How you look is very important in our society. Like it or not, we tend to judge people by how they look. We are a society with egalitarian ideals. That means that we think everyone should have the same fair shake as everyone else. Our Declaration of Independence states that we believe that all men are created equal. But the truth is, we judge each other and even ourselves by how we look. We dress for success. We dress to fit in. We are caught in the tension between saying that how people look does not matter and the reality that it does.

When this judging—showing favoritism—exists in the church, God calls it sin. God does not show favoritism. In our passage, we are told My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus, don’t show favoritism. He talks about favoring those who appear to have the wealth and influence that we think would benefit us.

Do we need money in the church? Of course. Do we want to have people who can give money to support our ministries? Of course. Does that mean that we want to target people of wealth and influence and neglect those who don’t have as much? Of course not. Everyone has been given gifts by God and everyone is used by God in his kingdom.

More than ever we cannot trust in our wealth to always be there to support us. Our trust must be in God alone, with thanksgiving for what he has allowed us to earn and have. Most all of us feel the economic uncertainty in the finance and insurance industry, in the airline industry, in the economy in general as we continue to dig out from the catastrophe that happened two weeks ago. Now more than ever, we must lean on the Lord to provide all our needs according to his riches in glory.

V 8 If you really keep the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself." You are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. What James calls the royal law is found in the Old Testament and in the words of Jesus. Jesus said that the whole law could be wrapped up in two commands: love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we are loving those created in the image of God. When we neglect to love our neighbor as our self because we don’t think they will benefit us much (but rather go after the ones we think will benefit us) then we show favoritism. And we become lawbreakers.

How can we learn to love each other? A good start is to pray for each other. Love comes from God and we are in contact with God in a special way when we pray. Prayer is one of the means of grace. Prayer places our heart open before God’s heart. As we pray for people, we will be more aware of God’s love for them. And our love to them will grow.

How should we then live? We are not to show favoritism to those who we think will benefit us. We need to love one another from the heart and fulfill the royal law. In v 12 we are told Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom. See also 1:25: But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

The law that gives freedom is the gospel itself. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one can atone for his own sin. We keep heaping up offences before a holy and righteous God. If we try to follow the law of good works, we will not be free, because we will not be good enough. Even if we did our best, we would fall short, because our selfishness, pride and lust take over so often. The law of trying to live up to a standard of holiness is not the law that gives freedom.

But the gospel of grace is different. Sin is bad, it tells us. But rather than leave us to despair, it tells us of a Savior. Jesus, the righteous Son of God died for us, while we were yet sinners. Jesus’ pain paid for our sin. We can be righteous in God’s sight because of Jesus, when we receive him as our Lord and Savior.

When we receive forgiveness, we receive something else—the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit uses the Word of God to change us. Something remarkable happens. We are not just forgiven in a legal sense in God’s eyes, but he makes us more like Jesus as the Word of God becomes alive in us. We change. We grow. Our hearts deepen with the love of Christ. Our hearts that have received mercy become merciful. Mercy triumphs over Judgement