James 2:1-4 – “Frying Fish”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹My brothers, do not with favoritisms have the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. ²For if a man having rings of gold on his fingers should come into your synagogue in a magnificent robe and a very poor one should also come in a filthy robe ³and you should look upon the one wearing the magnificent robe and say, “You sit here excellently,” and say to the very poor one, “You stand there or sit under my footstool,” ⁴are you not distinguishing among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

It’s interesting to me, again, that James launches this discussion in view of the glory of Christ. And right beside it, another thing I think worthy of exegetical note is that this discussion follows immediately after his admonition that we should concern ourselves with true religion and “keep ourselves unspotted by the world” (1:27).

If you heard that admonition from a pulpit, “Keep yourself unspotted by the world!” what would you immediately think of? Would you immediately say, “Oh my, I really need to watch that I’m not playing favorites with people!” Would your mind immediately go to the glory of Christ and how that affects your attitudes toward other people?

Yeah, me neither. It is so easy to take “unspotted by the world” and run with the million petty rules we’ve erected in our hearts and called them “religion.” “I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t run with girls that do.” But the two great commands are to love God and love people. I would suggest when we hear “unspotted by the world,” that is where our minds should go first – am I loving God (seeing my world in the glory of Christ) and loving people? To be “spotted by the world” isn’t first a problem of whether I “break the rules.” It is in whatever way allowing the lust of my flesh, or the lust of my eyes, or my love of applause draw my gaze away from Christ and move me to do anything less than love the people God puts around me.

It never ceases to amaze me how seeing the world through God’s eyes means dealing with issues so much deeper, so much more profound, and so much more significant than what my fallen heart naturally wants to be concerned with. It is so much easier to make up our own rules and concern ourselves with issues like how many times a week I go to church, whether or not I drink alcohol or use tobacco, which Bible translation I carry, which political issue I’m fussing about this week, etc. Those all so easily become issues of monumental importance while the Lord sits on His throne off to the side and says, “That’s all well and good, but do you love Me? Do you love people?”

I would suggest that one thing this passage should teach us, if we have eyes to see it, is that the Lord has far bigger fish to fry than we naturally think. I think this passage itself should teach us we need His eyes to see what is important in this world, that we need Him to lift up our eyes and see the real issues, that without Him, we are doomed to spend our hearts gathering straws in a life surrounded with gold. May the glory of Christ and living His love to people be the gold we prize.