James 2:1–13

Original Meaning

No Favoritism Based on Appearance (2:1–4)

JAMES BEGINS WITH his typical warm address, “My brothers.” He is about to combat an attitude and assumption that glorified the public expression of hierarchy and spawned displays of favoritism in the church. By addressing his readers in this manner, he eschews reference to his own high status and instead makes himself one of them. The object of his concern is “favoritism” (prosopolempsia). The root of this idea is tied to the Hebrew term nasaʿ panim, which means “lifting up the face.” The phrase thus has its origin in the Old Testament, particularly the LXX,3 and has overtones of the unjust favoritism granted to the powerful at the expense of others, often on the part of evil judges (see Ps. 82:2; Prov. 18:5; Mal. 2:9). As Laws notes, this is an attitude completely uncharacteristic of God.4

Whether in church, in the hearing of a legal case, or in some unknown context, the recipients of this letter had shown favoritism to those displaying the accouterments of wealth. If we may take 2:14–26 as linked to this passage,5 it seems likely that this Christian community had accepted the mere profession of faith as sufficient not only for entrance, but also for the maintenance of a position of good standing. As he warned earlier, James argues that the true Christian life consists of a growing awareness of the word planted within and a concomitant change in life decisions. James urges a faith that is more than a mere profession—one that results in deeds. The particular expression of the position in view here is a double error: (1) to think one can win favor by a display of wealth, and (2) to allow oneself to be impressed by such a display. Both are examples of folly.

The genitive phrase tes doxes (“our glory/glorious”) poses an interesting problem. The structure is marked by an unwieldy series of genitives. The phrase may be translated “faith in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ”; “faith in our Lord of glory, Jesus Christ” (so the KJV and ASV); “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glory”6; the interesting suggestion of Adamson, “faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Glory”7; or the simplest solution, “faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” The NIV prudently has chosen this last option. In any event it seems clear that in this rare case of Christology in the book of James, Jesus Christ is identified with the Shekinah, the visible manifestation of the divine. James believes that in Jesus God is revealed.

Furthermore, Jesus is the object of faith. There is clearly more than a meager gospel here, for Jesus Christ, the very manifestation of God’s glory, chose to identify with the poor and the outcasts. On the strength of that model and memory James urges his readers to avoid favoritism, just as did our Lord. In this manner James continues his discussion of the proper way to treat the poor, which he began in 1:27 with his discussion of the widow and the orphan.

James gives a practical illustration8 of this favoritism in the guise of a question (vv. 2–4). The situation posits the image of two guests at a church meeting. The first is obviously wealthy and not reticent to display that wealth. As in the parable of the prodigal son, the ring is a symbol of wealth and status.9 The second guest is adorned in the garb of the poor. The two men enter the “meeting.” Here another controversy surfaces, for instead of the more usual term ekklesia, James here presses into service the term synagoge.10 If James intends “church” here, it is the only such use of the term in the entire New Testament. It is not unreasonable, however, to suppose that an author as idiosyncratic as ours may very well have used the term in this way.

James does not use the word plousios (“rich”), which he employed in chapter 1. Instead he merely describes the gold ring and the fine clothing worn by the individual. Davids suggests that this is a cicumlocutionary device for referring to wealthy Christians, and he apparently believes that the use of plousios in verses 5 and 6 refers to rich non-Christians.11 The poor man (ptochos) is dressed in shabby (rhyparos) clothes.12 What little we know of ancient mercantilism suggests that all but the wealthy wore homemade clothing. There is no reason to doubt that this was the case in Palestine. One of the clearest markers of status in the Roman world was attire.

According to verse 3, the man with the symbols of wealth is ushered to a fine seat, while the poor person is ordered to stand, or to sit, at the feet of the usher. As Martin points out,13 the wealthy person must be a Christian, as the proper fashion to treat pagans would hardly have occasioned such division. The point is that it makes no sense to show favoritism to wealthy Christians just because of their wealth. After all, it is wealth and status that grants to non-Christians the ability to oppress the church. It makes no sense for Christians to show favoritism based solely on factors that on other occasions are used to exploit Christians.

Davids points out that the two people are unfamiliar with the meeting, or they would have no need to be directed to these positions.14 He finds the solution of W. B. Ward satisfying, specifically that the situation in view is a church-court modeled on that of the Jewish synagogue’s bet-din.15 While this is an intriguing thesis, there is hardly enough evidence to support it.

In verse 4 James asks: “Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” If his readers grant the wealthy man a place of privilege but the poor man a mongrel seat, James insinuates that they are guilty of being an evil judge. This last charge confirms our view of prosopolempsia in 2:1. Ward16 quotes the Babylonian Talmud, Shebuoth 31a, as a parallel, “How do we know that, if two come to court, one clothed in rags and the other in fine raiment worth a hundred manehs, they should say to him, ‘Either dress like him, or dress like you’?” From the Midrash Raboth Ward quotes R. Ishmael,17 “If before a judge two men appear for judgment, one rich and the another poor, the judge should say to the rich man, ‘Either dress in the same manner as he is dressed, or clothe him as you are clothed.’ ” Nor is abuse only the result of conscious resolve or clear action. The abuse of the poor can be passive and may be seen in the total lack of regard the wealthy show to them. In the Roman world the poor were faceless nothings in the eyes of the wealthy.

James’s question in verse 4 implies that the known and accepted norm within the Christian community was egalitarian. As the Bridging Contexts section will make clear, such an ethic stands in stark contrast with the surrounding culture. Given the fact that James is soon to refer to Leviticus 19:18, it is possible, as Laws argues,18 that James has in mind Leviticus 19:15: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” But to insist on such a fine point is neither prudent nor necessary. The Old Testament affords no shortage of passages with a similar message.

It also seems likely that the discrimination within the church here refers to an acceptance of cultural standards by some, but a rejection of those standards by another group in the church in favor of the egalitarian social norms of the gospel. James has already used the term “double-minded” in 1:7 to describe the individual with the divided mind, where it referred to someone who could not decide between trust in God and trust in the world. Here he applies the same idea to the entire church, and James uses it here for the same reasons. It is easy to see that poor church members would sense common cause with other poor people who were harassed by those with wealth and power. The powerful and wealthy in the first century were accustomed to special treatment—precisely the sort of favoritism that James here decries.19 It was not without merit that Jesus spoke of the difficulty of a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:23).

