Happy are those who respect the Lord and obey him. You will enjoy what you work for, and you will be blessed with good things. Your wife will give you many children, like a vine that produces much fruit. Your children will bring you much good, like olive branches that produce many olives. This is how the one who respects the Lord will be blessed. May the Lord bless you from Mount Zion; may you enjoy the good things of Jerusalem all your life. May you see your grandchildren.
Let there be peace in Israel. (New Century Version)
Obedience and blessing go together like a hand in a glove. Holy Scripture consistently connects the call to obey the Lord with blessing from G-d. Indeed, in carefully observing wise and biblical instruction, one will typically enjoy divine favor and approval.
Keep in mind, however, this is not a math equation. Like 2+2=4 there are folks who expect a neat linear connection between their obedience and their blessing. In math theology, when a woman is unable to have children, or a child goes astray from their heritage, the parent concludes that they themselves must have been unfaithful to G-d’s law or are being punished. Conversely, with children who grow to be good citizens and respectful persons, the parents might conclude it was because of their superior observance to the spiritual life.
In both cases, parents take too much credit, either for a child’s wandering or success. As for kids going astray, even G-d had prodigal children, so cut ourselves some slack. As for children who maintain faithfulness, a lot of factors went into who they are. I suppose it is only natural to quickly assume we have far more control of than we really do.
This all cuts to the heart of biblical interpretation. If all Scripture is read literally, then we will likely see the Bible as a math equation where doing and saying the right things gets a predictable result of blessing. Yet, this mistakenly views promise and proverb as the same thing, and divine work with one person or group will be precisely the same for another. The wisdom literature of Scripture, which includes the psalms, were never designed as prescriptive decree but rather as the sage approach for work, worship, and family.
“Faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Today’s psalm communicates the path of happiness coming through love and respect for G-d. It neither promises lots of kids, ensures money, nor guarantees smooth sailing. Rather, when one lives each day being cognizant and observant to center everything around the divine, then blessing and happiness will tend to follow.
Blessings and benedictions are given to sustain us in hope and confidence. The best things in life usually come through faith and family. So, when we choose to walk with G-d and travel down the ethical road, then life becomes full of peace and prosperity – perhaps not always in the manner we expect, yet blessing, nonetheless.
Humanity is hard-wired for blessing, for a steady diet of encouragement, acceptance, and approval from G-d and others. When this is withheld from us, unhappiness, even despair begins to settle. Giving and receiving blessing is at the heart of being fully human and alive. Our work and family life will likely be miserable if blessing is absent. Yet, with blessing, we have a sustainable form of happiness and enjoyment.
Most every good thing in life is obtained through a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears. Obedience is no easy task. It typically requires courage and is complicated in its application to life situations. Here are a few ways to maintain an obedient life to G-d:
Devote yourself to the daily reading of Scripture. One cannot obey that which is neither known nor remembered. A steady regimen of good old fashioned Bible reading is the best way to refresh the mind and incline the heart toward biblical commands. (Psalm 119:57-64)
Pray to listen and pay attention. There is more to prayer than petitions and praise. We must also practice silence and solitude so that we can give focused attention to hearing G-d, thus, obeying the Spirit. (Jeremiah 7:21-26)
Practice repentance. Being aware of our guilt and shame, acknowledging it, and naming it before G-d is the path of change – keeping us on the narrow road of obedience. (1 John 1:5-10)
Take the long view. Not all obedience is rewarded in this life but in the life to come. Perseverance and patience is needed to sustain obedience over the long haul of life. And, in the end, there are heavenly blessings awaiting us. (Hebrews 11:36-12:3)
Eternal God, by whose power we are created and by whose love we are redeemed, guide, strengthen, and bless us through your Spirit so that we may give ourselves to your service and live today in love to one another and to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
Brothers and sisters do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (New International Version)
Resolve to Come Near to God
God is longingly looking out the window watching and waiting for us to come home (Luke 15:11-32). And when we are seen, God will run and come near to us.
We can come to God morning, noon, and night; when things are good and when they are bad. God gives generously to all without finding fault if we will but come near. (James 1:5)
When my oldest daughter was a small child, her bike was stolen. When she discovered it was gone, we sat down together in the backyard and came to God and prayed. I barely finished praying, we both looked up, and a police cruiser pulled up in the alley behind our house. The officer rolled down his window and said, “Hey, are you missing a bike?”
