matthew 18. If a believer is warned privately by one person, and then by two or more but refuses to repent,” tell it to the church,” He commands; and “if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:15–17).

Church discipline should be administered with total impartiality. Paul admonishes Christians to take special care before accusing a church leader, saying,” Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses” (1 Tim. 5:19). But he then says that, if a leader is found to be guilty and continues in sin, he should be rebuked “in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality” (vv. 20–21).

Therefore, whether it concerns salvation, judgment, discipline of church leaders or ordinary church members, God’s standards are the same. He deals entirely with the soul, the inner person, and with total impartiality. Peter affirms that divine impartiality, reminding believers that “it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’ And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth” (1 Pet. 1:16–17). In other words, if we expect God to be fair and impartial with us, we should be fair and impartial with others, just as we are to forgive others if we expect God to forgive us (Matt. 6:14).

As mentioned numerous times before in this commentary, the epistle of James is very practical, dealing much more with day-to-day issues than with theology and doctrine in the usual sense. In the present passage, he stresses that our partiality or lack of it is another test of living faith. The first test relates to how we respond to trials (1:3–12); the second to how we respond to temptation (1:13–18); the third to how we react to the Word of God (1:19–27); and the fourth to partiality, or favoritism (2:1–13). In the fourth one, he focuses mostly on partiality in regard to social and economic status, doubtless because those were special problems in the early church and were obviously problems with some of the Jewish believers “who [were] dispersed abroad” (1:1).

In 2:1–13, James presents five features of genuine, Godlike impartiality: the principle (v. 1), the example (vv. 2–4), the inconsistency (vv. 5–7), the violation (vv. 8–11), and the appeal (vv. 12–13).

THE PRINCIPLE

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. (2:1)

James prefaces this command by addressing readers as my brethren, indicating that he is speaking out of love and as a fellow believer and brother in Christ. Mostly as a preface to an admonition or warning, James uses this or the expanded phrase “my beloved brethren” some fifteen times in the letter (e.g., 1:2, 16, 19; 2:5, 14; 4:11; 5:7).

The basic principle is succinctly stated in verse 1, indicating that having genuine faith in the gospel of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ while holding an attitude of personal favoritism is contradictory and incompatible.

The phrase our glorious Lord Jesus Christ is, more literally,” our Lord Jesus Christ of the glory,” perhaps referring to God’s Shechinah glory (see Ex. 40:34; 1 Kings 8:11), the history of which James’s Jewish readers would have been very familiar. The idea is that we cannot hold the faith of Jesus Christ, who is the very presence and glory of God, and be partial. Jesus Himself was impartial (Matt. 22:16), as indicated by His humble birth, family, and upbringing in Nazareth, and His willingness to minister in Samaria and Galilee, regions held in contempt by the Jewish leaders.

In the Greek text, the phrase do not … with an attitude of favoritism is in the emphatic position, preceding hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ and thereby giving special force to the imperative admonition, which carries the idea of continuation, of not making a practice of favoritism, which has no place in the life of a faithful Christian. A few verses later (2:9), James makes clear that favoritism is not simply discourteous and disrespectful but is a serious sin.

Being partial is in total conflict with our salvation and with what Scripture teaches (cf. Lev. 19:15; Prov. 24:23; 28:21). If we are saved, we are children of God; and if we are His children, we should emulate Him. Paul declares categorically that “there is no partiality with God” (Rom. 2:11; cf. Lev. 19:15; Job 34:19; Prov. 24:23; 28:21; Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25; 1 Pet. 1:17).

There is, of course, a proper special respect and honor that should be shown to the elderly and to those in authority, both in the church and in society in general. Through Moses, the Lord commanded,” You shall rise up before the grayheaded and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God; I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:32). Paul wrote the Thessalonians to “appreciate” and “esteem … very highly” their pastors (1 Thess. 5:12–13). “The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor,” Paul told Timothy,” especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17). Quoting Exodus 22:28, Paul apologized for unknowingly calling the high priest a “whitewashed wall” (Acts 23:35). Likewise,

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. (Rom. 13:1–5)

Peter reiterates that admonition, saying,” Fear God, honor the king” (1 Pet. 2:17).