Bridging Contexts

WHEN JAMES SPEAKS of “the rich,” “the poor,” and “favoritism,” he is speaking the parlance of social and economic markers. It is a language with which we are familiar. But therein lies a quagmire, a peril to be avoided. For in spite of apparent similarities, the world of James was different from our own in a number of fundamental ways, three of which are: (1) social standing was not nearly as often a function of wealth as it is in our world; (2) there was almost no possibility of social or economic climbing in James’s world; (3) the social and economic pyramid in the Roman empire was incredibly steep, with virtually no middle class as we understand that term. Perhaps 8 percent of the population had wealth, another 2 percent were gaining it, and the remaining 90 percent lived in conditions that we might describe as poor. Seneca wrote, “Consider, at the outset, how great a majority are the poor.”31 Before we can move with confidence to application, we must know something of the values and standards of the social world of the Roman empire. A discussion of this social world will constitute the sole focus of this section.

In our world, social status is most often a function of wealth while other factors, such as education and social level at birth, play a secondary role.32 My brother, sister, and I were the first generation in my family history to attend college. My sister is a surgical nurse, and my brother and I both hold doctoral degrees. In the eyes of our world we advanced “up the ladder,” even though our grandparents never finished elementary school. I never cease to be amazed at the reactions of people to me when I am introduced as “Dr. David Nystrom” as opposed to “David Nystrom.” Education matters in our culture. My grandmother worked as a domestic, and my grandfathers were blue-collar laborers. Such “social climbing” is not at all remarkable in our world, but it was virtually unheard of in the first century.

The social and economic culture of the Roman empire was marked by a far higher degree of rigidity than is ours. When one speaks of “standing” in the Roman empire, there are three classifications to consider: class, ordo, and status. Of these three “class” is the least helpful. In general, sociologists use the term to refer to income level,33 and Marx used it to speak of the relation of the worker to the means of production.34 Such a definition is inappropriate to the Roman world, for wealth did not guarantee social status.

Regarding social order (ordines), there were three: ordo senatorius, ordo equester, and ordo decurionum. (1) The senatorial order consisted of members of the oldest noble Roman families, and their wealth was concentrated in land and agricultural production. Entrance to this order was based on both birth and wealth, with a minimum set by Augustus at one million sesterces. This was the equivalent of 250,000 times the average day’s wage of a laborer.

(2) Entrance to the equestrian order was based solely on wealth, with the minimum set at 400,000 sesterces. Equestrians made their fortunes as merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs, as well as through consortiums that took government contracts to build roads, supply armies, and collect taxes.

In general the members of the ordo senatorius had little regard for the equestrians, and they despised everyone else. By the third century B.C. the senate passed legislation making it illegal for senators to engage in commerce, motivated in part by their desire to distance themselves from the equestrians. But as Ramsay MacMullen has demonstrated, the members of these two groups had much in common, for the total number whose income placed them in the two highest ordines amounted to no more than one-tenth of one percent of the population.35

To the other 99.9 percent of the empire, an equestrian was a person of uncommon prestige. In the eyes of a senator an equestrian represented “new money,” without the niceties that a senatorial upbringing guaranteed. But then senators could afford to claim that money was not a significant factor in determining status. They already had it! To everyone else, money was king. Juvenal wrote:

Let money carry the day, let the sacred office be given to one who came but yesterday with white feet36 into our city. For no god is held in such high reverence among us as wealth, even though you, evil money, have no temple of your own as yet.37

Juvenal here reveals both a firm belief in the sacred nature of social stratification and the love of money that had, in his view, challenged that stratification. When viewed from below, money was a marker of social prestige in the Roman world. When viewed from above, it was of little value.

(3) The ordo decurionum consisted of the local elite, and here wealth was more important than birth. In this order, as with the senators, wealth tended to take the form of land, so in a given city a few families dominated the decurionate over the years.38 Perhaps as much as 2 percent of the population of the empire was to be found here.

Alongside these official ordines was the informal ordo Augustales. This ordo consisted of persons who for various reasons of birth or status were prevented from entrance into the decurionate. Most were freedmen (former slaves) who had become somewhat well-to-do. This order, while lacking official status, emulated the decurionate in terms of titles and function. Allowing for women and children, this left some 90 percent of the population outside these categories.

The final social category is what we might call “status.” In the Roman world of James “status” was determined by a complex miasma of factors. Age, status at birth, birthplace, gender, wealth, citizenship, military career, and occupation were the most significant factors in determining one’s status. In general, rural people were viewed as boorish (cf. John 1:46, where Nathaniel offers his opinion on the tiny Galilean hamlet of Nazareth: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”), provincials were viewed less favorably than persons living in Rome, new money was less appealing than old money, the freeborn were considered better than the freed.39 Of course, perspective mattered a great deal. To an impoverished member of the urban poor, a wealthy freedman was more enviable than a member of a senatorial family that had lost its fortune.40

With the book of James we enter the world of Roman provinces. The local decurions, whose wealth most likely paled beside that of Roman senators, were nonetheless persons of great power and prestige in their own community, and they would have been viewed that way by the church located there. Cities normally had a cadre of 100 decurions,41 and from this group a number were selected each year to hold different city offices. Competition for the decurionate was fierce.42 Membership afforded special forensic treatment, but there were special demands too.43 This class, for example, was expected to provide the corn supply for the city, to pay for the construction of public projects such as buildings and roads, and to maintain public order.

When elected to serve in a public office, such men44 were expected to pay a fee, designated by the term summae honorariae. This amount, like the minimum amount necessary to qualify for the decurionate, varied with the office in question and the population of the city.45 These and other wealthy persons also paid for public works projects out of their own pockets (e.g., building of temples, public baths, paving of streets, and the city tax bill). Such voluntary payments were generally known as munera. A third type of payment were the sportula, a term that seems originally to have designated the daily payment a patron made to his clients.46 Other kinds of sportulae included cash gifts at marriages, coming-of-age ceremonies, and other public functions. Another significant example was the public feast. It was not uncommon for a wealthy person to hold a public feast for the entire city, though the quality and amount of the food received, as well as when the meal was received, depended on social status.

The epigraphic evidence from Italy records some 277 sportula rates and reveals clear discrimination in favor of the powerful. Decurions received twelve sesterces, the Augustales eight sesterces, and ordinary citizens four sesterces. In most cases women were excluded, and in cases in which they were present, they generally received less than the men.47 It is not unlikely that this accounts for the aberrant Eucharist practices against which Paul spoke in 1 Corinthians 11:17–22, as well as the flagrant displays of favoritism and toadyism decried by James.

One might very well ask, “What could have induced these people to pay for so much?” The answer is glory and honor. Before the establishment of the pax Romana, glory and honor could be won on the battlefield or through the arena of local politics. But with the establishment of Roman rule in the East, these chief routes to favorable reputation were sealed off. There were no armed conflicts to speak of, and virtually all significant political decisions were made in Rome. The result was a tightly restricted field of options, the surest being to spend money, with the proviso that a plaque or similar device would reveal the name of the generous benefactor for all to read, and for years to come.