We hopped in the back of the cruiser and the officer took us to a place where someone had ditched the bike. It was a tremendous lesson to both my daughter and I that when we come to God, God comes to us. I realize life doesn’t always work that way, yet we can be assured God listens, hears, and will respond.
Resolve to Wash Your Hands
We cannot approach God with blood on our hands. We need to come squarely facing our guilt and shame. God wants us to admit our guilt, confess it as such, receive forgiveness, and deal with matters of restitution, reconciliation, or making amends.
Look at what this very experience of godly sadness has produced in you: such enthusiasm, what a desire to clear yourselves of blame, such indignation, what fear, what purpose, such concern, what justice!(2 Corinthians 7:11, CEB)
Resolve to Purify Your Heart
Whereas the previous resolution was more external, this one addresses the inner person, the heart. Not only do our actions need to be cleaned up through washing our hands (repentance) our attitudes need cleansing, as well.
Our hearts cannot be devoted to two masters. Double-minded persons need to become single-minded with pure, not mixed, motives.
“The man who tries to walk two roads will split his pants.”
African Proverb
Resolve to Grieve
God blesses those people who grieve. They will find comfort! (Matthew 5:4, CEV)
Any significant change or loss creates grief. And it is necessary to grieve. Grief is not an event but a process. Everyone’s grief is intensely personal and has its own timetable. It is not crazy, selfish, or unspiritual to grieve. In fact, it is biblical.
The only way to get on the other side of grief is by telling your story. Sharing with each other, giving testimony to God’s grace, and expressing emotion is important. There cannot be healing apart from grief and lament.
Resolve to Mourn
Mourning is the emotional response to how terrible our fallen world is and can be, and how much we really need God. It is to see that sin in all of its foulness and degradation is horrible and destroys everything it touches.
People who do not or cannot mourn are hard-hearted. They need deep spiritual transformation. By his wounds we are healed.
Resolve to Wail
We are actually commanded to cry – more than cry – to wail. Whereas mourning might be more private and personal, wailing is more public.
I believe one of the greatest tragedies in today’s modern church is that Christians can become so focused on victory that they end up crying alone. Nobody should ever have to cry by themselves. Weep with those who weep. If there ever was an appropriate place for crying, it should be amongst likeminded brothers and sisters.
Resolve to Change
In the face of immense human need in this world, there must be change. We cannot turn the clock back to a more bygone idyllic era. We are here, now, together on spaceship Earth. We must come to grips with the kind of change needed to live above petty human degradation.
I once had a discussion with a young woman about heaven and hell. When we first started conversing, she expressed the desire to be in the place that had the better party going on. By the time we finished talking, she was grieving, mourning, and crying. I never knew what became of her – I even forget her name now. But once she got just a glimpse of sin’s gravity, it completely undid her.
Resolve to Be Humble
Humility is the path to intimacy with God and one another. The paradox is that through grieving, mourning, and wailing we become joyful and experience God. Through suffering there is glory. Being last makes us first. Entering through the narrow gate brings us into the broad open space of eternal life.
Resolve to Not Slander One Another
To slander means to “speak against” or “speak down” to someone. Slander always contains false information based on bogus observations and misinterpretations. To intentionally tear-down another person either to their face or to other people is slander.
People sometimes believe they have a right to speak against another person. That really says more about the slanderer than the slandered. Slander is a spirit of retaliation and revenge. It is being self-righteous and acting as the judge.
Resolve to Not Be Judgmental
A critical and condemning spirit breaks the biblical law of love and declares itself the authority. It wrongheadedly believes it knows best for everyone.
When we put our focus on others and do not deal with our own critical spirit, we play God. That is not our job.
Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say,
“I will take revenge; I will pay them back,” says the Lord.
Instead,
“If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads.”
Don’t let evil conquer you but conquer evil by doing good (Romans 12:17-21, NLT)
Resolve to Have God in Your Plans
Some folks plan and map out their lives without a consideration of what God wants. They hold back on God, only giving partial effort and resources. And this can happen to any of us. We may not all have money and power, but we all have time, and how we use our time says a lot about our faith.
Jesus said we cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24). In God’s economy, money is a tool to be used to meet needs and bless others. However, many persons tend to make audacious plans with money by accumulating debt and presuming they can pay it off; encouraging their kids to get high paying jobs as their highest objective; and, relying on the market economy to provide for them in the end.
Money and making plans are good. Yet, the almighty dollar is not to be the motivating factor in our lives, and God needs to be squarely in the middle of all that we do.
