into struggling with how do we understand the law? How do we relate to the law of God? James in our text today has a lot to say about the law, mentioning it five times in six short verses. We've been moving through the book of James, and if you are familiar with Hope Church, then you know that we like to work through books, preaching expositionally, portion by portion, moving through entire sections of Scripture. Why? Because we value the Word of God. Not my words, but the Word of God. And so our text today continues James' thoughts as he works through what it looks like to show partiality and how devastating that is to the body of Christ. Last week we saw that showing partiality is inconsistent with the gospel because it divides the church and it dishonors the poor. showing partiality is judging by the face, looking at someone and making a judgment and then excluding them based on that judgment that you make. And James says that divides the church. And what's more, it dishonors the poor in our midst. What James is continuing his thought today in our text In chapter 2, verses 8 through 13, not only is showing partiality inconsistent with the gospel, but it actually breaks the law of God. I want you to keep this question in mind as we come to the text today. How do we, as Christians, fulfill the royal law? Please stand with me as we read from our text, which is printed in your bulletins. James 2, beginning in verse 8. If you really fulfill the royal law according to 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 a transgressor. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law, so speak And so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy mercy triumphs over judgment This is the word of the lord You may be seated and let's pray Father we thank you for this portion of your word and we ask that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear, so that we may behold wonders therein. Give us that same delight that the psalmist expressed in Psalm 19, that we may say, oh, how I love your law. For we pray this in Christ's name, and amen. Grammar is important. Grammar is not just for grade school, but it's for us as the people of God because we are people of the Word. Because God has inspired the Word, His Word, in the very words themselves. And so we dig into grammar so that we understand the God who has revealed Himself there. The sentence in verse 8 begins with, if begins a conditional statement. That means if you meet these requirements, these conditions, then you have this outcome. In this case, James says you do well. If you really fulfill the law according to scripture, you do well. So it's blessed. It's blessed to respond in obedience to the law of God. But James, notice he says, really, he seems skeptical that they're actually fulfilling it. So it seems like this community, this audience that James is writing to, which we have discussed, is primarily a Jewish audience in the first century, scattered mostly up north into Syria because of persecution brought on by Saul, later the Apostle Paul, and the church scattered and dispersed And so they're called the 12 tribes of the dispersion. And these are Jewish Christians. And apparently they're priding themselves on fulfilling the royal law. But James says, if you really, if you really fulfill the royal law, according to scripture, you do well. He introduces some skepticism about, are they really fulfilling this law? And then through the rest of the verses, verse 9 through 13, he fleshes out why he's skeptical. First thing we need to ask is, what is the royal law that James is talking about? Now James, often in the New Testament, the word law is used in many different ways. Sometimes, like Paul would use it, and it's in opposition to the gospel. It's opposed to the gospel. It's something that brings death. It doesn't bring life because we are sinful creatures and unable to obey it. the Reformed, you see, we've always had several uses for the law. The first use of the law is to restrain evil so that we know the boundaries between good and wrong. So the first use of the law is to restrain evil. The second use of the law is to convict us of sin. You see, we read the law and we see our inability to keep it, and it drives us to Christ. So we cling more tightly to him as the only one who perfectly kept it. That's the second use of the law. And our Lutheran brothers, they stopped there. But in the Reformed tradition, we've always held that there's a third use of the law, what we might call the normative use or a perfect rule of life. That is, how do we, once we have become the people of God, how do we live? what Francis Schaeffer used to say, how then do we live? You see, the law is not opposed to the gospel in the sense of at odds with it. The law is opposed to the gospel in the sense that we can't keep it apart from it. But because of the gospel, we are enabled to keep it. We are enabled to step out in obedience, and that's the rule of faith. So the law functions as a rule to help us understand how we are to live as the people of God. One thing you'll notice in verse 8, he says, according to scripture. Now, whenever you see that, and usually in our English translations, it will be followed with a quotation. One thing that's been very helpful in my own study of God's Word is every time I find that, that formula or a quotation from the Old Testament, I look up the reference, and then I go back to the Old Testament, I see where they're quoting from, and I'll underline it. And I'll make a little notation in the side, and I'll put James 2, verse 8. And then I'll underline it in James, Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18. And I call this an apostolic study Bible, because what it does is, one, it familiarizes us with where the authors of the New Testament are quoting from. But two, how are they quoting from it? How are they