The sociology of the Roman empire, particularly as experienced by urbanites, served this need. It was marked by a complex web of patronage systems and of the support of benefactors. Recipients (the “clients”) of the largesse of benefactors were expected to demonstrate their dependence on and thankfulness to their “patrons” by public displays that often included flattery. Persons of modest wealth might engage in only private munificence, binding to themselves a group of former slaves48 and freedmen. The wealthiest engaged in public munificence. They paved streets, built public buildings, sponsored political campaigns,49 or even manumitted large numbers of slaves, all in the hope that glory would be brought to their names.50 Those whose birth precluded membership in the local decurionate, such as the Augustales, behaved similarly. Many families throughout the empire spent themselves into poverty in just this way. Plutarch51 has given us this explanation:

Most men think themselves robbed of their wealth if they are prevented from displaying it, and that display of it is made in the superfluities of life, not in the necessities of life.

Nor was this phenomenon restricted to individuals. Cities vied with one another over titles52 and the magnificence of public works. In Bithynia-Pontus Pliny found city after city mired in public debt because of the number and enormity of extravagant but poorly executed public building programs.53 Juvenal said that Pecunia (the love of money) was a goddess. But she was a vassal, a minion in the service of another goddess, Philotomia (the love of status).

In our world love of money and love of status are equally powerful and pernicious lures. Americans dig themselves deeper and deeper into credit card debt every year, and there are ever higher numbers of bankruptcies filed. We spend our money on wants that we take to be needs: a flashier car, a swimming pool, new designer clothes. Advertisements tell us to purchase automobiles, houses, and even toilet paper with an eye to impressing others. This trend has even infected the church. There is a line where excellence in church architecture, facilities, and programming becomes excessive opulence, which closes the door of the church to some, who are made to feel unwelcome, while those on the fortunate side of the social spectrum feel at home. This line is different in every area and requires a sensitive heart to discern the wisdom of God.

For the vast majority of the population of the Roman empire who could not seek glory by these avenues, there were other options. Trade associations and private clubs (collegia) were established, bearing extravagant names: the Universal Sacred Consistory of Linen Weavers, the Most August Work-Center of Wool-Washers, the Holy College of Dyers, the Sacred Craft of Linen-Workers.54 These associations were organized along the lines of municipal administrations, with offices bearing titles that mimicked those of city offices.55 Membership in such an association allowed a chance to experience the semblance of power and prestige, a feeling heightened by the exalted but meaningless nomenclature adopted.56

Frequently persons of wealth who had no other avenue for its display became the patron or patroness of a civic or religious collegium. Women in particular chose this route. It is not unlikely that many of the women we encounter in the New Testament fit this pattern.57 To the Roman world, the Christian church was but another of these collegia, another avenue that afforded the wealthy an opportunity to demonstrate their superiority over others. Such a person would expect to be accorded the greatest respect during the meetings of the group.

The pervasive nature of this hunger for prestige is difficult to overemphasize. Cicero said, “Rank must be maintained.” Four centuries later in the provincial city of Antioch the same sentiment was expressed by Libanus: “Whatever one’s rank, it must be maintained.”58 Everyone knew their place. The Roman fascination with ossified social status helps to explain the desire to make clear one’s own superiority, and this desire is mirrored in James 2:1–13. This was a society with few positions of real authority and an insatiable thirst for the sense of power.

The legal and literary sources for the period speak of the difference between the honestiores and the humiliores, “the great” and “the humble.” In the first category were found the members of the three leading ordines. Everyone else, with the rare exceptions of those who had made money, considered themselves humiliores. Sallust has left for us a typical example: “In every city those who are poor envy the best citizens.”59 Aelius Aristides praised Rome for this distinction:

But the following is easily the most worthy of consideration and admiration in your government, the magnanimity of your conception, because there is nothing else like it. For you have divided into two parts all the men in your empire—with this expression I have indicated the entire inhabited world—and everywhere you have made citizens all those who are the more accomplished, noble and powerful people, even if they retain their native ways, while the rest you have made the subjects and the governed.60

This was reinforced by another important feature of life in the Roman world, the static nature of the economy that made social climbing almost impossible. There were exceptions, as we have seen already in the cases of the equestrians in Rome, but there were also exceptions within the provinces.61 One sterling example was Corinth, destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C., but repopulated with Roman citizens by Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. This meant that there was no old elite in Corinth, so it was ripe for social climbing. But these cases are the extraordinary. Barely 2 percent of the population found social climbing a possibility. In a local urban center, then, the elite consisted of members of the families of wealth and those fortunate enough to be engaged in local or provincial commerce. It was not unusual for freedmen to engage in commerce, and their status at birth precluded them from being ascribed honor by the freeborn wealthy. Such persons were perfect candidates to become the benefactors of a religious collegia.

It is often asserted today that the New Testament world was an “honor and shame” society, and this is no doubt a helpful (but limited) insight. “Honor,” as defined by the cultural anthropologist Bruce Malina, is the value of a person in his or her own eyes, plus the value of that person in the social group.62 Malina defines “honor” by three boundary markers, “power, sexual status, and religion, and where they come together, what they mark off, is something called honor.”63 “Power” is the ability to control the behavior of others; “sexual status” is the set of duties regarding behavior expected of men and women; “religion” is the “attitude and behavior one is expected to follow relative to those who control one’s existence.”64 Honor is the socially proper behavior in the area where these three boundary markers intersect.

Honor could be gained in two ways: It could be ascribed (as through inheritance), or it could be acquired. Those considering themselves “noble,” or aspiring to that status, would be vitally interested in ways to enhance the clarity of social stratification. They would seek groups in which, relative to others, they had “high status,” and they would seek to highlight the potency of those status markers. For such persons, a local Christian church might appear a prime field for cultivation, an opportunity for people to consider themselves among the honestiores.

In a variety of ways our culture is reminiscent of that known by James. Both cultures are sick and dangerous: sick because they tend towards extreme self-aggrandizement, and dangerous because the church seems all too willing to fall prey to culture. The fascination with wealth and status is all too prominent in America. Our cultural heroes include the wealthy by virtue of talent or accident, such as Donald Trump, Ross Perot, Michael Jordan, Bette Middler, and Demi Moore. The advertising industry glorifies wealth in the pursuit of products from automobiles to disinfectants.

