Favoring the Rich
Tom Shrader works through James 1:25–2:4, establishing that genuine faith produces visible change — in the tongue, in care for the vulnerable, and in resistance to worldly values. He unpacks James's command against personal favoritism, showing that preferential treatment of the wealthy in the church contradicts the character of a God who does not show partiality. Drawing on 1 Timothy 6, he warns that the desire for riches leads to destructive choices, and calls those who have been materially blessed to be rich in good works and generosity instead.
“If you say you're a Christian, I ought to see it. If you say you're a Christian, then you are not just somebody who hears the word.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Blue Jean Theology (2006)
Recorded: 2006 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: favoritism, generosity, wealth, faith and works, caring for the poor, worldliness, partiality, true faith, struggling with materialism, wealthy believer, showing favoritism at work, new believer, feeling looked down on, church member, navigating social pressure, parent teaching generosity
Scripture: James 1:19, James 1:22, James 1:25-27, James 2:1-4, James 3:1-12, Ephesians 1:3-6, Ephesians 2:1-10, Deuteronomy 1:17, Deuteronomy 10:17, Romans 8:14, 1 John 2:15, 1 Timothy 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Joshua 1:8, Matthew 11:30, Luke 23:11
Theological Themes: soteriology, justification by faith, sanctification, impartiality of god, election, works as evidence of faith, social justice, biblical stewardship
Full Transcript
Introduction: The Theme of James
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to the book of James. We are working our way through a study of this book. I had planned today to get to James chapter 2, verse 13, but it just didn't happen, and so that is all right.
Let me remind you about the book, because I think we need to keep this in front of us. If we fail to understand this, we are going to be in real trouble all the time we are working our way through the book. James is writing to believers — fourteen, fifteen, sixteen times he uses the phrase "brethren," and three or four times "beloved brethren." He is writing to a church, and what he is talking about is faith. He is saying: if you have faith, I ought to be able to see it.
That is the theme verse of the book, James chapter 1, verse 22: *"But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves."* It is a well-worn expression, but it goes like this: if somebody arrested you and charged you with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? That is the challenge. If you say you are a Christian, I ought to see it. You are not just somebody who hears the word — you hear the word, and you know you have really heard it because you do it.
Faith and Works: Content vs. Expression
James talks at length about works. When James talks about works and about faith, this is really important, because if you do not get this straight, you are going to be in trouble. James is not talking about the content of our faith. He is talking about the expression of our faith.
Let us take a short trip to make this clear. Leave your finger in James and turn to the left to the book of Ephesians. Paul writes this letter to the church at Ephesus — a group of believers who are physically located in Ephesus and spiritually located in Christ. He reminds them of some wonderful truths.
Look at chapter 1, verse 3: *"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved."*
Here is what Paul is saying: God saved you and me in spite of us, not because of us. All sorts of people want to try to explain that away, but there it is — you cannot make it any more plain than this. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. If you are genuinely a follower of Christ, the reason you are a follower of Christ is because God the Father, before the foundation of the earth, determined that He would save you. Not because of something you did, and not in anticipation of something you would do. He saved you in spite of you, not because of you.
The Father chose you. The Son, when He died on the cross, shed His blood for your sin. Jesus came to seek and save His people — to save His people from their sins. Then at the appropriate time, the Holy Spirit applies that truth to your life.
Dead in Sin, Saved by Grace
Now look at Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1: *"You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath."* We come into this world as sinners. We are separated from God. We are in a helpless and hopeless position.
Then — Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4 — *"But God."* See that? We were dead in our sins and trespasses, but God, being rich in His mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. Look at verse 8: *"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast."*
You and I have been delivered from sin, from the bondage of sin, from the consequence of sin — meaning eternal death. We have been delivered from that by God's grace. There is nothing we can do to merit it. It is not a result of works, it is not a result even of our own desire. It is totally a result of God. By His grace, God saved us. He placed faith in our hearts and minds. We come to Christ in repentance and faith because God does that work in our lives.