So, resolve to embrace the virtue of humility – considering both others and God in making plans and decisions. For if we fail to do what we know we ought, our guilt will eventually catch up to us. Better to rely on God’s grace and make necessary changes.
Holy One, you are eternal, ever-present, and boundless in love. Yet there are times when we fail to recognize you in our daily lives. Sometimes shame clenches our hearts, and we hide our true feelings. Sometimes fear makes us small, and we miss the chance to speak from our strength. Sometimes doubt invades our hopefulness, and we degrade our own wisdom. In the daily round from sunrise to sunset, remind us again of your holy presence hovering near us and in us. Free us from shame and self-doubt. Help us to see you in the moment-by-moment possibilities to live honestly and to act courageously, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department; I’ll handle the works department.”
Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?
Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”? The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture sentence, “Abraham believed God and was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s that weave of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?
The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn’t her action in hiding God’s spies and helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what counted with God? The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse. (The Message)
True faith is shown as the genuine article by how it acts and responds in real life situations.
Christians are saved for a purpose. Christian faith is much more than mere intellectual knowledge of Jesus Christ. We are to take our knowledge of Christ’s redemptive events and put it into daily practice.
There were folks in today’s New Testament lesson who were justifying a lack of action with statements such as, “I’m not wired that way,” “That’s not my gift,” “We pay our pastor to do the ministry,” “This church is not meeting my needs,” “Let the next generation deal with change.”
Anyone in the habit of complaining without doing anything to be part of the solution needs to get an active faith. Every believer in Jesus Christ is called to ministry. All Christians are gifted by God for service. And God expects us to use those gifts to build up the Body of Christ. The church suffers when we do not all participate with the abilities God has provided.
Faith apart from action is impossible. It’s like saying I can bench press 400lbs. just because I read about it in a muscle magazine; or, that I can produce corn just because I saw a farmer in a field.
There are no atheistic demons. The glimpses of Satan we get in the Bible lead me to think he likely has the entire Bible memorized and knows it quite well. Knowledge, however, by itself, is useless.
The Great Blondin, walking a tightrope across Niagara Falls, 1859
In the nineteenth century, a famous tightrope walker from France, Charles Blondin, once strung a cable across Niagara Falls from the American side all the way to the Canadian side. Thousands of people watched him do his theatrics across the falls. He walked back and forth, people applauding wildly. Then to further wow the crowds, he put a blindfold on and went back and forth. He also rode a bicycle back and forth, and then pushed a wheelbarrow back and forth.
As the story goes, while pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth, he called out to the crowd on one end, inquiring whether or not they thought he could successfully push the wheelbarrow across with a human being riding in the wheelbarrow. The crowd went berserk: “Sure you can. You’re remarkable. We believe in your abilities. You are the greatest.” On and on they went, to which Blondin responded, “Then someone volunteer. You come right up here, single file, form a line, and get in the wheelbarrow to prove your trust in my ability.” A deafening silence overtook the crowd. There were no takers.
Intellectual belief is one thing. It is quite another thing to place complete trust in Jesus Christ. Knowledge without an active commitment is about as helpful as a backseat driver.
Faith is a big word in Scripture and life. It encompasses the totality of how we come to Jesus Christ and how we live for him. So, when talking about faith, it is important to distinguish between saving faith and sanctifying faith.
If we are fuzzy on our understanding and application of these two spiritual realities of salvation and sanctification, we will sleepwalk through life as zombies living in two different worlds of the living and the dead.
“Salvation” is a term used a lot in the church. In Christianity, it means to be delivered from sin, death, and hell. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, a person is “saved” by knowing about the work of Christ on the cross and trusting this has taken care of the sin issue once for all.
Through repentance and faith in Jesus, there is salvation. A person cannot earn it, accomplish it, or buy it. Salvation is a gift that comes by faith in the person and work of Jesus. It is a one-time event of trust.
“Sanctification,” on the other hand, begins when we become believers in Jesus. The word means “to become holy,” or, “to be set apart for God.” Sanctification is not a singular event; it is a lifelong process. Whereas saving faith is a gift given to us without effort, sanctification requires much effort. We work, struggle, and expend lots of energy to live the Christian life.
“Grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.”
Dallas Willard
When a student receives a college scholarship, it is a one-time event, granted to the student. She now possesses it and is able to attend school without trying to earn the money to pay for it. Yet, the scholarship was given for a reason – so that the student can now focus entirely on their studies and/or sport. The work is just beginning. More blood, sweat, and tears will take place living into that scholarship than the student could ever imagine. It won’t be easy. It will consume the student’s waking hours for the next four years.