This fascination is also prominent in American evangelicalism. I spoke recently at a church that in its eighty-year history had relocated four times, from the urban center to ever newer suburbs. Today the church owns a beautiful ten-acre facility, complete with sanctuary, gym, kitchen, Christian education space, and a generous surrounding lawn. The church is further surrounded by homes worth half a million dollars, sporting Cadillac, BMW, and Lexus automobiles, many of which were to be found in the parking lot the Sunday I preached. On that Sunday the chairperson announced a capital fund drive the church was about to launch. While he was at the lectern, I could not help noticing (nor, I doubt, could anyone else) the enormous diamond ring he wore. Everything about this gentleman said “money.”

Money is not inherently evil, of course; but if it is used as a measure of personal worth, either consciously or unconsciously, then we have fallen prey to the standards of our culture. In ways subtle and obvious we do crave status and wealth. We are also overly impressed by other markers of social standing, such as attire, profession, and even social polish. James would warn us against the subtle power these cultural markers may have over the Christian community.

These differences in the cultural patterns of the first century and our own will affect the way we read the three broad points James has outlined (the display of favoritism based on status, the attempt to ape the standards of the surrounding culture, and the biblical argument). Our world provides far more opportunities for achieving status and influence than did James’s world. This means that a proper investigation of the contemporary significance of the passage must include our culture to uncover the many and various ways it grants status to individuals and to groups. What James has to say concerning the wealthy should be read as applying to this more diverse group in our own culture. In addition, the church of James’s society was tempted to embrace certain cultural patterns—some of them obvious, some more subtle. The contemporary church falls prey to the same tendency, but of course the cultural patterns in our century are not necessarily the same as those faced by James. A proper discussion of the contemporary significance of this passage seeks to discern some of the dangers inherent in our culture that the church today, like the church of James’s day, might be tempted to embrace.

Contemporary Significance

JAMES HAS PRESENTED us with a picture of a church under the influence of the surrounding culture. In emulation of the prevailing Roman social norms the church was beginning to be marked by favoritism and social stratification. Some in the church seemed blissfully unaware of the danger. Others, perhaps, saw the problem, but did not understand its full gravity. To them James has outlined a holistic ethic: to stumble at one point of the law is to break all of it. This is the message that must be applied to the contemporary situation. In the pursuit of this task the following discussion will focus on four points: (1) Our culture is sick and dangerous. (2) Our culture is dangerous and debilitating in ways we do not always expect or realize. (3) The problem of favoritism, which had nearly crippled the church of James, is apparent in our own churches. (4) Like James we must pursue a holistic model of church life.

Our culture is sick and dangerous. As noted in the previous section, the Roman world that James knew was marked by largely ossified social stratification, combined with a social system in which the poor bestowed honor on the wealthy through public displays. The Roman historian Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17) commented on this development: “Wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective.”65 It is a description that many Americans might find chillingly familiar.66 In his famous 1978 commencement address at Harvard University, Alexander Solzhenitsyn charged that the West, by eliminating God and therefore the sense of accountability and purpose that follows from that belief, had chosen materialism, godlessness, and shallow attempts at freedom and happiness. Any attempt to return to greatness, he said, must begin with the recognition that human life and human nature are at their core spiritual, and therefore human beings have a responsibility to God and to others.

One among a spate of books that catalogues the moral decline in America is Why America Needs Religion.67 A striking feature of the book is that its author, Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, is an agnostic. He claims to have begun the book with the intention of refuting the thesis that the decline in the American moral climate can be traced to the modern rejection of theological values, even the rejection of God. But, he says, a “funny thing happened on the way to the completion of this book, which I envisaged as a defense of secular humanism and ethical relativism. Positions which I had always supported turned out to be, on new reflection, far less convincing than I had assumed.”68 Instead, he found himself agreeing with positions and commentators that he had long dismissed.

Lewy continues to believe that moral arrogance and intolerance are to be avoided, but he is far less sanguine about the ability of moral relativism to produce a healthy society. Lewy calls for cooperation between Christians and non-Christians in this task, citing Vatican II, the Protestant theologian Paul Ramsay, the evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry, and Robert Bork as others who have issued similar calls.69 He remains a nontheist, but his call for ethical reform is warmly supportive of the heart of Christian ethical teaching.

I continue to question the claim pressed by many Christian theologians that they have a hold on moral Truth, yet I find myself in agreement with not a few of their moral positions…. The urgent task for believers and nonbelievers alike, I submit, is to replenish the moral capital that was accumulated over many centuries from a unique stock of religious and ethical teachings, a fund of treasure that we have been depleting of late at an alarming rate.70

In 2:1–13 James issues an unmistakably strong call to avoid certain aspects of Roman culture, particularly those aspects that supported social and economic stratification. It is vital to note that he is not universal in this condemnation of culture. What he opposes is the spirit of the age, a spirit of self-interest. Likewise, there is much that is dangerous and sick in our culture. But evangelicals should not be too quick to condemn all of culture. There is much that is worthwhile and much that can be redeemed. It is easy to issue blanket condemnations of American culture. But such actions and attitudes all too often seal us off from the world James calls us to engage as God’s ambassadors. Yet our culture can and does find its way into the church, and some of these intrusions are inimical to its life and health. We may be strong and clear in our opposition to abortion or drug abuse, we may be vocal about the case for prayer in the public schools, but we can also be blind to the subtle ways our culture can shape our churches into an image that is not the image of Christ.

Sometimes cultural influence is not what we expect. Our culture influences us in ways that we neither recognize nor expect. In an article entitled “Hope Dreams,” Amy Sherman reviewed a number of books that take as their subject “the other America,” that is, life in the urban ghetto.71 In ways that I find fascinating her article throws a spotlight on facets of culture that we often do not recognize. One of the books she reviewed is The Ville, by Greg Donaldson. The book describes what Amy Sherman calls,

the truncation engendered by the ghetto: the reduction of “being” to “having.” This triumph of consumerism emerges in large part from the dominance of television. “The teenagers [in Brownsville] are undereducated in most things,” Donaldson says, “but they are connoisseurs of pop culture, ready receptacles for the jingles and scattershot imagery of television. Their speech is drenched in the verbal flotsam of television shows. The police are called Five-O’s after Hawaii Five-O…. Brand names tyrannize the classrooms; prestige cars are worshipped.”

On the street, being a person of “substance” is defined, ironically, as having a certain appearance or image.

In his pursuit of the “appearance” of substance, one young man spent the first $75 he earned in a new job on a beeper, so he could look like a drug dealer. Drug dealers, he believes, are people of “substance” because they have money, women, and material goods. Donaldson calls them “props” and notes that in this corner of America the “props,” the incidentals, have become the markers and symbols of “substance,” even though there is no “substance” underneath. The young men Donaldson introduces us to call themselves “LoLifes,” after the Ralph Lauren Polo shirts they wear as uniforms. They literally believe that “clothes make the man.” Donaldson writes, “[The] LoLifes are more an outlaw consumer group than a gang…. The young black men of Brownsville indict society by their total belief in it. They trust what they have been told about image, status, competition, hierarchy, and the primacy of self-gratification. Their faith is lethal, mostly to themselves.”72 Donaldson also takes us to prison, where a member of the LoLifes is stripped of his Polo shirt identity, and in our discomfort we are left to conclude that there is little substance to the man.