An attitude of personal favoritism translates the single Greek word prosōpolēmpsia, which has the literal meaning of lifting up someone’s face, with the idea of judging by appearance and on that basis giving special favor and respect. It pertains to judging purely on a superficial level, without consideration of a person’s true merits, abilities, or character. It is both interesting and significant that this word, along with the related noun prosōpolēmptēs (see Acts 10:34,” partiality”) and the verb prosōpolēmpteō (see James 2:9,” show partiality”) are found only in Christian writings. Perhaps that is because favoritism was such an accepted part of most ancient societies that it was assumed and not even identified, as it still is in many cultures today.

During His incarnation, Jesus was the glory and image of God in human form (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:4, 6; Phil. 2:6) and, like His Father, He showed no favoritism, a virtue even His enemies acknowledged. It made no difference to Jesus whether the one to whom He spoke or ministered was a wealthy Jewish leader or a common beggar, a virtuous woman or a prostitute, a high priest or a common worshiper, handsome or ugly, educated or ignorant, religious or irreligious, law-abiding citizen or criminal. His overriding concern was the condition of the soul. One day, John assures believers,” we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). And while we are on earth, we should act just as He did when He was on earth.

God’s impartiality is reflected even in the genealogies of His Son, Jesus Christ. In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ descendants are shown to include such notable and godly believers as Abraham, David, Solomon, and Hezekiah (Matt. 1:1–2, 5–7, 10; Luke 3:31–32, 34). But also included are many otherwise obscure and common people, including the incestuous Tamar, the former prostitute Rahab, and Ruth, from the outcast Moabites (Matt. 1:3, 5). Jesus was not born in the great holy city of Jerusalem but in Bethlehem, of historical importance to Jews as the city of David but not at all comparable to Jerusalem in glory, and of total insignificance to the rest of the world. Jesus grew up in the Galilean town of Nazareth, whose poor reputation among most Jews is reflected in Nathanael’s comment to Philip: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). On another occasion some people commented about Jesus,” Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is He?” (John 7:41). Still others said,” Search, and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee” (John 7:52). Onlookers at Pentecost “were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?’” (Acts 2:7).

The landowner who hired workers in Jesus’ parable sent them to begin working at various times throughout the day. At the end of the day the men discovered they were all being paid the same amount. But those who had worked all day complained that those who started work near the end of the day were paid the same as they were. The landowner “answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’” Clearly recognizing the man’s right to do as he did, Jesus added,” So the last shall be first, and the first last” (Matt. 20:13–16). Those who are saved in the last minutes of their lives will enjoy the same glories in heaven as those who have known and served the Lord faithfully for many years. The time of their salvation, like their wealth, fame, intelligence, social status, and other worldly measurements, will not be factors in their heavenly blessings. This wonderful story shows God’s impartiality in giving all the same eternal life.

In another parable, when some of the invited guests did not bother to show up at the wedding banquet given for his son, the king ordered his servants to “‘go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast. ‘Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests” (Matt. 22:9–10). Jesus impartially calls all people to Himself; and if they have saving faith in Him, their being rich or poor, educated or ignorant, basically moral or grossly immoral, religious or irreligious, Jew or Gentile makes no difference (cf. Gal. 3:28). It was doubtless at least partly for that reason that “the common people heard Him gladly” (Mark 12:37 KJV). Jesus went on to illustrate that it is not the amount of money a person gives to the Lord’s work but the heart intent of the giver by which God judges. As He and the disciples sat down in the temple opposite the treasury,” a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, ‘Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on’” (Mark 12:42–44).