interpreting the Old Testament? Because oftentimes when they say one little verse, they're importing a whole context that's behind that verse. For instance, Leviticus 19.18, which James quotes from, is in a section in Leviticus that has to do with loving your neighbor. And it outlines all of the different ways that the people of God might apply that law to their lives. Caring for the poor by not gleaning all of the crops. being impartial in judgment when they come to trial with one another. Over and over again, there's all these laws that are outlining how do we as the people of God relate to one another? How do we live in community? We need to know that because we're sinful, right? And we need something to point us, one, in the right direction, and two, to keep us from doing what's wrong. So we read in Leviticus 19.18, that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. I am the Lord. And that means that it comes with the authority of God behind it. And we know that that statement, we know from the New Testament, that that's a summation of the second table of the law. Now, the second table of the law, perhaps Pastor Steve has explained that to you, is that those commands from five to 10, and they relate to our horizontal relationships between brothers and sisters, between neighbors, How do we love one another? The first table of the law is one through four, and that relates to how do we relate to God? The summation of the entire second table is love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is asked by a lawyer, what is the greatest commandment? And he quotes Deuteronomy 6.5, which says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And then he quotes from Leviticus 19.18. And he says, on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophet. That is, it's a summary of everything that comes after it. The entire Old Testament can be summed up in love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else is just working out of that. How do we do it? That's what the Torah, the law, the five books of Moses are. They help the people of God take those 10 commandments and apply them to their situation. Now, our situation is not theirs. We're not wandering nomads, shepherds in Palestine. We're a people of God in the 21st century with Facebook and cell phones and all of the challenges that come with our modern life. How do we take the law of God and apply it to love our neighbor? And that's the question that we have to ask ourselves. all of the law can be summarized in those two statements. So what does James mean by royal law? Royal law means law that comes from the king. So in this situation, he's referring to Jesus, Jesus as our king, and the law as taught and fulfilled by him. That is everything Jesus taught, He took from the law and He applied it to the people of God. You see, just like the people in James' text, just his audience, we also make hierarchies of sin, right? We have sins that are, these are really, really bad. And then we have sins that, well, we keep them around. I mean, they're bad, but, you know, it's just part of my personality. I just do these things. They're respectable sins, really. But James says he has none of that. Look with me at verse nine. He says, but, So remember, he introduced some skepticism when he said, really. But then in verse 9, he says, but if you show partiality, you're committing sin and are convicted by the law as a transgressor. So you see, somehow there's a disconnect between what they're thinking they're fulfilling the royal law, which is love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. But they're showing partiality. See, they've allowed that sin to creep into their community. such that they can make distinctions. Remember, they can say to the poor man, hey, you go stand back there or you sit at my feet. But the rich man, they give the seat of honor. You know, I can imagine them taking the chair off the stage, putting it down there. Hey, come sit here. They're showing partiality and James says you cannot. You cannot fulfill the royal law according to scripture which says love your neighbor and show partiality. Those two things are not consistent. But we do this. We establish hierarchies. We say, well, yes, I'm fulfilling the law of God, but don't talk about that. Don't talk about when I show partiality. That's just what we do as a community. Yeah, of course, we just treat the rich better. They have more to offer us. Why is it that showing partiality is breaking the law of God? Because they seem to think that they're fulfilling it, but look in verse 10. He says, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said do not commit adultery also said do not murder. If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. What James is doing What we do often is we want to piecemeal out the law. I'll obey that, I'll obey that, I'll obey that, not that one, that one, that one, yeah, all those good. But I'm not doing that. I'm going to show partiality. But James is saying the law is one. Why is the law one? How can you be convicted of the whole law when you only break one commandment? Well, that's because the law of God is not just some arbitrary standards that we put in place to keep things running smoothly. The law of God is an expression of God's character. That is who God is. And we respond by obeying that law because of who God is. If you would look at Leviticus 19 verse 2, the beginning of that section before James quotes verse 18, it says, you shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy. The pattern for our holiness, the reason for our obedience is the character of God. he's perfect in all his ways and he shows no partiality and so we also are not to show partiality because the law is one because God is one for he who said do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. Do you see that? He's saying that