Sherman wisely comments that the rest of America shares this belief in consumerism, but its heinous debilitating effects are rendered less obvious by the wealth of opportunities not available to persons in the ghetto. Is affluent evangelical America immune to this disease? Sadly, no. Evangelical Christianity is itself portrayed in consumerist terms. “God wants only the best for you…. Church should make you feel good,” says Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner on the television show Politically Incorrect.73 At what point do the megachurches that dot the American Protestant landscape sell out the gospel in their effort to provide a comfortable, nonthreatening, and familiar environment to the corporate types and aging yuppies that are often their target audience? At what point should our conscience bother us when we see the church chairperson drive off in a BMW or Jaguar?

Such examples of material culture are not inherently evil, as long as there is authentic substance underneath—in this case, spiritual substance. Otherwise, these are just the “props” of our culture. Have wealth and professional accomplishment superseded the exercise of the spiritual disciplines as the prerequisite for leadership in our churches? Several of my friends in the Christian college environment think so. When church architecture consciously mimics the architectural styles of the suburban corporate headquarters of high-tech companies, we have, perhaps, already capitulated. We may draw converts, but unless we combine the beneficial skills of worldly competence with spiritual maturity, the question of precisely to what we have converted people is open. It is possible that Generation X churches, with their passion for “authenticity” in contradistinction to the clear professionalism and color-coordinated outfits that mark Baby Boom churches, may indeed have a point.74 Of course, Generation X culture has its own pitfalls to avoid.

Many who criticize evangelical corporate flattery are testimony to the eroding effects of our surrounding culture in other ways. The creeping effects of an ideology of antiseptic political and moral relativism can be seen, for example, in those who, without critical biblical reflection, have bought the “I was born this way” argument relative to homosexual practice. Born of a desire to be “nice” and to exercise Christian compassion, they fail to see that the broader application of that principle nullifies all sin. Many men, after all, are “born” with a bent to promiscuity. This internal drive is what Paul calls the “old nature” or the “natural man” (psychikos), and what James calls the “evil impulse.” Such a person is under the control of the law of sin in the flesh.75 The New Testament recognizes that it is “natural,” but it never argues that “natural” is therefore “right.” It is not compassion to treat what the Bible calls sin as something less than what it is.

Nor should we expect biblical truth to be warmly endorsed by our culture. Such truth is not applauded; rather, it is vilified and rejected, as was Jesus. The body of Christ is called to serve our world, not to condemn it (cf. 1 Cor. 5:12–13; James 4:12). The evangelical church has currently fixed its attention on the issue of homosexuality. Justice demands that we recognize inappropriate desires and actions of the heterosexual community along with those of the homosexual community. They are equal in scope and of a piece with each other. We must confront and demonstrate profound concern about our own sin before we condemn the sin of others. In fact, this recognition of our own sinfulness allows us both to recognize sin for what it is and to speak of and confront it with compassion. People with AIDS are the lepers of our day; they need errands run, good meals served, and simple human companionship. Here is an opportunity for the church to walk in the footsteps of its Lord. But the gnawing effects of our surrounding culture become dangerous when we begin to show favoritism or to make decisions based on cultural standards of honor and acceptability.

The peril of favoritism. Our culture influences the evangelical church in a variety of ways that mirror the fashion in which James’s church was influenced by his culture. One of the most obvious is the showing of favoritism, embracing certain expectations based on various markers. These markers become solidified in our minds, forming expectations of others that are sealed off from the possibility of change.

The 1957 film An Affair To Remember, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, is a favorite of many. It contains a scene representative of American culture in mid-century, which can be viewed only with discomfort and embarrassment today. The scene involves a number of children of various ethnic groups performing in a combined choir and orchestra. At one point the singing is interrupted, and the only two African-American children on screen move to center stage and perform a tap dance number. There is a proud history to tap, and African-Americans have traditionally been among its most skilled practitioners. But the scene in question is disturbing because the African-American children were present only to fulfill a role that our culture expected. There were no African-American violin players or vocal soloists. Our culture has taught us how to show favoritism. Markers we learn from childhood indicate one’s station on the scale of respect—such as profession, “social polish,” clothing, and wealth.

(1) Profession. In America there are clearly defined roles and professions that, we think, deserve greater respect than others. When I was twenty-seven years old, I was asked by an evangelical leader to attend the annual meeting of the ministers of his denomination. After one evening session a group of fifty of us were invited to join one of the denominational administrators in his suite for a time of conversation. Several hotel employees were present, wearing their hotel uniforms and serving coffee, soft drinks, and cookies. In situations like this I feel ill at ease and usually opt for an activity to keep me busy. I noticed that there were not enough hotel employees to cover all of the tasks in the room, because the soft drinks were handled in a self-serve fashion. So I began to pour soft drinks into glasses for the guests.

I suppose in my suit I may have appeared as the supervisor of the crew of hotel workers in the room. One distinguished-looking guest approached and I served him. He treated me in the brusque, inhuman fashion that anyone who has worked in the service sector knows all too well. I attempted to engage him in conversation, but with a dismissive glance he simply walked away. Soon after we were called to order and formed a large circle in order to begin the time of discussion. Along with a few others, I arranged my chair behind the circle and found myself sitting directly behind the gentleman whom I had served. Commenting upon the sermon we had heard a few minutes before, our host then said, “Let us begin by hearing the opinion of our resident New Testament specialist.” At this point he turned and looked at me. The gentleman in front of me turned, and when he realized that I was the New Testament specialist in question, his visage fell and his skin paled. Afterward he approached me and without reference to our earlier noninterchange spoke in tones that were kind and flattering.

The entire scene left a bad taste in my mouth. What had changed? I was still the same person, wearing the same clothes, with the same foibles and frailties and hopes as before. It was simply that he had misjudged my “status” as our culture defines it. In his mind, a “New Testament specialist” is to be accorded more honor than the employee of a hotel.

Lord Acton, the man who said that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely,” also said, “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”76 We far too easily ascribe or withhold honor, respect, or even simple human kindness merely on the basis of profession. How quickly and easily we have forgotten that each human being we encounter is equally deserving of our kindest attention, for each one is made in the image of God.

