Facial Recognition Part 2

If God’s people would take their
Bibles and turn back once again to James, we find ourselves in
chapter 2. James chapter 2, where James
is again driving home another point of examination into the
believer’s life, examining whether their talk measures up or their
walk, rather, measures up to their talk, and specifically
here in this chapter, examining that tendency all too prevalent
towards partiality. James returns to a subject, as
we began to see last week, he returns to a subject that he’d
already introduced, that of the tendency towards partiality,
but Here he begins to really dig into this division between
the wealthy and the poor. As I said, James had already
introduced this difficulty, that of the relationship between the
rich and the poor in verses 9 through 11 of chapter 1, but here he
really exposes the great problem between these two groups. And
we find that in the first 13 verses of chapter 2, and if you
would, I just want to look at those verses and read them again
together if you would. 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,
then 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? Listen, my beloved brethren,
did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith
and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love
him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich
who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they
not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If,
however, you are fulfilling the royal law, according to the scripture,
you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you
are committing sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law
and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not commit
murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery,
but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the
law. So speak and so act as those
who are to be judged by the law of liberty, for judgment will
be merciless to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs
over judgment. We began last week into the consideration
of this passage that I referred to as facial recognition. I’ll
explain why in just a moment. Just the title itself, based
on all that’s going on in our own society with that new technology
of facial recognition, should at least pique our interest.
But James has a particular offense in view, that of distinguishing
people, separating them out, and treating them differently
based on only what we see. James began last week, as we
looked at it, building a case against prejudicial dealings.
We saw, first of all, the warning about biased living. This isn’t
a one-time occasion. This isn’t an accidental slip-up.
This is a tendency towards treating people this way on an ongoing
basis. a prejudicial treatment of others. We saw it in verse one, do not
hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude
of personal favoritism. James is talking to Christians. He’s talking to those who profess
Christ. He’s talking to this young and
fledgling and largely Jewish church there in Jerusalem and
in the nearby areas. He’s talking to those who had
come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, who, by the way, was
God’s manifestation of glory. No less than were those great
manifestations, the Shekinah glory of old, to the Old Testament
saints. Jesus Christ is, as Paul put
it, the Lord of glory. Or as John said it in John chapter
one, the word became flesh, dwelt among us, and we saw his glory. Glory as of the only begotten
from the Father, full of grace and truth. And so James simply
refers to Christ as the glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Whereas the
glory of Christ should have been the sole focus of the saints
of the Jerusalem church Unfortunately, it seems that some of those people
in the church, some of those people in the area churches with
which James was very familiar, they were beginning to focus
on other faces. They were beginning to focus
on other things, other factors, and James calls it, according
to the New American Standard, personal favoritism. As we saw
that idea translated here in the NAS as personal favoritism,
it was a favorite Hebrew saying, a very familiar saying among
the Jews that literally meant to lift the face and to treat
with favor. In the New Testament, there was
always a sinister evil significance to the use of this word. preference,
bias, evil intentions, or as the King James translates it,
respective persons, where you’re looking only at the face. You’re
recognizing only the face and not at the entirety of the individual. And so it is an accepting, a
taking in of one based on only what is skin deep. One pastor said it is an undue
and unfair partiality. It is a flattering or pandering
or paying special attention to someone simply because he is
rich or influential or powerful or a popular person. There is
this tendency that we all have to play to the face, to recognize
someone only according to outward appearance. And the first thing
that we recognize is that’s not how God operates, is it? In fact, all four of the other
occurrences of that particular word Declare that God does not
play favorites. Romans 2.11, there is no partiality
with God. Ephesians 6.9, no partiality. Colossians 3.25, God will judge