When the Apostle James talks about faith, he is primarily referring to sanctifying faith, to believers who already professed saving faith in Jesus. They were granted a full-ride scholarship in the kingdom of God. Now the work begins. And, just as a student will surely become discouraged at points throughout their education, wondering if they ought to drop out, so the Christian will face tremendous adversity and challenge in living the Christian life. There is a lot of spiritual training and studies to do so that faith will be strengthened for a lifetime of service.
Abraham was saved from an empty way of life and given a gift of grace to move to a better country. Abraham did nothing to earn this favor. God just chose him, period. Abraham sojourned as a pilgrim throughout the land God gave him, which mirrored his spiritual sojourning and learning to be a follower of God.
Abraham’s faith was demonstrated by what he did. The way genuine faith develops and grows is in the fiery trial of adversity and hardship.
Christianity is not a matter of continual upward triumph; it is a downright hard work of faith development as we learn to be followers of Christ. Spiritual maturity happens through sanctifying faith by means of difficult life circumstances.
Rahab, a completely different person than Abraham, was a prostitute who lived in the red light district of Jericho. Abraham is a recognized giant of faith. Rahab is an almost overlooked example of faith. All of us likely fall somewhere in between these two people – graced and called by God to live into our sanctifying faith through continual spiritual exercise.
Rahab’s faith and actions worked together. She honestly believed the city of Jericho would experience God’s judgment, and, so, she housed the visiting Israelite spies.
Maybe we need to expand our understanding of faith to include people we might typically exclude.
No one is outside the realm of faith. So, let’s not be quick to judge those with dubious lives and backgrounds, as well as the poor and needy. If we do not know their stories, or why and how they ended up in this station in life, we may make unwarranted assumptions, and turn our backs on the needy.
We must not sanitize Rahab as someone other than who she was – and because of her faith she ended up being an ancestor of Jesus himself.
Needy people are not dumb, clueless, helpless, or ignorant; they are resourceful and resilient. They need Jesus, too. Yes, people make choices, often bad ones. Yet, nobody says to themselves, “When I grow up I want to be a prostitute or maybe a porn star and live in a red light district with a pimp who abuses me and gets high on heroin.”
People too often back into behaviors due to a lack of positive relational connections and just trying to survive whatever crisis is going on in their lives. The church can be a social connection for them to become grounded in something other than their past experience.
God grants faith scholarships to the rich and the poor, from every race, ethnicity, and background imaginable across the entire earth.
From the standpoint of faith, Abraham and Rahab are on the same level. Neither of them did anything to receive God’s grace. And God does not grit his teeth to show favor – the Lord genuinely loves us – and sincerely loves and likes all kinds of people.
Saving faith means life is just beginning. True salvation produces good works. Both Abraham and Rahab, along with all God’s people throughout the ages, exhibit sanctifying faith by persevering through hardship and allowing God to grow their faith.
Therefore, submit to hardship. Find solace in God and Scripture. Pray and worship like you mean it. Lean into community. Keep your eyes of faith open to what the Lord is doing around you.
Faith works. So, embrace it. Enjoy it. Live into it and with it always.
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
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. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (New International Version)
Being an Outsider
It’s awkward feeling like an outsider. As a young pastor in Michigan, I once went to make a hospital call on one of my parishioners. He was having a procedure done at Ford Hospital in Detroit. I had never been there before. I parked my car and walked into the hospital, just like I had done at several hospitals before.
Yet, there was something different that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then, I realized, I didn’t see any other Caucasian people. Every person I encountered was African-American.
Up to that point in my life, I was never a minority in any situation. Although everyone in the hospital was polite and respectful, it was still weird for me. I distinctly remember thinking to myself in the midst of that experience, “Huh, so that’s what it feels like for my African-American friends!”
Imagine being a visitor to a church worship service. You are just a normal person trying to make ends meet, without much money or resources, and only a few clothes with none of them being very dressy. You have never been to this church before. You pull up in a fifteen year old car that has a few rattles to it and park. “Wow, that building is big! I don’t know anybody here, except Mary.”
Mary isn’t here today. You gin-up the courage to get out of the car and walk into the building. “Where do I go? Will anybody notice me? How am I supposed to act? Where do I sit?” All the things we take for granted are at the forefront of your mind.