Saved for Good Works
At East Valley Bible Church, if you spend any length of time here, you are going to hear that over and over again. And at any good Bible-teaching church you will hear it: I am saved by grace through faith. That is simply the truth. For many in this room, myself included, that truth is a response to what we have seen around us. Many of us came out of religion that taught: do this, don't do this, try this, work at this, and then if you are good enough, God will save you.
I cling so firmly to being saved by grace through faith that if I am not careful, I can miss Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10: *"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works."* He saved you — and why? Well, ultimately, so that —
Transformed by the Word
We could see, and the world could see, the expression of that faith — that you would be different than those around you. Not odd, but unique. Your mindset would be different. When you go to work, you look different. When you are at home, you look different. When you are at the market, it is different. When you are at school, it is different. Wherever you are, there is something unique and different about you.
We were saved by grace alone, through faith alone, but that grace and that faith do not stay alone. God begins to work in our life. If you are saying you are a follower of Christ and there has been no change in your life — you are living just like you did before — then, as you look at the Scripture, it is safe to say you have no biblical assurance of your salvation. If your life has not changed, if you still do all the things you did before, and I am not even talking about actions — you still have the same hard spirit, you still get angry, you still lie, you still gossip, you still tear people apart, you are still rude, you are the same old person, except now you have a Bible verse and carry a Bible — then you are not a follower of Christ at all. And that is what James is trying to say to us.
Doers of the Word
Back to James. James is saying there must be a difference in the way you live. Verse 22 of chapter 1: "Prove yourselves doers of the word, not merely hearers who delude themselves." He then illustrates this negatively: "For anyone who is a hearer of the word and not a doer is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror, and once he has looked away and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was." We unpacked that last week.
Here is where we left off. We will pick up at verse 25: "But the one who looks intently..." The word translated "intently" was used by both Luke and John in their Gospels to describe resurrection Sunday morning, when Peter came to the tomb, stooped over, looked in, and surveyed every part of the room. He looked at everything. It is not a casual glance. It is to look, to study, to scrutinize — to examine an object from every possible vantage point, again and again and again.
"But the one who looks intently at the perfect law..." In other words, the one who looks at this Word, who studies it. Notice the phrase James uses: the perfect law. The Scriptures are inerrant and sufficient. They are everything we need for life. If I want to know God and who He is, I need to study this book.
Knowing God, Knowing Yourself
Something remarkable happens when I study this book. I do not just find out who God is — I find out who I am. I talk to people all the time who feel they need to go away to Maui or Vail to find themselves, to figure out who they are. They go and think about their life and try to unpack their past, their parents, everything that comes with it. But the fastest way to understand who you are is to understand who God is, and to understand who God is, you cannot do it apart from this book.
We live in a world that has minimized sin. The thinking goes: nobody is perfect, we have all sinned a little. But here is what happens — and Larry Wright used to say this all the time — if you are just a little sinner, then you really just need a little savior. If you have only screwed up a little, then God does not need to be very big to save you, to pull you in, to adopt you, to bring you into the family. But when I look at Scripture, I understand what we read: we are dead in our sins and trespasses. We are by nature children of wrath. We hate God. We are sons of disobedience. And now He saves us. I would never know that apart from this law.
The Law of Liberty
Notice what James calls it: the law of liberty. As non-Christians, we often look at the Christian faith and say, "One thing I do not want is a bunch of rules — don't do this, do that, stay away from this, can't have that." We get the idea that coming to Christ is going to cramp our style, put a stranglehold on how we live. But James says the opposite. It is the law of liberty. It does not put you in chains — it breaks the chains. It does not put you in bondage — it frees you.
Romans 8:14 speaks to this directly. Paul writes: "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption and of freedom as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father." We are free.