without partiality. 1 Peter 1.17, the father, the
one who impartially judges. And so we contrast the way God
operates fairly, justly, impartially, and he expects no less of his
people as we began to see last week. And we notice that it isn’t
just wealth. James has in view wealth, that’s
the illustration that he uses here, but you can judge people
unfairly on all kinds of different elements. racial differences,
gender differences, the appearance, their good looks, their popularity,
their political strength. It’s always what’s in it for
me. It’s an attitude of looking at them, not justly, but for
what they can do for the individual. As one pastor summed it up, he
said, a man who believes the gospel has come to see himself
as a fellow sinner of all around. He has become convinced that
his relations to God are of immeasurably greater moment than any he can
hold to his fellow creatures. He has passed into a sphere in
which he recognizes all his fellow Christians are as high and peculiar
sense his brethren members with him through the grace of their
common Savior of the family of God. In other words, to look
at somebody in this crass nature only for what they can give to
you and overlook at the same time your brother in Christ,
who is truly your brother because of what God has done, is nothing
short of sin. Now, as we saw, there’s not only
this basic warning in verse 1, but James gives a very plain
and graphic example. Look at verse 2. Here he gives
an example of this biased living. This was a tendency. This was
an ongoing event. This was a regular feature of
this individual’s worship. For if a man comes into your
assembly with a gold ring, dressed in fine clothes, or comes in
a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention
to the one wearing fine clothes, and you 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? He gives a concrete example here. Let me show you what I mean by
this favoritism. And this individual that just
comes meandering in, dressed in a fancy manner, this person,
unnamed, and it probably was a hypothetical situation, and
yet James zeros in on it as a well-known feature, and probably one of
which all of us have struggled with in some way, shape, or form. James zeroes in on it, and he
gives a concrete example of what it is to treat someone with personal
favoritism, to receive their face. And that’s what leads him to
issue the indictment in verse four. You’ve made distinctions
among yourselves. You’ve become judges with evil
motives. Whenever we do that, Whenever
we make these kinds of distinctions, and the word there indicated
that there is a divide, there is a division in the individual’s
mind, he knows this isn’t right. He knows that this individual
isn’t saved, he isn’t a brother in Christ, and yet he’s willing
to treat him as such. There is division even in his
own heart. Thomas Manton, as we saw last
week, says, to give more or less to anyone than is appropriate. That’s what’s in view. You think
of Peter. In 1 Peter, Peter says, we are
to honor those to whom honor is due. Well, who is due more
honor than those whom God himself has honored by drafting them
into faith in Christ? Manton says to give more or less
to anyone than is appropriate because of something in his person. Because of something we see on
the outside. His good looks, his powerful
position, his money. To do that is sin. And James
says you become judges with evil motives. And we looked at the
wretchedness of this word. Typically, it’s used in the Gospels
of a character flaw in the Pharisees who were constantly caught up
with evil thoughts. Paul uses it frequently. Speculations,
passing judgment, disputing, dissension. It is a war in the
soul. And that’s why I liked one particular
translation. It’s disputatious reasoning. You know, As you begin to think
it through, you know that what you’re doing is wrong. You know
that this is not a brother in Christ, and yet you’re pandering
to him, you’re flattering him. And all the while, you’re treating
a true brother in Christ with disrespect, as we’ll see. Well,
James wants to provide us in the remainder of this chapter
with three particulars that will help us to eradicate this sin
of partiality. Three particulars. And in the verses that unfold
before us, James shows a very clear picture of the evil of
this sin and the foolishness of it. And he brings out in a
powerful fashion the justness of his statements thus far, that
this is wretchedness on display. The first thing that he wants
to point out here in verses five through seven is the absurdity
of engaging in what I’ve called facial recognition. the absurdity
of engaging in this partiality, where we dishonor the very one
that God favors. Look, if you will, first of all,
at the very special place that James reminds his readers of,
the very special place of the poor in God’s eyes. Look at verse
five. Listen, my beloved brethren,
did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith
and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love
him? I loved one pastor’s title for
this section of scripture. He called it the riches of poverty
and the poverty of riches. The particular incident that
James had presented here, some people might listen to it
and say, yeah, so? It wasn’t that big of a deal. I gave somebody a better chair.