(2) Anonymity and “social polish.” In James’s world the poor were often put at economic and social risk by the wealthy, who were not even aware of them. There is a scene in the movie Casablanca in which Ugarte, the character played by Peter Lorre, speaks to Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart. “You despise me, don’t you, Rick?” “I probably would,” replies Rick, “if I gave you any thought.” The peasant farmers on large estates owned by absentee landlords would understand this statement. So too would millions of people to whom our culture ascribes little value.

Several years ago I was a college pastor in the San Francisco Bay area, and our group was composed of people of college age in the working world, community college students, and a few students at Stanford University. Needless to say, it was an interesting mix. Our leadership team reflected this variety. It was an impressive group, blessed with real talent. But in many ways the most interesting person, and I think the clear leader of the team, was a young man named Frank. Frank had had a rough life. His father was out of the picture, and his mother, along with her series of boyfriends, lived with Frank and his brother. Frank dropped out of high school in order to get a job and support his family. His lack of social polish reflected this. Frank’s conversational English was peppered with expressions like “I tooken it” and “he done it,” as if his goal was to impress upon the listener his lack of social polish. Everything about him spoke of low expectations by the standards of our world: his speech, his clothes, his manner. But Frank was blessed by God with a tender heart, great insight, and leadership ability. Quickly he established himself as the leader of our leadership team; when he spoke, even the Stanford students listened with care. By all appearances Frank was a candidate for anonymity according to the standards of our world. How many other persons does the church ignore, simply because of our assumptions?

(3) Attire. On the CBS news show Coast to Coast77 a reporter decided to embark upon an unorthodox experiment. On a bright, sunny day he rode his bicycle around Tucson, Arizona, looking for people. He found them everywhere—sitting and reading, waiting for friends, drinking coffee at a sidewalk cafe. He rode his bicycle up to these strangers, dismounted, and asked if they would watch his bicycle for a few minutes until he returned. When they agreed, he would depart, as if on some errand. Within minutes one of his comrades, posing as a thief, would take the bike and try to ride away. Each of the scenarios was caught on video tape.

The reporter noted that it has become commonplace in America to bemoan the fact that “nobody wants to get involved anymore.” There is a mountain of evidence to support this view, but the reporter wanted to test the veracity of this assumption. He wondered if there were not other Americans who would get involved. He chose to trust women and teenagers, a security guard (who watched the thief ride away with a calm and studied indifference), shirtless young men, and an army officer. Most people reacted immediately, putting themselves at potential risk in order to protect the property of a stranger. He even decided to trust a homeless couple, resting along with their dog on a blanket at the edge of a city park. The face of the woman showed the signs of prolonged exposure to the sun and elements. The man wore a soiled T-shirt and raggedy jeans. The reporter wondered how this couple would react. To his surprise and even to his shame, the homeless couple quickly and valiantly protected his property. When he interviewed them afterward, they observed that other people rarely if ever trusted them because of their appearance and situation. However, the wife said, “We are honest, trustworthy people.” They proved it. But how many of us would bother to give them the opportunity even to do that?

(4) Wealth. Ministry takes money. Salaries, facilities, insurance, church vans—all of this requires a tremendous amount of money. A friend of mine once told me about his wise senior pastor, who once reminded the fiery youth pastor that some of the wealthy folks in the congregation, whom the youth pastor had criticized for their lifestyle (expensive cars, expansive homes), were the same people who made his ministry possible. They had bought the youth groups a van, covered the $3,000 shortfall incurred by the mission trip to Mexico, and were the anonymous donors who regularly contributed to a fund so the children of disadvantaged circumstances in the community could go on the $400 ski trip the youth group sponsored.

Wealth is the clearest marker of social status in our culture. Compared to the first century, our age offers of variety of options for its display. The automobiles we drive tell others how wealthy we are and what we think about ourselves.78 Our attire often broadcasts the name of fashion designers, both figuratively and literally. Where we choose to live is supposed to be revelatory of our status. My wife and I live in the neighborhood of North Park University, where I am a professor. The school lies on the borderline between the “good” neighborhoods (to the north) and the “bad” neighborhoods (to the south). When we moved in, people at church asked us where we lived. When told our address the typical response was a startled, “South of Foster Avenue?” We had not chosen wisely, according the wisdom of status in our neighborhood.

James is not against wealth, but he is against the church becoming an arena for the display of wealth used to enhance status. Naming church facilities after the donor or other such displays would make James nervous, if not angry. His teaching is fully commensurate with that of Jesus in Matthew 6:2–4:

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

A holistic model of church life. In myriad forms the church either apes the surrounding culture or is unaware that in ways subtle and insidious the not-so-irenic manifestations of our culture have impressed their stamp on our church life. Livy and Solzhenitsyn each described their cultures, and in terms that were quite similar: godless, materialistic, self-indulgent, greedy, given to sensual excess. One of the most profound of these influences, perhaps, is isolation and the loss of a sense of true Christian community. Nouwen, McNeill, and Morrison write,

Many very generous Christians find themselves increasingly tired and dispirited not so much because the work is hard or the success slight, but because they feel isolated, unsupported, and left alone. People who say, “I wonder if anyone cares what I am doing. I wonder if my superior, my friends at home, or the people who sent me ever think about me, ever pray for me, ever consider me part of their lives,” are in real spiritual danger. We are able to do many hard things, tolerate many conflicts, overcome many obstacles, and persevere under many pressures, but when we no longer experience ourselves as part of a caring, supporting, praying community, we quickly lose faith. This is because faith in God’s compassionate presence can never be separated from experiencing God’s presence in the community to which we belong. The crises in the lives of many caring Christians today are closely associated with deep feelings of not belonging. Without a sense of being sent by a caring community, a compassionate life cannot last long and quickly degenerates into a life marked by numbness and anger. This is not simply a psychological observation, but a theological truth, because apart from a vital relationship with a caring community a vital relationship with Christ is not possible.79

James faced a situation in which the self-indulgent attitude of some in his congregation threatened to create not a community of compassion, but one of social stratification and privilege. He wrote to reestablish the necessary conditions for a community of compassion, which he called “the law that gives freedom” (2:12). But just as there were threats to James’s congregation, there are threats to ours.

An African-American friend of mine frequently laughs at and occasionally with me about how “nice” white churches are. We are so worried about being “nice,” about the appearance of health and correctness, she says, that we frequently are out of touch with the truth of our own private and corporate lives. When she speaks this way, I am often uncomfortable. Sometimes I even argue with her. But in my heart I know that most of the time she is right. I am not arguing for full public disclosure of every bit of dirty laundry, but something is amiss if the marital troubles of a pastor are kept from church leadership until it is announced that the couple has filed for divorce. Is there no trust in those leaders? All too frequently tensions among the staff result in the dismissal of one of the pastors in a quick and largely silent manner. Such situations are “difficult,” “delicate,” and “unseemly” and therefore better handled quietly, but with little if any opportunity for the body to be a part of a process of healing.