I watched a story this week on ESPN — one of those "Beyond the Glory" features — about an athlete who had everything, got into drugs, and found he could not get rid of it. I saw another news story about a man released from prison for molesting children, and it appeared he had offended again. The testimony of men like these is: "I cannot stop. I do not know why. I cannot get rid of it." Does that sound like freedom? No — they are in bondage to sin. We, on the other hand, have the law of liberty.
Here is what James is saying: if we look intently into the law of liberty, if we believe it, if it abides in us, if we obey it — not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual one —
The Five-Part Grip on God's Word
"Doer" — this is the man who is blessed. I look at this word and understand it is an absolutely crucial piece of my spiritual growth. God saved me in 1980, and one of the groups that was very active then were the Navigators. The Navigators used to have this — maybe old-fashioned, maybe a little goofy, but it is really helpful to remember — they used to say we need to get a grip on God's word.
They illustrated this with the hand, and said that grip was really comprised of five elements. First, we need to hear God's word — hear it taught, hear it read, hear it. But they said that is just like the little finger. If all I have is that one finger on the Bible, I do not have a very good grip on God's word.
So they said we need to read it also. Now I have a couple of fingers and a pretty good grip. I am hearing it and I am reading it, spending time in it. But reading it is different from studying it. I need to study it — I need to look at this and figure out: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to me? What is the context?
You live at a wonderful time for Bible study, because there are so many tools available to you. Let me give you one site I use a lot: BibleStudyTools.net. It is a free resource, and you can do a Google search to find all sorts of other free tools that are out there. You can do an awful lot of work and begin to study this word.
Take something like chapter 1, verse 22 — "Prove yourself doers of the word, not merely hearers." I could take the first half of that and ask: What does it mean to be a doer of the word? What is he talking about? And then, what does that mean to me — at work, at home, at school? If I am a Christian who is single and I am on a date, what does it mean to be a doer of the word on a date? What does a neighbor who is a doer of the word look like? And now I begin to really study this and understand it.
Memorizing and Meditating on Scripture
The fourth thing is to memorize God's word. "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You." We joke about memorizing scripture, don't we? We say, if I can only memorize one verse because I do not have a very good memory, then the verse I will memorize is — Jesus wept. So let us allow you that. It is not a lot, and you should be able to get that one down.
But here is the fifth part. I do not just hear it and read it and study it and memorize it — I meditate on it. So I start thinking about "Jesus wept." I take some time, break that apart, and think: What is it that made Jesus cry? What does the fact that Jesus is weeping tell me about Him?
All of a sudden I see a compassion in Him. I begin to see that He responds to the sin He sees around Him and it breaks His heart. Is that the same way I respond? I begin to think about Jesus and His humanity. It seems to me there are two distortions going on: one group of people sees Jesus only as deity, and another sees Him only as humanity, and somehow we have to hold those together. Now I see that when I come to Him, Jesus understands — He has been there, done that, felt that, experienced that. And I can go on and on from just the two words "Jesus wept."
So I look into this perfect law. Joshua chapter 1 verse 8 says, "This is the book of the law that shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it." And Jesus says in Matthew chapter 11 verse 30, "My yoke is easy, my burden is light." I look intently at this law, and I become a doer of the word, not just a hearer.
Bridling the Tongue
Now James says in verse 26 of chapter 1, if anybody thinks himself to be religious — if he says he has this faith — then there are a couple of things we ought to see. Number one, he ought to bridle his tongue. James states it in the negative: "If anyone thinks he is religious yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is useless." If you are saying you are a follower of Christ but you still have that same old lying, cursing, gossipy, slandering, cutting tongue, then all we are seeing is what is really in your heart.
Turn to chapter 3 of the same book. James has already touched on the tongue — back in chapter 1 verse 19, he said to be quick to hear and slow to speak. But in James chapter 3 verses 1 through 12, he talks about the tongue at length. He talks about what a small object it is, and yet what huge destruction it can cause.
Look at verse 5: "So also the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it boasts of great things. Behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell."