I issued a better place to one as opposed to the other. What’s
the big deal? And James wants to point out
the particulars. He wants to show them how sinful
this is. That they were not only dishonoring
this individual, they were dishonoring God himself. And they were not
only dishonoring this individual and God himself, but they were
dishonoring their poor brother in Christ. James starts by this
section by really calling them to attention. Listen, he says.
There’s an important section coming, and it’s important that
you sit up and listen. It mirrors even the words that
John used in the book of Revelation in today’s reading, words that
were familiar from Christ’s lips. He who has ears to hear, let
him hear.” Listen to this. Listen, my beloved brethren.
Did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith
and heirs of the kingdom, which He promised to those who love
Him? The first thing that James wants to do is remind his hearers
of God’s sovereign election, and that God in His sovereignty
had chosen those in their midst. That language, that word is as
plain from the lips of James as it ever is from that of Paul. It’s God’s sovereign election,
no doubt. And don’t misunderstand, it’s
not as if James is saying that poverty is inherently some kind
of ground of merit. He isn’t saying that at all,
that just to be poor, otherwise you’re gonna run out and give
away all your money and it’s gonna be for naught. Nor is he saying that wealth
in and of itself is a dishonoring thing, there will be those in
the body of Christ who are wealthy, and those in
the body of Christ who are poor, and there is God’s sovereign
election. Yet James says here that in a
very special way, God has set his electing love on the poor. not as an entire class, but in his sovereignty, they
are his focus. It’s the same word, Regarding
God’s choice of Israel, Deuteronomy 14.2, the Lord has chosen you
to be a people for His own possession. Same idea, same literal word
that is used for our own divine election. Ephesians 1.4, He chose
us in Him before the foundation of the world. And so God’s special love for
the poor is an outworking of his sovereignty. And we see the
poor as a focus of God’s intentions, Leviticus 25, where he gives
directions to Israel regarding the care of the poor. In Psalm
68, we see an acknowledgment of God’s graciousness to the
poor. You provided your goodness to
the poor, O God. The very foundations of Christ’s
ministry were articulated as aimed at, not exclusively, but
primarily at the poor. Luke 4, 18, the Spirit of the
Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor. In fact, Matthew goes on to record a fulfillment
of Isaiah’s prophecy, the blind receive sight, the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised
up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. God has a special
place in his heart. God has elected, in a very real
sense, the poor. God has a special concern for
the poor. That doesn’t mean that all poor
will be saved, nor does it mean that their poverty is meritorious. One pastor clarified by saying,
a vast number of the poor are not spiritually rich. And some
of the rich are truly honorable. Because they love and revere
the worthy name of Jesus, and yet beyond all question, wealth
has been in all ages a serious obstacle to men’s salvation because
it tends to insulate from their need of Christ. Nevertheless, it does assure the poor individual
that his poverty does not put him in a place of disadvantage,
that God is inclined to him. God has chosen him. And as expected, therefore, of
God’s people, we are to have a special place in our own hearts
for the poor. We are in this sense, as in all
others, to be godly, to be like God in this. No wonder the admonitions of
Scripture are so replete. Psalm 41.1, blessed is he who
considers the helpless. Proverbs 17.5, he who mocks the
poor taunts his maker. Proverbs 21.13, he who shuts
his eye to the cry of the poor will cry himself and not be answered. God puts a premium on the care
of the poor. But God has not only elected
the poor, look again at the verse, he did so with a particular design. Look at the verse, listen my
beloved brethren, did not God choose the poor of this world
to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised
to those who love him? Faith is the sphere where these
particular people are rich. Their bank account may be drained.
They may be down to their piggy bank and shaking coins out of
that thin slit in the top. But they are rich, spiritually
speaking. They are wealthy beyond all measure
in some sense. They are heirs of the kingdom.