How can the body pray for and support its members in such a climate? How are those leaders, or the body as a whole, expected to view their role and the value in which they are held? Like our broader culture, we do not deal well with conflict. Often we hide it, hoping it will “just get better.” Sometimes it does, but sometimes it does not. Would it not be better if the body were praying for and with the couple in question? Would it not be healthier if broader pools of support were available? But our culture tells us to hide such issues. One of the characters on the popular television sitcom Friends was worried that he was losing his girlfriend to another man. As he began to verbalize his concerns, another character interrupted with this advice, “Don’t! Keep it inside! Never express your true feelings!”80

It has been my experience that predominantly white evangelical churches do not deal with conflict very well. Sometimes this involves issues of family life, an area our culture generally considers off-limits to others. One of my close friends from seminary served on a church staff that saw a prominent couple in the church go through a divorce. Both the husband and wife were popular and respected in the church, and as is often the case, there was enough blame for the failure of the marriage to go around. My friend watched as the husband garnered support for himself within the church, subtly besmirching the reputation of his wife. His wife, for various reasons, passively allowed him to continue. In large measure the staff and church leadership simply stood by.

In our culture these are private matters. But should they be in the church? We have moved beyond the day when we safely can hide behind our naiveté. There are too many cases of physical abuse of spouses, of sexual abuse of children in our churches and among our parishioners. James stood for the proposition that the mere profession of faith was not enough to maintain membership in the Christian community. Faith is about the transformation of the inner life, and therefore also about “deeds.” “Speak and act,” he said, “as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom” (v. 12).

In his review of the movie The First Wives Club, Michael G. Maudlin relates how his wife, a psychologist, at times comes home from work angry:81

Nine times out of ten times what prompts her fury is a divorce case. The husband is hiding the assets, and his wife has no clue as to what they actually own. Or he has cheated on his wife and now wants half her pension. Or the wife wants to fight for a just settlement but is afraid her husband will beat her or even kill her. Or she simply doesn’t know how she will raise three children and meet expenses while her husband gets to live out the dreams of a second adolescence.

Karen has heard it all…. [She] seethes with frustration at her relative impotence. She is on the wife’s side, but everyone else, it seems, is on the husband’s: the lawyers, the judges, the government, and, tragically, the church….

My wife was once surprised by the candid and unguarded comment of a pastor: “Women who go through divorce often become so much more alive, more interesting than they were before.” Karen and I have noticed this disturbing phenomenon, uncomfortable because it complicates the simple formula “Divorce is bad.” …

In Gender and Grace, psychologist Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen puts forth the intriguing theory that men and women experience the Fall differently. She speculates that men’s sinful propensity is to objectify people and treat them as means to an end. Women, on the other hand, have a propensity to give away too much responsibility for the sake of a relationship….

The church has begun to mobilize against divorce, but … First Wives reveals another step we must take: promoting models of marriage that allow women to thrive and grow without having to divorce.

Maudlin has put his finger on a disturbing truth: Our churches are not always places of sanctuary. I am not convinced that Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen is right when she speculates that men and women experience the Fall differently, but I do know that the church needs to ask if the perpetuation of a stereotypical role for women is cultural or biblical. Can the church be an agent of healing in situations like the one Maudlin has isolated? Can the church be an arena in which women, children, and men thrive and grow spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually? Can the church be a place where we substitute “nice” American behavior for honesty that is linked to compassion?

Henri Nouwen thinks so. In Compassion,82 he claims that the “message which comes to us in the New Testament is that the compassionate life is a life together.” This is what James is striving for in arguing against favoritism and in favor of “the law that gives freedom” (v. 12). While compassion is an individual trait, it is also essentially communal in nature. As such the Christian community is the antidote for the isolation that is the flip side of the self-indulgence of which Livy spoke. In community our lives become compassionate because of the way we live and work together. Willingly we place ourselves next to each other, and in working and sharing together we learn to trust each other and to be vulnerable to each other.

Part of what the modern church has lost and which we would do well to recapture is the intimacy and interdependence of the early church. James himself is a model of honesty in this regard. He cared enough about the members of the church to offer rebuke, but he did so wearing the mantle of brother, not of judge or superior. Far too often church order is maintained through a system that reflects that of our culture. We would do well to remember the humble spirit that caused James to claim the title “brother.”

Surprisingly, church growth theory may be of help here. It can be marked by a pragmatic concern that at times seems to overlook biblical teaching. But many church growth theorists argue that in order to be healthy, large and growing churches need to ensure that each person is a part of a “congregation,” a subset of the larger church. These “congregations” should be no more than 100 people so that intimacy, accountability, and honesty can thrive. George Hunter, in his The Contagious Congregation, argues strongly that churches must create opportunities for members to “be known.”83

My wife, Kristina, and I live in the city of Chicago. We feel safe in our neighborhood, even though gang graffiti can be found and has appeared once or twice on our back door. There are a myriad problems in this urban landscape. Some churches have attempted to remedy the situation through a “goods-based” ministry of mercy, such as a food bank or a soup kitchen.84 Others focus their energies on political action. These are good, admirable pursuits. But they easily fall prey to the peril of antiseptic liberalism. Neither of these broad approaches necessarily involves the members of the church in close contact with their neighbors, the very persons whom they want to help. Especially when associated with churches sporting a more liberal theology, these efforts presuppose a willingness to locate sin in institutions and structures, not in individuals. This thinking makes the fatal mistake of failing to recognize that structures are shaped and given direction by people. It also does a great disservice to the very people they are trying to help, because the implicit message is that there is nothing in them that needs reforming.

Most evangelical churches, by contrast, tend to see the individual in need of only reformation. By focusing almost exclusively on the spiritual needs of persons, we fail to comprehend the massive mutually implicatory web of problems that constitute the reality faced by a poor person in the city. In each of these cases is lodged a message, largely hidden from our eyes but abundantly clear to those we wish to “help” in our desire to serve Jesus. In each scenario, we play the role of Jesus, offering healing or a compassionate touch. Yet without realizing it, we have staked a claim to have high status and unconsciously adopt an attitude of superiority to these people. We do not allow them to be the touch of Jesus in our lives (cf. Matt. 25:31–46). It is possible that we need that touch as much or more as others need our help.

