We live in a very judgy time. Social media that was supposed to make us connected to so many others, has given permission to be very judgy. Most social media posts have a like or dislike or thumbs up thumbs down. We are called to judge whether something is good or not by a quick half second glance

Online dating is this one steroid. You flick left or right according to a person’s look, without actually getting to know them. We judge on our own arbitrary sense of what we like at the time. Recent studies have shown that this can be devastating to young people, who post, and then wait to have their action approved of.

And because people do not want to be judged all the time, they close themselves off, not revealing who they truly are. It leads to an epidemic of loneliness.

In 2012, we see a sharp rise in mental health issues for people between the ages of 12 to 18. This is when the smart phone hit the market. The phone is built on a machine algorithm that increases its activity as you do, and forms around your parameters. So, things that you like appear more often, and things that you don’t disappear. It becomes a safe place, albeit an echo chamber, reinforcing what you believe is right. It develops hate for things that do not agree with you. It fractures relationships.

Is this what we want our community to look like?

James gives us another option of what community should look like.  Today, we’re going to see in this passage he says here’s what kind of community you ought to be, why you ought to be it, and how we can become that kind of community.

1. What kind of community you ought to be

 What kind of community are Christians supposed to be? The answer is a community of justice and mercy. So, in verse 1“My brothers, who are believers in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favouritism.” What’s that? Well, down in verse 4 it says it’s discrimination.

Inside the church, inside the Christian community, there should not be the favouring of one social group or one social class or one socioeconomic group or one cultural group over another, because if there is, he says, verse 4 “Then, have you not just become judges with evil thoughts?” which actually is a term that means judges that take bribes. He’s saying that if inside the church you privilege one social class or one culture group over another, you’re just like an official that takes a bribe. You are guilty of perverting justice. That’s injustice.

What’s really important to see, though, is inside the church, what he’s talking about are not illegalities. If you want to get an idea of what James is saying, what kind of community we’re supposed to be, there’s a great example of it in Acts 6. People read it and don’t realise this is what it’s a picture of a community of justice.

There were two cultural groups in the early church in Jerusalem. There were the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebrew-speaking Jews. Hellenistic Jews spoke Greek. They understood Greek. They thought in Greek; it was their heart language, and therefore, they were more cosmopolitan in their sensibilities, as it were. They were something of a different culture than the Hebrew-speaking Jews.

Inside the church, there was grating upon each other, especially in one regard. There was something called the daily distribution. The daily distribution was a common fund Christians gave to, out of which members of the church who did not have an income were supported, especially widows.

Acts 6 tells us the Greek-speaking Jews were complaining because they said their widows were getting shortchanged. What do the apostles do? Because they were the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. Well, in Acts 6 it tells us they appointed a whole new class of leaders over the daily distribution. What you can’t tell, necessarily, when you read it through in English, is that all of the people who were appointed had Greek names, whereas the apostles all had Hebrew names. Here’s what the apostles were doing.

They certainly knew this wasn’t a kind of overt thing. It wasn’t like the Hebrew Jews were sitting around saying, “What can we do to shortchange those Greek widows?” No. That’s not how these kinds of cultural clashes happen in a church. There are always different perceptions. There are claims and counterclaims and complaints, and both sides, very often, feel put-upon. Do you know what the apostles did?  They empowered a disempowered group. They said, “We must take pains to make sure all groups are treated with equity here.”

What they did was they raised up a group of leaders out of a particular cultural group that was really not being very well represented. So, they created advocates for their people. It takes ingenuity, it takes creativity, to be a community of justice inside the Christian community, but we are to take pains to be that. That’s what James is saying, we must be a community of justice.

Secondly, we’re to be a community of mercy. Near the end of the passage, it says in verse 13, “… judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.” What is that? “You must be a merciful people. You’ll be judged if you’re not a merciful person.” What does that mean?

In the New Testament the word mercy could have that general sense, but it can also have a more specific sense. When Jesus was walking by in the Gospels and two blind men cried out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” they weren’t saying, “Jesus, be nice to us.” They also weren’t asking, “Please forgive us our sins.” They were saying, “We have a physical need. We’re blind, and we hear you can do miraculous medical intervention. We have a material need, and we want you to address it.”