The gospel is a great leveler, available with absolute equality to everyone who believes in the Savior it proclaims. Jesus’ promise to all those who trust in Him is: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matt. 11:29–30).

Tragically, many otherwise biblical and faithful churches today do not treat all their members the same. Frequently, those who are of a different ethnic background, race, or financial standing are not fully welcomed into fellowship. That ought not to be. It not only is a transgression of God’s divine law but is a mockery of His divine character.

THE EXAMPLE

For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say,” You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man,” You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (2:2–4)

To better appreciate James’s emphasis in this passage, it is necessary to understand that the vast majority of early converts to Christianity were Jewish and poor. If they were not already, many suddenly became poor when, because of their faith, they were ostracized from their families and society, so that a husband and father lost his job or a wife and mother was thrown out of the house without anything but the clothes on her back. There was intense hatred of fellow Jews who converted to Christianity. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul asked believers there to consider the fact that among them “there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble” (1 Cor. 1:26).

In a diatribe against Christians written in A.D. 178, the Roman philosopher Celsus attacked Christians to a large extent simply because most of them were poor and uneducated. He severely criticized the commonness of believers, portraying them as vulgar,” like a swarm of bats or ants creeping out of their nests, or frogs holding a symposium amid a swamp, or worms in a convention in a corner of mud.”

Immediately after Pentecost, the absence of partiality was evident: “All those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need” (Acts 2:44–45). These needs came about as Jerusalem Jews were alienated by the new believers faith in Christ and as pilgrims who had come for Passover and Pentecost and remained had no sources of income. A short while later, Luke reports,” For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need. Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement), and who owned a tract of land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:34–37).

Still later, as persecution caused many believing Jews to lose their jobs and become ostracized by families and friends, the need for food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities increased to a critical point. One consequence was that,” while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food” (Acts 6:1). That practical need led the church to choose godly men to oversee the food distribution. That allowed the apostles to devote themselves “to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (v. 4).

There were, of course, a number of early Christians who were wealthy. One was Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish Council and a secret disciple of Jesus, who gained Pilate’s approval to bury Jesus in his own new tomb. Nicodemus, another secret disciple, and also a prominent and wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, helped Joseph by providing myrrh and aloes to anoint Jesus for burial (John 19:38–40). The Ethiopian eunuch who was converted under the ministry of Philip was a court official and treasurer of the queen of Ethiopia and consequently very wealthy (see Acts 8:26–38). The Roman centurion Cornelius was another prominent Gentile convert and was obviously a man of some means (see Acts 10), as was Sergius Paulus, a proconsul (13:7, 12). Also financially well-off were Lydia, a “seller of purple fabrics” (16:14), many of the “God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women” (17:4) converted in Thessalonica (v. 1), the Jewish tent-makers Aquila and Priscilla (18:1–3), as well as the Gentile Titius Justus (v. 7) and Crispus, the leader of the synagogue in Corinth (v. 8). Writing to Timothy in Ephesus, Paul said,” Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17).

But as already noted, most early believers were poor, especially those in Judea, a condition that would be made much worse by a famine. Luke reports that “in the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea. And this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul [Paul] to the elders” (Acts 11:29–30). Even poor believers gave as generously as they could to help their brothers and sisters in Christ who were perhaps even worse off than they. Paul writes of “the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality” (2 Cor. 8:1–2). All through Scripture, the poor are objects of God’s special concern (Lev. 25:25, 35–37, 39; Pss. 41:1; 68:10; 72:4, 12; Prov. 17:5; 21:13; 28:27; 29:7; 31:9, 20; Is a. 3:14–15; 10:1–2; 25:4; Gal. 2:10).

It is obvious from the present passage that at least some of the churches to which James wrote had wealthy members, or at least an occasional wealthy visitor. Otherwise, it would have been pointless to warn about showing favor to a man [who] comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes.