In Chicago the Lawndale Community Church has taken on this tough challenge,85 and done so with no small degree of success through a multifaceted community development program.86 This church addresses the material needs of the community head on, challenging drug addicts and drug dealers to renounce their lifestyle as corrosive of their community, speaking for sexual abstinence, and teaching biblical principles for living. Its members are active in working for reform of the school system, the legal system, and the social service system. But it is equally passionate about the need for the lost to come to Christ. This is a church that has taken the words of James seriously. It has understood that there are Christians in the city, brothers and sisters who are part of a community that needs our help and in which God can reveal himself in new ways to the more affluent brothers and sisters. But by remaining insulated, whether in the suburbs or in “nice” white urban churches, we fail to recognize the face of Christ in the face of the city. This alien world allows us to keep our distance and therefore to show favoritism.

James has said that Jesus Christ is the Shekinah of God. His call is to avoid favoritism and to live by the law that gives freedom. Jesus, the very glory of God, modeled such a life. James faithfully has preserved this model and this call. Let us be found faithful.

Original Meaning

The Wisdom of Experience Is Against Favoritism (2:5–7)

AS WAS THE case in 1:16, 19, James links strong teaching and harsh words with the term agapetoi (“beloved”). Ever the pastor, James conveys a stern message with the timbre and tones of gentle tenderness. James buttresses his case by employing an experiential argument. “Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?” This question balances others concerning the wealthy (vv. 6–7) and seems to suggest a diatribe style.

In choosing this line of attack James draws upon the Jesus tradition, developing a case not dissimilar to that used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1. In Luke 6:2020 Jesus proclaims, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” and Paul declares that the wisdom of God appears as foolishness when seen through the lens of the wisdom of the world (1 Cor. 1:18–29). Furthermore, standing prominently in the background is the Hebrew belief that the poor were especially dear to God. The phraseology of James also draws on belief in God’s choosing of certain persons and peoples. God chose Israel (Deut. 4:37), and he chose the Gentiles to be the mission field for Paul (Acts 15:7). According to James, God has chosen for himself the poor.

The word James uses for “poor” (ptochos) had by the late first century acquired the sense of the poor who put their trust in God and not in (the hope for) material wealth. Ernst Bammel quotes R. Akiba as having said, “Beautiful is the poverty of the daughter of Jacob like a red necklace on the neck of a white horse.”21 Bammel notes that the term had come to posses a range of closely related meanings, such as “the righteous who possess authentic faith,” “the objects of God’s actions,” and persons who were almost God’s “comrades as he is about his task.”22 Thus, for James the contrast is stronger than simply between rich and poor; it has to do with those who trust in God and with those whose trust in God is mixed with a trust in the standards of the world—standards that seem perpetually hostile to him and his designs.

The phrase “to be rich in faith” indicates that these poor, unlike the rich, not only have “true riches” here in this life, but also eschatological riches in that theirs is the kingdom. James makes explicit what Luke leaves implicit in Luke 6:20: He lays out for us the proposition that it is not poverty alone that issues forth in this inheritance, but rather the faith that poverty germinates. The grammar and vocabulary clearly describe that group in the church that, like the individual of undivided mind in chapter 1, will receive the crown of life promised to those who love God. James thus links the poor in the church with the poor in chapter 1 and with the poor in general, some of whom when visiting the Christian community experienced the same shabby treatment they received in the world at large. For James this is a tragedy.23

In spite of the principles outlined by Jesus (and Paul), which James expects his readers to have known, the community has “insulted” the poor (2:6). The issue is not so much the treatment given the wealthy person, nor is there any hint that James believes membership in the church should be reserved for the materially poor. The issue is the uneven quality of the treatment, especially since it falls along the same status lines as was current in Roman culture. The word for “insulted” is derived from atimao, a term used for oppressing the poor in the LXX (Prov. 14:21).

This insult is rendered all the more unbelievable in that by favoring the rich, some in the church are favoring the very class of people who seek to harm the church, for it is the wealthy and powerful who drag Christians to court (v. 6) and slander the name of Christ (v. 7). James levels three accusations at the wealthy: oppression, legal persecution, and blasphemy. While almost all commentators wish to see the wealthy who “drag” Christians into court as outside the church, there are several reasons for preferring a different view. Martin’s comment that the fashion in which pagans are to be treated would hardly launch such divisive energies is well taken. Further, note James’s frequent use of “my brothers.” Finally, the close association of the three charges seems to point to the identification of the wealthy as Christians. There are problems with this view, as the discussion of Ropes24 concerning the use of the word “blasphemy” demonstrates. However, if we allow “the wealthy” to stand for the rich both inside and outside of the church, then the objections are largely silenced.

The passage is replete with forensic imagery, which explains the predilection of some to see the context for this favoritism as a church court. However, the rich Old Testament background of favoritism “in the gate” (i.e., in legal disputes) seems fully able to account for its use here. More serious is the inference that the wealthy within the broader community were bringing Christians to court. The grammar seems to support three possible interpretations: (1) Christians are dragged into court precisely because they are Christians, and those bringing suit thereby slander the name of Christ; (2) the fact that some Christians are in court, perhaps because they owe wealthy people money, is a cause for the population at large to slander the name of Christ; or (3) if the situation is wealthy Christians bringing suit against poor Christians, this has caused slander to be attached to the name of Christ.

While this last option parallels the thought of 1 Corinthians 6:1–11, it is the least likely grammatically. Either of the first two options is possible. The wealthy, Christian and non-Christian alike, were presumably bringing suit against the poor within the church. Normally in Roman provincial administration the state did not bring charges. Instead, the state relied on citizens to bring charges. Such a person was designated by the term delator.25 Some wish to place the writing of James in the context of the reign of Domitian and thereby to assume that Christians were being persecuted precisely because of their faith in Jesus. While this is possible, it is not necessary.

Roman jurisprudence on the local level countenanced the bringing of lawsuits at any time, as Acts and probably Philippians attest. Simply to be brought to trial for any reason (debt, wages, etc.) then, as well as now, was more than a minor inconvenience, and James implies in verse 7 that whatever the charge, at least part of the reason had to do with the faith of the poor. Even if the charges were not in any sense motivated by the faith of the poor, one motivation would have to be the protection of the wealth and status of the rich, which is itself contrary to the gospel. James’s point is that to curry favor with anyone simply because of their wealth is fundamentally to misunderstand the gospel and to do injury to the faith.

“Are [the rich] not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?” (v. 7). The “noble name” must, of course, refer to Christ. In the LXX “the name” was a periphrastic way of referring to God (Deut. 28:10; Isa. 43:7).26 But for Christians the name of Jesus was substituted.27 Thus in Acts 2:38 Peter says, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” If indeed James is a document of early composition, the fact that it so clearly substitutes the name of Jesus for God is a strong argument that Christian teaching assumed a high Christology at an early date. Given the little Christology that James affords, it is striking that both here and in the ascription of “glory” to Jesus Christ in 2:1 we have statements of high Christology.