They literally are children of God. They belong to the great
sovereign himself. And even though now in the world’s
eyes, they’re poor, they’re insignificant in the world’s eyes, in God’s
eyes, they are children of the king. And one day the kingdom
is entirely theirs. James goes on to say that this
is a fulfillment of a promise. And this could be one of those
many statements that Jesus made that wasn’t ever recorded in
the Gospels. But I think there are some things
that were recorded that certainly incline us to understand that
this may be what James is referring to. Do you remember the Sermon
on the Mount? One of the first things Jesus
said was, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom
of God. That’s a promise. And that’s a promise, I believe,
that James sees his hold of here and says to the poor that you
don’t need to be disconsolate, you don’t need to be downtrodden,
spiritually speaking. God has not forgotten you. Wealth does not fit you for the
kingdom. Faith in Christ is what fits
you for the kingdom of God. And so James makes this first
point. The absurdities of facial recognition,
the absurdities of making distinctions purely on what we see. Because these are the very people
that God himself has chosen. And yet the absurdity comes immediately
to the surface, very abruptly, uncomfortably so. Look at the
passage once again, look at verse five. Listen, my beloved brethren,
did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith
and heirs of the kingdom, which he promised to those who love
him? But you have dishonored the poor man. And you can imagine the first time
that this letter was read, That what James is doing here is he’s
asking every person in the hearing of these words to examine their
heart. You know the truth, you know
what’s right. And he hearkens back to that
illustration that he’s already provided in verses two and three. A man comes into your assembly
with a gold ring, dressed in fine clothes, comes in a poor
man wearing dirty clothes. You pay special attention to
the one who’s wearing the fine clothes and you say, you sit
here in a good place. And you say to the poor man,
you stand over there, sit down by my footstool. It was wretched, contentious
treatment of this individual, this brother in Christ. And James
says, this can’t happen. This can’t continue to happen.
You cannot continue to live like this. This is sin. You’ve dishonored this man. He
is a child of the king and you’ve treated him like nothing. You’ve
treated him like an unwanted guest. And it was because they looked
only on the physical surface. They looked only at the outward
impression. They were judging purely by facial
recognition. They were treating this man,
this poor man, dreadfully, simply because he was poor. And they
were treating this rich man well, simply because he was rich. Do
you understand what’s taking place here? Whether it’s race
or power or prestige or some favor that this individual can
render, you’re willing to mistreat a brother in Christ, even though
you know that this isn’t a Christian brother, you’re willing to cater
to him. He’s not a Christian, But he’s
rich, that’s how the thinking goes. And I’ll cater to him even
if it means dishonoring my brother in Christ. That’s what James
is zeroing in on. Robert Johnstone said here, think,
ponder. Think then how very far you are
in this respective persons. from reflecting the divine image. You’re not acting like God. You’re not acting like Christians.
You’re not treating him like God has treated him. How very far you are in this
respect of persons from reflecting the divine image, how directly
opposed your conduct is to him whom you call father. You say
that He’s your God, you say that He’s your Father, and yet by
your behavior, you’re contradicting the words of your own lips and
the way that you’ve treated this individual. There are, this is an absurdity
to treat a poor brother in Christ and meanwhile cater to the rich,
but there’s another absurdity embedded in this discussion It
takes place in the rest of verse six and in verse seven. The absurdities
of facial recognition, not only the special place of honor that
the poor have with God, but look secondly at the harsh tendencies
of the rich. Why on earth would you cater
to them? Look at the second part of verse
six. Is it not the rich who oppress
you and drag you, personally drag you into court? Do they
not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? James
here isn’t speaking of the rich, anybody who has ever come into
wealth as part of this. He’s talking specifically about
the Jewish Sadducees who were wealthy beyond all measure and
were venomously against the New Testament church. And yet, from
time to time, one of these would come tripping into church. And there would be those Jews,
those Jewish converts, those converts to Christianity, Christians
who would suddenly begin to cater to these Sadducees, to these
rich, wealthy, powerful people. The very people that oppress
them, keep them down. The only other occurrence of
that word, do you know who it’s spoken of? The devil. Acts 10, 38, you know of Jesus
of Nazareth, how God appointed him with the Holy Spirit and
with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who
were oppressed by the devil. The Sadducees were just going
about doing the devil’s business, keeping people down, oppressing,
as the Old Testament pointed out, the alien, the orphan, the
widow, They were the very people who James goes on to say would
drag you into court and trouble you in that regard, and that
word dragging indicates a violent treatment. They would have people
arrested, especially in this fledgling season of the church. They were attacking Christianity. They were attacking those who
named the name of Christ. So James has in view here the
persecution of the early Christian church by the Jews themselves. Jesus had warned his disciples
that this was going to happen. In Matthew chapter 10, beware
of men, they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you
in the synagogues. You will be brought before governors
and kings for my name’s sake as a testimony to them and to
the Gentiles. Well, in time that began to happen,
didn’t it? Much of the New Testament records
this great upheaval In the beginning of a series of persecutions,
it wasn’t just one, it was one after the other of persecutions
against the church. Why on earth would you cater
to someone who is advancing that cause? Paul experienced it. In Acts 16, the literal word,
when her master saw that their hope of prophet was gone, they
seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before
the authorities, they dragged them into court. This wasn’t
a Roman tribunal, this was a Jewish, essentially, kangaroo court.