Assembly translates sunagōgē, which has the basic meaning of gathering together and is commonly rendered “synagogue.” As mentioned in the Introduction, the fact that James uses sunagōgē here instead of ekkiēsia, which has the same meaning and is usually translated “church” (as in 5:14), gives further evidence that the churches to which he wrote were composed primarily of Jews and that the letter was written at an early date in the life of the New ekkiēsia, the term sunagōgē is not a proper noun, as are their English counterparts, synagogue and church. In the New Testament, both terms were used of any sort of gathering, or place of gathering. That is the sense in which sunagōgē is used here by James and in which Luke uses ekkiēsia in Acts 19:32, 39, 41.

Chrusodaktulios (with a gold ring) literally means “gold-fingered” and could indicate the person was wearing more than one ring. It was a common practice among well-to-do people of that day, both Jews and Gentiles, to wear numerous rings on their fingers as marks of wealth and social status. The Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca wrote,” We adorn our fingers with rings and we distribute gems over every joint” (cited in William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960], 75). It was doubtless because that practice was common in some churches that the second-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria admonished Christians to wear no more than one ring and that one should depict a dove, fish, anchor, or other Christian symbol (Barclay, 75).

Fine translates lampros, which literally means “bright,” or “brilliant.” It is used of the “gorgeous robe” that Herod and his soldiers mockingly placed on Jesus before they sent Him to Pilate (Luke 23:11) and of the “shining garments” of the angel who appeared to Cornelius as he was praying (Acts 10:30).

From the context, it seems likely that the imaginary man in James’s illustration is a visiting unbeliever. In any case, the sin was not in the man’s wearing a gold ring and fine clothes or in his being given a good place to sit. Nor was the sin in the poor man, also perhaps a visitor, being dressed in dirty clothes, which would have looked and smelled terrible. Although clean clothes and a clean body are certainly desirable, a poor person could only afford the cheapest kind of clothing, probably castoffs; and, especially in that day, he had less opportunity to wash himself and his clothes.

In most synagogues of that day, there were only a few benches to sit on, perhaps one or two in the front—the “chief seats in the synagogues” that the scribes and Pharisees coveted (Matt. 23:6)—and possibly some others placed around the walls. Most of the people either stood or sat cross-legged on the floor. Occasionally, someone would also have a footstool. To ask another person, especially a visitor or guest, to sit down by my footstool was therefore a double show of disrespect. The person on a bench or in a chair not only would not give that seat to the visitor but would not even allow him to sit on his footstool.

In both instances, the sin is partiality, making distinctions among yourselves, by showing special favor to the well-dressed man and showing discourtesy, if not contempt, for the poor man. To do either is a serious sin, and those who are guilty of it become judges with evil motives. In each case, the treatment of the visitor was based on superficial, self-interested, and worldly motives. Among Christians, such discrimination is much more than poor hospitality; it is plainly evil. Of the three words James uses for evil (see 1:21, kakia,” wickedness;” and 3:16, phaulos,” evil”), the one used here and in 4:16 (ponēros) is the strongest, carrying the idea of vicious intentions that have a destructive and injurious effect.

In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul says,” Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God” (Rom. 15:5–7). Earlier in that letter, the apostle reminds believers that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that [even] while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8, emphasis added). How much more obligated, then, are we, as God’s still sin-tainted and imperfect children, to love everyone else, unbelievers as well as fellow believers. The only “favoritism” that the Lord honors is that in which, “with humility of mind [we] regard one another as more important than [ourselves]” (Phil 2:3). That sort of unselfish partiality favors the needs of others above our own, their welfare and well-being above ours.

It should be emphasized that, although the rich are subject to special temptations and proclivities (see James 2:6–7), their wealth itself is not sinful, as long as they acquire it justly and use it wisely and generously as faithful stewards of the Lord. Nor, of course, is there any sin in being poor, unless a person has become so from foolishly squandering what he once had or been chastened by God for sin. But both rich and poor are equal in God’s sight, and partiality must not be shown to either.