Pure and Undefiled Religion
"But no one can tame the tongue. It is a relentless evil, full of deadly poison." Here is what James is saying: you claim to have religion, and he is saying, show it to me. If your mouth is just the same as it was — it is a foul mouth — and that is easy to address on one level. We say, well, I quit cussing, and we think we are done with that. But how about this? Do you lie? Do you gossip? Do you eat people up with your tongue? Do you cut them apart? You would never think of shoving a knife in someone's heart, but you will let your tongue do a nasty little deal on them. What that demonstrates is a lack of self-control. Paul tells us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
James says, listen — and this is the whole context here — I want you to be a doer of the Word, not just a hearer. So you are saying you have religion. James is saying, well, then you ought to be able to control your tongue. If you cannot control your tongue, something is wrong.
A Positive Statement of True Religion
Now look at verse 27, where this is stated positively: "This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father to visit the orphans and the widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world." He says this is religion — pure, which means literally clean or cleanliness; undefiled, which carries the idea of contamination. This is real, true, genuine, pure, clean, uncontaminated faith.
Looking closely at verse 27, there are three observations to make. Two of them are fairly obvious when you read the text. There is one that may be a little more subtle. James speaks of visiting the widows and the orphans — and that word visit is more than just dropping by. It shares the same root word from which we get overseer and bishop, so there is much more going on there than a casual call. He also speaks of keeping oneself unstained by the world. So pure, clean, uncontaminated religion has the element of caring for orphans and widows, and it has the element of remaining undefiled.
God Sets the Standard
But I want you to see something. Pure and undefiled religion — by whose definition? Is that not always the question we get into? Who is going to determine the morality? Who is going to determine the truth? What James tells you is that it is in the sight of our God and Father. God is the one who determined this. God is the one who makes the rules. God is the one who sets the standards.
We looked at it last week with Howard Stern — people say, I do not want to be part of an organized religion, I want something free-flowing enough that I can make my own rules. We love that. We love to do our own thing everywhere, including religion. We love to say, nobody is going to tell me anything. I am going to worship the God that I want, on the terms that I want, when I want, how I want, if I want. I want to be the Pope, the elders, the apostles — I am going to run my whole religion system around me. And James says no. Here is pure and undefiled religion, and let me tell you who is making the rules: God is making the rules. So when we pursue truth and ask what is really true, it is God's truth. God spoke to us — He did not stutter or stammer — and He communicated in His Word. So He says, here is what it is.
Caring for the Vulnerable
The first element is to visit — and again, it is much more than dropping by. It is caring for the widows and caring for the orphans. David writes that God is a father to the fatherless and a judge of the widows. God seems to demonstrate in His Word a particular affection for those who are hurting, for those who are struggling. He uses the picture of orphans and widows here.
Now in that day and age, there was no general societal provision for these people. If you were a widow, you fell to the bottom of the social strata. The same was true of an orphan. That is not typically true today. I made the comment in the first service that most of the widows we come in contact with are taken care of, at least financially and physically. There is life insurance now, health benefits, social security, and many other things.
A lady came up after the first service and said, "I have been a widow seven months, and I think when you said that, you allowed people to get off the hook a little bit." She said she really responded to that, and I said, I bet you did — partly because you have been a widow for seven months. But she said the other part of it is that she is really struggling. She is new to this church. She had been at another church when her husband died, and there was simply nothing. She was out there all alone. She has a teenage son who is not an orphan in the sense that she is still there, but he does not have anyone to talk to him through those difficult transitions, no man to walk with him through those hard issues.
She did a wonderful job of opening my eyes and making sure that what I assumed — that most widows are taken care of financially — is true only in part and not in all instances. Even where there is financial provision, there are other needs, and we need to be sensitive to those needs. We need to be available. Those needs need to be expressed, and we as a body are best positioned to meet them.