the law is one because God is one. You cannot tear God apart. You cannot separate the goodness of God from the mercy of God, from His justice, from His righteousness, from His holiness. This is the doctrine of God's simplicity. He just is all of His attributes. He just is good and just and merciful and holy and righteous. And none of them can be separated out. That is who God is. If you were to do the same thing with the law, you break the whole law. Because it's one. It's one. Well, how then do we live? James in verse 12 finally gets to some imperatives when he says, so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. The law of liberty is just the law that gives freedom. the law that leads to freedom. You see we often think of law, we think of it as something that hampers us, something that binds us up. You look at all the looting and all the rioting and all of the protesting against laws and they've got it exactly backwards. The laws are not there to bind us but to give us freedom. I quoted Thomas Manton earlier in this sermon series and he says this about law. He says, duty is the greatest liberty and sin is the greatest bondage. You cannot have a worse restraint than to be left to walk in the ways of your own hearts. So how do we live? We live every day as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. That is, we live every day in light of eternity, in light of judgment. There will come a time when we will all stand before God and give account, Jesus says, for every idle word. That is a fearful, fearful thing. There was, in a past generation, an end times madness concerned with the last things. But really, the scriptures all document the last things so that we know how to live now. Worrying about the end time is so that we worry about how we are as the people of God right now, today. How are we loving our neighbor? There's a country song by, I believe, Tim McGraw called Live Like You Were Dying. And in the song, he describes a man who gets a diagnosis of, I think, cancer, and he has very short to live. And so he sets out to live his life with gusto, right? He wants to, if he only has a few moments left, he wants to experience everything life has to offer. And in the chorus, after recounting some thrill-seeking, he says this, and I loved deeper, and I spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying. And he said, someday, I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying. And the point is that until he recognized that his life was a short, it was a breath, it was just a moment and then it was over, he took it for granted. He didn't love deeply. He didn't speak sweetly. He didn't give forgiveness because he thought he had forever. But brothers and sisters in Christ, your life is a moment and it's gone. Why would you hold on to petty grievances? Why would you hold on to anger? Why would you treat someone based upon their appearance differently than you would treat another? So speak and so act as those who would be judged under the perfect law of liberty. Live like you were dying because you are. and you will stand before God and give an account. Love that God calls us to is not emotional or sentimental. It's not just sending I love you's. I'm just sending out I love you's to you. It's tangible, real life and practical, and it's costly. If it's cheap and easy, it's not love. The kind of love that I'm talking about is the kind of love that Jesus poured out on the cross when He gave everything, His last full measure, as He poured out His blood in sacrifice for you. That's the kind of love that lays down His life for another. John says, we love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. And the truth is not in him. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. these things can't go together. You cannot fulfill the royal law and not love your neighbor. The law is one because God is one and in order to fulfill it we must love our neighbor. Now worldly love, we must distinguish between what the world calls love and what scripture calls as love. Because The world hates condemnation and judgment. As brothers and sisters in Christ, it's not loving to allow each other to continue in sin or excuse it. No, we have a responsibility to go to our brother and sister and correct them lovingly, pointing them to the law and saying, brother, do you not see this in your life? And I'm not talking about going to unbelievers and saying, hey, you need to repent for sleeping around and living with your girlfriend when you're not married. That's getting the cart before the horse. First, they need the gospel. First, they need hearts that are transformed and changed. Then, we can worry about their behavior. Often, we really do a lot of damage to those who are struggling with sexual bondage because we go right after that sin. Maybe homosexuality. And we say, that needs to be repented of. And rightly so, it does. But unbelievers need to come to Christ before they can repent. They need to be called by His Spirit and their hearts changed before any behavior will ever change. I think we as a church have done great damage to people because we don't start with the gospel. We don't start with the good news. We bring the law first. It's not the same with brothers and sisters in Christ. Those who profess faith in Christ, then we point them to God's Word and we say, have you not read? This is how we treat one another. This is how you love. Love is costly. It's not cheap. It means opening your home. It means sharing your food, money, clothes. It means giving your time and energy. It means being inconvenienced. It's not just for the nice neighbors, the ones who you resemble or get along with or could do benefit to you. It's to all your neighbors, those in your household first. those next door to you, behind you? Do you know your neighbors? Do you know their names? Do you pray for them? Do you look