It was allowed by the Romans, but it wasn’t even officially
recognized. Not only they drag you into the
court, but they blaspheme the fair name by which you have been
called. And I want you to pause on this one. Because it’s one
thing It’s one thing that the world
mistreats us. We almost understand that. We’re
a little bit quirky. We’re a little bit different.
We don’t support their agendas. We don’t agree with much of what
they conclude. And so when they oppress us,
when they hold us down, when they charge us additional fees,
when they take away rights and privileges, we have a tendency
to at least, we can at least work the equation. And we understand
where they’re coming from. When they personally drag us
into court, we can begin to understand, yeah, that’s practical persecution,
we can understand that. This one, blaspheming the fair
name by which we’ve been called, I can’t reconcile that one. And
neither will you when you understand it. This is hostility that the church
is receiving at the hands of the rich, And the word is graphic,
slandering, reviling. And when it’s directed against
people, that’s really how the word should be translated. Slander,
revile, defame. But when it’s God who is being
spoken of, The only way to translate this word would be blaspheme. And that’s who’s in view. The fair name by which they had
been called is the name of Jesus Christ. It’s not the fact that
they were Christians per se, it’s the fact that they were
aligned with the Lord Jesus Christ, that they had named the Lord
Jesus Christ, that they had been baptized in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that they were naming the name
of Christ, and that’s the one who was maligned. That’s the
one who the world hates. Sometimes we’ll feel that tertiary,
that secondary blast from the world, but ultimately the world hates
Christ, not you. We’ll come back to this passage
next Lord’s Day as we begin to look on some clarity that James
provides. You know, not every time you
greet someone, Not every person you ever welcome into the church
should be second-guessed and castigated as sinful. And James wants to clarify, you
know, it could just be out of the kindness of your own heart
that you reached out to this individual and got him a chair.
It could just be. And only your own heart knows.
But to do what James has pointed, if your heart tells you that
you have been partial, that you have played the part of bias
towards a rich man who only could do you well, while all the while
dishonoring a poor man, then you have sinned a grievous sin.
And it’s a question we must examine, and we’ll do that next Lord’s
Day. Let’s go before him in prayer. Merciful King, we humble ourselves
before you and we see your sovereign hand in all of this, in this
fledgling church. And yet, Lord, we see so many
parallels even in our own day. We should never be ashamed to
hang out with those who name the name of Christ and profess
faith in Christ. We should never align ourselves
with the world against the church or against the people of God.
We know that there’s a great tendency to do that. There’s
a great temptation to do that. The world does have much to offer. The devil himself offered Jesus
everything. Lord God, grant us the grace
to see things as they are, as they really are. Help us to never
look down on our brother in Christ, especially over one who doesn’t
even know the Lord. Father, grant us the wisdom to
discern this situation. And we look expectantly to James’
treatment of the remainder of this passage. Lord, we thank
you and we praise you. In Jesus’ name, amen.