The Principle Extended to the Most Vulnerable
But if you want to talk about a group that is truly helpless, the weakest in society, consider the unborn. We are going to kill 1.25 million of them this year. The principle James lays out may deal specifically with orphans and widows, but I do not think we would limit it to that. We would say, if I have true, undefiled, genuine religion in my life — real, genuine faith — there is a sensitivity
Keeping Unstained by the World
Again, in that context of orphans and widows, that would be part of our responsibility, but I am sure we could expand it. We are also to keep ourselves uncontaminated, unstained by the world. When Scripture uses the word "world," it typically means one of three things: first, the universe, that whole big thing out there; second, the planet, the globe we are on; or third, a worldly philosophy, morals, and values.
That third meaning was the subject of Jesus' prayer for His people. His prayer was not that all of His people would get together and hang out together, stay in church together, huddle together, go to school together, read the same books, watch the same content. No. There is a part of the body that we need, but He prayed the night before He died, "Father, just as You sent me into the world, I'm sending these people into the world." There is something about us that ought to be out there in the world.
Sent into the World
When Jerry Smith and Mike Posh were just in Uzbekistan, they shared that our missionaries there had made a decision — and I have to confess here to ignorance, I was uninformed — they made a decision not to live with the rest of the missionaries in the missionary compound, but to live out among the people. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Why would someone go all the way to Uzbekistan as a missionary and then live with a bunch of other missionaries? That makes no sense to me at all.
If I am going to go from here to Uzbekistan, to learn the culture, learn the language, live with the people, and share the gospel with them, why would I then retreat with a bunch of other Christians and stay there at night? That makes no sense. God did not design you to just live around and hang with and work with and stay with a bunch of Christians. You are to be out in the world, infecting Intel and the schools and all the other places for the gospel.
How am I going to live out the Great Commission if I do not have ongoing, meaningful contact with unbelievers? It simply cannot happen. Having said that, here is what James is saying: now that you are out there in the world, do not start to look like it, think like it, act like it, dress like it, or adopt its value systems. There ought to be tension in your life.
The Tax Story: Contaminated Thinking
A few years ago, we were doing our taxes — coming up on that time again — and I had an accountant, a different one from who I use now. I turned my taxes in and he called me and said, "I think you're paying too much taxes." I said, "I agree with you. You are right, my friend." He said, "I don't think you have enough deductions." I said, "I agree with you."
He said I needed to feel free to declare more miles driven and more business expenses. I told him I could think about that for the next year. He said I needed them for the previous year. I explained that we had a problem, because I had already given him everything for the previous year. He said the miles I had declared were a fraction of what I could claim, that we could triple them and nobody would ever look at them, and that he did not think I needed receipts for the business expenses — we could simply increase them. I told him I had not driven those miles and had not bought those lunches.
He said, "I know, but all my clients do this." I told him I wanted to keep his record perfect, so I was going to stop by, pick up my documents, and find someone else. Now, it is not that I am some prim and prudish fellow, but here is what he was saying: everybody does it. That may be what the world says, but that is not what God says. God says to submit to your government and pay your taxes. Those are the rules.
I love how adults are with their children — they are really good about this. A child says a friend does something, and the parent says, "I don't care. If he jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge?" And then that same parent sits down with his accountant, hears "everybody does it," and says, "Oh, okay, I'll do it too." That is being contaminated by the world. All of a sudden you begin to see things as the world sees them — the same philosophy, the same values.
The Standard of 1 John 2
John writes this in 1 John 2:15: "Do not love the world nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, it is from the world."
So here is a little summary paragraph that one of the authors writes: godly religion — that is, biblical Christianity — is a matter of holy obedience to God's word, reflected, among other ways, by our honesty in regard to ourselves, by our selflessness in regard to the needs of others, and by our uncompromising moral and spiritual stand in regard to the world. That is what James has said. Now he gets really practical.