Is he talking in the general sense of being kind and forgiving, or is he talking in the more specific sense? Well, we know, because look at verse 15. “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physicals needs, what good is it?” There it is.

It is saying God will judge us as a congregation if we just talk about love, and we don’t put our money where our mouth is, and we don’t put our bodies where our mouth is, and actually help people address practical needs, inside the church and outside. If you don’t care about the poor, God will judge you; that’s what it’s saying. “Judgment will be without mercy for those who have shown no mercy.” Pretty strong stuff, but there it is. We are to be a community sensitive to, radically committed to, justice and mercy.

2. Why we should become a community like this

Look. Verse 1. “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favouritism.” “… as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus …” What’s that? Literally, the word glory there comes after Jesus, and it’s actually saying, “Jesus is the Lord of glory.”

The word glory in the Bible doesn’t just mean brightness or something. The glorious is the important, the significant.  To say Jesus is the Lord of glory is to say he and what he wants and your relationship with him is the supremely important thing.

See, he’s connecting this with the rest of the chapter. He says if you understand the glory of God and the glory of Jesus Christ, you will be people of justice and mercy. How is that?

In fact, what he does in verses 1–4 is he says, “If you treat poor people, if you treat a person who comes in and who smells bad …” We’ll get back to that. “If you don’t treat people of certain social groups or certain groups as equals, if you don’t see every human being as infinitely valuable and of great dignity and worth, you don’t understand glory.”

He’s harkening back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3, because Genesis says every human being is made in the image of the glory of God. Because we’re made in the image of the glorious God, Genesis 9 says you shouldn’t murder. Why? You shouldn’t murder human beings because they’re made in the image of God. They’re precious. They’re infinitely valuable. They have God’s glory in them, in a way. So, you mustn’t murder.

If you insult anybody, if you treat the poor man as if he’s somehow less important (“Oh, go sit over there”), you do not understand that every human being is made in the image of God. How important is this?

In Western civilisation, this idea that every human being has rights, no matter how old or young, no matter how weak, no matter how poor, no matter what racial group, what ethnic group, what cultural group … Every human being has rights, and no one can violate them.  Does that sound like common sense to you?

It is not common sense. You say, “Well, everybody believes that.” Well, maybe a lot of people believe that now, but it’s not common sense at all; it’s a new development in human thought.  Where did it come from?

For example, Aristotle.  Aristotle said when you look at some groups of people (this is Aristotle now), you can just tell they’re born to be slaves. That’s Aristotle. So, you say, “Well, isn’t it common sense that we all believe that every human being is infinitely valuable and has dignity and rights?  Nobody should be a slave. That’s common sense.” No, it’s not.

It is not common sense to say every single human being, no matter how weak, no matter how poor, no matter how old or young, no matter who they are, that they all have rights. Where did it come from?

It came from Christian jurists in the Middle Ages meditating and reflecting on what the Bible says are the implications of every human being in the image of God. They were thinking, “Well, what are the implications of that?” and they came up with the idea of universal human rights, and until they did, that idea was not common sense.

So, Martin Luther King Jr. gives you an example of this.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his work The American Dream, says, “You see, the founding fathers were influenced by the Bible. The concept of the imago dei, ‘the image of God,’ is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. And this gives everyone a uniqueness, a worth; it gives dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: there are no gradations in the image of God.”

Then he says, “Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God.” Do you see Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “Well, the reason you have to respect the rights of every human being is because it’s just common sense”? Is that what he says, “Everybody just knows that”? No. He’s doing theology. He’s saying the reason why we know this is because human beings are made in the image of God.

3. How we can become that kind of community

Here are three quick ways we can become a community of justice and mercy … identity, poverty, beauty.

First, identity. Do you see the place, in verse 7, where he says you have a noble name? That’s Christian identity. No matter how poor you are, no matter how destitute you are, if you marry into, or are adopted into, a wealthy, prominent family, it changes your status like that. When you become a Christian, you’re baptised into the noble name, the ultimate name … the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

When James says in order to create a community of justice and mercy that we should look at our identity, this is the second time he does that. The first time was in 1:9 and 10.

In 1:9 and 10 James makes the paradoxical statement. He says the poor Christian ought to boast in his high position, but the rich Christian ought to boast in his low position.