for opportunities to serve them as vehicles and gateways for the gospel? How do we as Christians fulfill the royal law? By loving our neighbor as ourself. But James doesn't stop there, he says, also by showing mercy. Look in verse 13, he says, for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. And this proverb-like statement, which James loves, mercy triumphs over judgment, we often don't think in terms of that because we look out at the world and we see that mercy doesn't seem to be triumphing. We see animosity and anger. We see hatred of one another. We see bitterness. But we don't see mercy triumphing. And so we read statements like that and we think, yeah, I mean, I guess when we get to heaven, mercy triumphs over judgment. And we have to remember that the entirety of Scripture is the story of mercy triumphing over judgment. When man sinned in the garden and turned its back on God, breaking it, covenant, by disobeying Him, what does God do? He mercifully provides a way. The greatest act of mercy triumphing over judgment is the cross of Jesus Christ. How can God be a God of wrath? and a God of mercy. How can these two things be together in one person? How can God be both just and the justifier? In Christ. In Christ is where mercy triumphs over judgment. For there we see the wrath of God absorbed for all of our sins, because they were all laid upon Him. And we see His righteousness and love flowing out to all of His people as His righteousness is imputed to them by faith. And we, receiving a verdict of not guilty, stand acquitted before a judge who is perfectly just. Not because we did anything, but because we trusted in Christ who did it all. Christ is the embodiment of mercy triumphing over judgment. Ephesians 2, verse 4-5 says, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. If that's true for you, if you've been shown amazing mercy at the cross, how can you judge people by their appearance and show partiality? Jesus tells the parable of a man who owed a million dollars. A million dollars. He owed a thousand talents, which is 20 years of wages for a laborer. 20 years work he owed. And the king brought him before him and he said, pay, you need to pay. And the man begged and pleaded for his life and for his wife and children. And the king had mercy and forgave him. And he went out, that same servant who was forgiven, he went out. He found a fellow servant who owed him 200 bucks. And he grabbed him by the neck and shook him. Pay! Pay now! And he refused to have mercy and sold him to the jailer till he could pay his 200 bucks, after just having been forgiven a lifetime of work. And Jesus says, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? Jesus is showing the absurd nature of our holding on to petty faults. Jesus is showing the absurdity of us not showing mercy. Because you have been forgiven much, you must forgive much. What does that mean? That means we're to be people who are merciful. That means we're to be people who keep short accounts. Are you constantly going around with a list in your head? Oh, I know what that person did. Five years ago, they did this to me. I know what that person did two years ago. She took my knitting needles. I Know what that guy did. He's still got my chainsaw. He still has it and We've got this list and we're working through it and we're sizing up the room every time we come in there because we've got a list of grievances and Have you not been forgiven everything? Don't you owe your whole life as payment for And yet a chainsaw and yet knitting needles will be the thing that divides us as a church. Because we don't keep short accounts. That thing gets emptied out every night. You don't go down with anger to bed. We keep short accounts. How do you fulfill the royal law? By showing mercy. God has shown you so much mercy in Christ Jesus. We respond by doing the same. It's impossible for us to show partiality. It's impossible for someone to come in here who looks different than me and say, you sit here while you sit over here. Partiality is inconsistent with the gospel, and it breaks the royal law of God, the perfect rule of faith. How do we live? We live as people who love our neighbor and people who show mercy because God has loved us and God has shown us mercy. And we respond because we're people made in his image, remade in the image of Christ. And so we respond by loving our neighbor and showing mercy. Remember, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. There's no room for distinctions. There's no hierarchies. There's no super spiritual and not super spiritual and will I. It's level one in Christ Jesus. Don't. put arbitrary distinctions in place because it's inconsistent with the gospel and it breaks the law of God. So how do we fulfill the royal law? Only by the Spirit of God working in us to bring about the obedience of faith. And we love God's law. We look at it. We read it daily. We delight in it like the psalmist. And we learn how do we love our neighbor. And then we go and we apply it. How do I love my neighbor? You try every day. Try in your household. Try in your marriage. Try with your children. And then move out from there. Your neighborhood, your community, this church. We respond by loving our neighbor and by showing mercy. Amen? Let's pray. Father, thank you for the great love that you have shown to us. While we were yet sinners, dead in our sins and trespasses, you made us alive together with Christ and have seated us in heavenly places. How can we, who have been forgiven so much, who have been shown so much mercy, how can we respond by showing partiality? We know it's inconsistent with the gospel. We know it breaks your law. Father, we ask for the strength and the ability to carry out what you have called us to be as your people, loving our neighbor and showing mercy. For we pray this in the strong name of Jesus, and amen.