Sunday Service Online Stream

This page has the notes for the sermon and links for songs used during children’s music time each week. Scroll down to the bottom for the children’s info.

A Respectable Sin

James: Faith Works
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Pastor Jojo Ma

 

8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 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. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

If we care about God’s character, we will not dismiss the sin of partiality. If we care about God’s Word, we will not see partiality as a respectable sin. If we care about God’s law of love, we will not consider partiality an acceptable sin.

I.          Partiality violates the law of Christ [vv8-9]
II.        Partiality is not a respectable sin [vv10-11]
III.       Partiality will have its day of judgment [vv12-13]

I.         Partiality violates the law of Christ [vv8-9]
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

By emphasizing the law of love as a royal love, we must feel the King’s authority in this law, this call to love. We as new covenant beleivers are under the law of our King Jesus. And his law, this royal authoritative law is a law of love; we are compelled to be lovers at heart, lovers of God and of people.

Loving God and neighbor is an imperative, a command. Loving yourself is indicative, it’s already done, it’s assumed. Jesus is not commanding us to love ourselves.

So love of self is assumed, not commanded. True love focuses on God and others, not ourselves. True love dies to self and lives for others.

9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

II.        Partiality is not a respectable sin [vv10-11]
10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 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.

Dr. J Alec Motyer and the Logic of Scripture

You are not truly loving according to the royal law. You have broken the law itself as a whole by participating in that one vice.

11 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.

Theologian Doug Moo: “If we view the law as a series of individual commandments, we could assume that disobedience of a particular commandment incurred guilt for that commandment only. But, in fact, the individual commandments are part and parcel of one indivisible whole, because they reflect the will of the one Lawgiver. To violate a commandment is to disobey God Himself and render a person guilty before Him.”

For the apostle James and for all the New Testament apostles, it is the law of Christ that sums up everything in the old covenant. We are not to focus on not commiting adultery, we are to focus on loving Christ and being a faithful bride to him.

III.      Partiality will have its day of judgment [vv12-13]
12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Salvation is by grace, judgment is by works. The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Cor 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

True Christians show mercy, fake Christians show little to no mercy.

Jesus said he who has been forgiven much, loves much. The flip side is true also: he who has not been forgiven much, loves little. That is the life of unbelief.

I.          Partiality violates the law of Christ [vv8-9]
II.        Partiality is not a respectable sin [vv10-11]
III.       Partiality will have its day of judgment [vv12-13]