What is that?  If you believe you’re saved by your good works, then either you say, “Well, if you’re a good person, God loves you, and he’s blessing you,” or, “If you’re a bad person, God rejects you.” So, in that framework, you’re either a good person or a bad person; you’re either high in your position or low. But the minute you become a Christian, if you believe the gospel.

The gospel is in yourself you deserve nothing but rejection, but you can be saved not by your works, but Jesus’ works, which means the minute you say, “Father, accept me because of what Jesus did,” and God accepts you because he lived the life you should have lived, and he died the death you should have died, because you didn’t live the life you should have lived, and he fulfilled all the requirements of salvation for you…

Then, the minute you become a Christian, at that minute, you have a low position in yourself (you deserve to be rejected), but you have a high position in Christ.

The poor Christians are both low and high; they’re sinners saved by grace. Successful Christians, you are both low and high; sinners, but adopted and saved by grace.”

To the degree you create a gospel-shaped identity, that degree will have a community of justice and mercy.

Secondly, poverty. It’s a powerful passage, isn’t it? It’s a powerful passage. The second thing we have to realise is in verse 5, “Has not God chosen the poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom?” What is that? That is a simple fact. The simple fact is, throughout history, in general, the people who have embraced the gospel have not been the well-off and the powerful, but the simple and the humble and the poor.

Why is it in general that the poor tend to turn to the gospel? Well, first, if you believe you’re saved by works, that means you earn it. “If I live a good life, then God will bless me.” That’s being middle-class in spirit. Middle-class people say, “I don’t want any handouts. I don’t want any help. I can do it myself.”  That’s middle-class in spirit. The gospel says the only way you’ll ever be saved is if you throw yourself on the Bleeding Charity of God, because God’s charity took the bleeding of Jesus.

See, when poor people hear you must admit that you are hopeless and that you have to be saved only by throwing yourself on Charity, they say, “Oh, I know how to do that.” When middle-class people hear, “You have to admit you’re a hopeless sinner, a helpless sinner. You need to be born again, washed in the blood of the Lamb,” they say, “That’s offensive to me.”

Yeah, because you’re middle-class in spirit, and spiritually speaking, that means you’re lost. You’ll never ask for grace because you feel as though, “I don’t need really it. I’m not that bad.” As a result, in general, humanly speaking, the poor know and understand the gospel better than the well-off.

So why do we talk about Charity? Why is it that James is actually saying, “… faith without works is dead also”? This is the bottom line, and this is the end of the sermon. “… faith without works …”  What are the works now? It says if you have gospel faith, but it doesn’t result in works, then it’s not gospel faith. The works are mercy and justice. That’s what the whole chapter is about.

So, James has the audacity to say, “If a poor man wearing shabby clothes …” That word shabby means revolting … urine, faeces. Revolting. That’s what it says. “If a poor man walks into your assembly and you say, ‘Sit at my feet. Sit over there,’ and you’re not courteous and gracious and you have them sit next to you and you treat them as an equal, you don’t understand the gospel.” That’s what he’s saying.

Because the gospel is you look like that to God. Your righteousness is as a filthy rag. You’re revolting. If you have not gotten to that level of belief about your spiritual need, you’re middle-class in spirit. When somebody like that walks in that’s that different from you, you’re not going to treat them as an equal.

That’s not the only reason why gospel faith turns you into a person who is open-minded and reaches out to people, especially the poor. It’s not just that you know you are a poor man in God’s eyes, that you look like that, you’re revolting, but we know how Jesus saved us. He became a poor man. He was born in a manger.

Isaiah 52 and 53, those great servant songs say, “His visage was so marred, he didn’t even look human; he was so beaten to a pulp. He had no beauty that we should desire him. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. By his wounds we’re healed.” Jesus became the leper. Jesus became the poor man.

He became the revolting one, and he was cast out. What that means is he was cast out so you could smell like a rose. He lost his glory that you could have the noble name. He was judged so you could have God’s mercy. If you know that, you’re going to do justice and mercy, not because you have, because you want to.

Thirdly, beauty. Have you seen the beauty of what Jesus Christ has done for you to save you?  Losing his glory, that’s why he’s so glorious. See, the word glorious means beautiful. Do you see the beauty of what Jesus has done for you, so that you want to reflect it, so that you want to participate in it?  Then, you will become people who can build a community of justice and mercy in this city.  Let’s pray.