Favoring the Rich: The Principle Stated
In the original text there is no chapter break between verse 27 of chapter one and verse one of chapter two, so it seems James is continuing the same line of thought and now becomes very direct. Here is the principle, chapter two, verse one: "My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism." The phrase in the original is literally "our Lord Jesus Christ of the glory." Here is our Lord, here is our Savior — and if you hold faith in Him, then there should not be this attitude of personal favoritism.
The phrase "personal favoritism" is a single word in the Greek, and its literal meaning is the lifting up of someone's face —
Judging by Appearance
The issue James raises is the idea of judging by appearance — making distinctions on the basis of special favor or respect, dealing with people on a purely superficial level, looking at someone and wondering, "What can they do for me?" Looking at one of the beautiful people, one of the powerful people, one of the up-and-inners, one of the politically connected, and showing special preference based solely on the surface.
James is not saying that it is wrong in every instance to show favoritism. He is not saying it is wrong to acknowledge your seniors, your parents, or somebody who has earned recognition or deserves honor. He is not saying there is anything wrong with that. The principle he is establishing is this: when you start showing favoritism strictly on a superficial level, and you claim to be a follower of Christ, that is not Christ-like at all. That is not how God thinks at all.
Deuteronomy 1:17 says, "You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike." Deuteronomy 10:17 says, "For the Lord your God is the God of gods, the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, the awesome God who does not show partiality." The message is clear: if you want to be like Christ and begin to think and act like Christ, you do not judge based on the surface. We see that all through Scripture — Samuel looking for Saul's successor, and God saying to him, "Don't judge by appearance. Man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart."
The Problem in the Early Church
James writes this because apparently there was a problem that had developed in that church. Those early churches were essentially made up of poor Jews — Jews who at the time of conversion were poor, or who became poor because of their conversion. They were ostracized by their families, their friends, and their business associates.
James sets out an illustration beginning in verses two through four. He writes: "If a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there comes also a poor man in dirty clothes, you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes and say, 'You sit here in a good place.' You say to the poor man, 'You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool.' Have you not made distinction among yourselves in becoming judge with evil motives?"
The word translated "assembly" is sometimes also translated "synagogue" — it simply refers to a gathering place. In those early churches, which may have been homes or large rooms within homes, there would typically be a couple of benches along the walls. A few people might sit on those, but most would be standing or sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Gold Rings and Fine Clothes
James identifies the first man as wearing a gold ring and fine clothes. "Gold ring" literally means "gold-fingered" — it is not just the idea of a single ring, but rings upon rings upon rings. The Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca described people in his economic strata this way: "We adorn our fingers with rings and we distribute gems over every joint." One of the primary ways you demonstrated wealth in that day and age was through jewelry.
Much as people today might rent a tuxedo for a formal occasion, people in that era would rent rings, bracelets, and jewelry, because others would look at them and assume they must be someone of importance. The word used for "fine clothes" is the same word — brilliant, bright — used in Luke 23:11, when Pilate and others put a robe on Jesus and mocked Him.
So James is presenting this scenario: a wealthy man walks into your church giving every indication of his prosperity, and a poor man walks in with nothing much to show at all. You tell the wealthy man to come forward and take a good seat. You send the other man to stand off to the side or, at best, sit by the footstool — which, according to the custom of the time, would have been a serious insult. When you do that, James says, you are acting with evil motives.
Evil Motives
James uses the word translated "evil" in English three or four times throughout this letter, drawing on three different Greek words. The word he uses here is the most intense and strongest of them all. It describes something vicious in the way you live.
A Summary
John MacArthur writes this: "It should be emphasized that although the rich are subject to special temptations and proclivities, their wealth itself is not sinful as long as they acquire it justly, use it wisely and generously, as faithful stewards of the Lord. Nor, of course, is there any sin in being poor, unless a person has become poor from some foolish squandering of what he once had, or is being chastened by God for his sin. Both the rich and the poor are equal in God's sight, and partiality must not be shown to either."
