James 2

[image by -regi]

Favoring the rich doesn’t make sense

My fellow Christians, as you depend on our spectacular master, Jesus the Chosen One, you should avoid harboring any attitudes of favoritism. Imagine that two people walk into your church and one is wearing gold jewelry and expensive clothing, while the other is a beggar wearing filthy clothes. If you tend to the rich man and say, “Come take this good seat,” but you tell the poor man, “Please stand over there or sit on the floor,” then doesn’t that divided mentality make you like a judge with faulty reasoning? Please hear me out, my cherished fellow Christians: didn’t God choose the beggars of this world to be rich in dependence and to inherit the empire he promised to those who love him? And here you are insulting those beggars! Aren’t the rich people the ones who rule over you and drag you into court themselves? Aren’t they the ones who belittle the good name you’ve become associated with?

Follow God’s edict & show mercy to others

If you carry out the king’s edict—which is outlined as “cherishing others as highly as you cherish yourself”—then you are doing well. But if you are biased, then your efforts are insufficient, and the edict exposes you as a criminal. Even if you follow the majority of the edict but stumble over one section, that still makes you guilty of breaking it. The same God who said, “Don’t cheat on your spouse” also said “Don’t murder people”. So even if you never cheat on your spouse, if you murder someone, then you’ve still broken the edict. So speak and act like you’ll be put on trial by the edict that outlines freedom. If you don’t show others mercy, then you yourself will receive a merciless sentence, and mercy can overrule an unfavorable sentence.

Depending on God is useless if it doesn’t result in action

My fellow Christians, what good is it if you think you depend on God but your actions don’t show it? Can that fix you? If you know someone who needs food or clothing and you tell them, “I hope you stay warm and don’t get too hungry. Take care!” but you don’t give them what their body needs, then what good is that? If dependence on God has no action, then it is dead.

But then some might argue:

“You have the dependence while I have the actions. You can go ahead and demonstrate your dependence without worrying about the actions, and I’ll demonstrate my actions to show that I’m depending on God.”

If that’s your thought process, then at least you believe that God is one. That’s good! …But even the demons believe that—and tremble. But are you senseless people humble enough to recognize that dependence without action is worthless?

When our patriarch Abraham was accredited with righteousness, didn’t that take place because of his actions when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You can see how his dependence on God was working together alongside his actions. The follow-through of his actions are what made his dependence on God complete, fulfilling the scripture that said, “Abraham depended on God which was credited to him as righteousness,” and then he was called God’s friend. So you can see that people are accredited as righteous by actions and not only dependence. Similarly, when you remember Rahab the prostitute, wasn’t it her actions that accredited her when she protected Israelite spies and got them out safely? In the exact same way that a body without a spirit is dead, dependance without action is also dead.