If ever there was a day, a time, a culture, and a place prone to the trappings of riches, wealth, and material things, it is here and now. What James is saying runs counter to our instincts — because most of us want to spend time with successful people.
The Danger of Favoring the Wealthy
If all of a sudden Donald Trump showed up at your small group — and this is theoretical; I don't see that happening unless he needs your help in a zoning case — or Bill Gates walked in, or the governor, or a senator, we would be attracted to that. What James is saying is: guard against that. When there are trappings of riches, we are drawn to them.
The Snare of Wanting to Get Rich
Turn to 1 Timothy chapter six, a passage we deal with over and over again. Look at verse nine: "Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare, many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction." He is not talking about rich people there. He is talking about greedy people who want to be rich. A lot of the greediest people I know don't have hardly any money at all, but they want to get it, and he says you are vulnerable then — vulnerable to do stupid things.
Verse ten: "The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil." The desire for money will cause you to do all sorts of things you never even dreamed about. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago, when property prices got tight and many businessmen were in the throes of losing everything. Many of them had racehorses, and people were becoming animal hit men. What was happening was this: you had a racehorse insured for ten million dollars, your property was going south, so you would take out your racehorse, claim the ten million, and save your property. The love of money, the desire for money, will cause you to do some of the silliest, dumbest things imaginable.
Instructions for Those Who Are Rich
Verse seventeen addresses a different group: "Instruct those who are rich in this present world." In other words, those who have stuff. Now, this breaks down every time, because the minute the subject of riches comes up, you won't let it apply to you, because you define rich as anybody who has more money than you. Bill Gates, with a net worth of fifty billion dollars — that seems rich. But you think, well, I don't have as much as them. I think you can make an argument that if you have food, clothes, and a place to sleep, you are rich. But Paul is speaking to those who are rich in this present world — those who have some stuff.
He identifies two things to avoid. First, there is a tendency to think that if you are rich, you did something to deserve it or earn it — so you write books, do seminars, tell everyone about your system for getting wealthy, and it becomes all about you. Second, there is the temptation to fix your hope on the uncertainty of riches. There are people in their early seventies who never planned on working again, but stocks went down and never came back, and the riches they thought were secure eluded them. You also think riches are going to make you happy: if I just close this deal, if I just get that one thing, then I will be happy. We see that fail over and over again.
When we get to James chapter four, where he talks about life being but a vapor, I plan to do a mini study in Ecclesiastes, because that really gets into this. Solomon had everything and he said no — you do not find meaning or life in wealth. So are you rich? I think you are. Am I rich? I think so. What does Paul say to us? "Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future."
The Serious Sin of Superficial Favoritism
Here is what James says. James says you and I have this tendency — this tendency to show superficial favoritism. And the whole of Scripture warns us about the danger of riches. Is money evil in and of itself? Absolutely not. But the longing for it, the desire for it — and once it is there, once it is acquired, accumulated, and protected — it affects relationships and how we view things. There are all sorts of warnings here.
If you have been blessed, you are to be rich in good works. You are not supposed to sit back and judge someone superficially, saying, "That person has that car, that house, that job," and therefore invite them to come and sit in the place of honor. James continues this study and makes clear that when that happens, you have violated some very basic truths. He does not say it is merely rude or a social faux pas. He says it is a serious sin. We will look at that next week, picking up right at James chapter two, verse five.
Father, we pray that as Your people we will live lives that bring honor and glory to You. If we call You Father, then we ought to look like Your kids. That is what James is saying. Our tongues ought to be under control, and there ought to be evidence of Your character in how we treat one another.
Closing Prayer and Benediction
There should be a sensitivity to those around us who are hurting. There should be a desire to be in the world, proclaiming Your truth, living as salt and light, and yet remain unstained, continually cleansing ourselves from the world's value system and its philosophy. God, help us resist what seems to be the natural tendency, which is to show favoritism. Father, let us be like You. Let us follow Your lead and Your example. God, we pray this to You here this morning. In Christ's name, amen.