Favoritism is Insider Judgment
Not everyone thinks or lives the same – and that is the point the Apostle James is trying to get across to us. If we are only attentive, aware, and care about people who look like us, think like us, and live like us, then we are playing favorites. And God calls that being judgmental.
The word “favoritism” comes from an idiom literally meaning, “lifting up the face.” That is, taking something merely at face value. To make a biased judgment based on only surface impressions is not good. It is not the way of Jesus, who associated with people of dubious morality and came into close contact with ostracized persons, like lepers. Discrimination based on limited understanding is soundly condemned in Scripture.
Those who show favoritism aren’t good.
Proverbs 28:21, CEB
Be fair, no matter who is on trial—don’t favor either the poor or the rich. (Leviticus 19:15, CEV)
Times change; God’s heart doesn’t. The Lord cares for all kinds of people, not just insiders. Peter had to get that into his head and heart concerning Gentiles, whom he considered inferior. He took for granted they were to always be outsiders. It took a series of visions from God for Peter to get this testimony into his life:
“Now I understand that God doesn’t play favorites. Rather, whoever respects God and does what is right is acceptable to him in any nation.” (Acts 10:34-35, GW)
A poor woman once wanted to join a church. She went to the pastor, and he told her to pray about becoming a member. The pastor did not see the woman for months and then one day met her on the street. He asked her if she had been praying and what she had decided about joining the church. She said, “I did what you asked me to do, and one day while I was praying, the Lord said to me, ‘Don’t worry about getting into that church – I’ve been trying to get into it myself for the last twenty years!’”
The church the Apostle James addressed had the mistaken notion certain persons were better than others because of their ability to financially contribute and wield influence. Put yourselves in the shoes of those ancient church folks.
These are refugees trying to make it in a strange country. It was tempting and easy to suck-up to the rich persons who came to their meetings. They needed some stable donors, and not some poor people who were going to drain their already short resources. Showing preferential treatment to the wealthy only made sense to them.
Favoritism is a Heart Problem
For the Apostle James, showing favoritism reflected a terrible malady of the heart: a divided loyalty between God and the world. When things got rocky, the church turned to money and those with it, instead of coming to the Lord and seeking God’s unlimited resources. Inattention to the poor and needy might make good business sense but will result in spiritual death when Jesus comes back to judge the living and the dead.
Far too many Christians believe poor people are poor because they are lazy and don’t want to work. There are certainly lazy people in this world, and maybe we are some of them – too spiritually lazy to take the time and effort to get to know persons in poverty and those very different from ourselves.
In the third century, a church deacon named Lawrence was in charge of the church’s treasury (benevolence fund) in Rome. One day the prefect (mayor) of the city asked Lawrence to gather up and give him “the wealth of the church.” Lawrence sent back a message: “I will bring forth all the precious things that belong to Christ, if only you will give me a little time to gather everything together.” The prefect agreed, as he dreamed of what he could do with the money, gold, and silver.
For three days, Lawrence walked through all the alleys and squares of Rome and gathered the church’s real treasure—the poor, the disabled, the blind, the homeless, and the lepers. The people he gathered included a man with two eyeless sockets, a disabled man with a broken knee, a one-legged man, a person with one leg shorter than the other, and others with grave infirmities.
Lawrence wrote down their names and lined them up at the entrance to the church at his appointment with the prefect. “These are the treasures of the Church of Christ!” Lawrence declared, as he presented the ragged crowd to the astonished prefect. “Their bodies may not be beautiful, but within these vessels of clay they bear all the treasures of divine grace.”
The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Jesus was not an upwardly mobile and tech-savvy Jew; he was a king who chose to serve and get into the lives of the poor, the pitiful, the wretched and the marginal folks of society – just as he did with the rich and influential.
Growing up, I had a dog named “Sam.” Sam loved being on the farm. One time he tussled with a skunk. I could barely get close enough to him to clean him up because he stunk so badly. Favoritism stinks, and God has a hard time getting close to us when we show partiality to others. And he is going to clean us up when he smells the stench of discrimination on us.
Showing favoritism to some over others is evidence that the dog is running away from the bath of grace. To develop relationships and interact with people the way God wants us to, we must be free from prejudice.
Three Reasons Why Favoritism Stinks
1. A theological reason: Jesus doesn’t show favoritism to the rich.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.” (Luke 4:18, NIV)
In the Old Testament, God said:
There will always be poor people in the land, so I command you to give freely to your neighbors and to the poor and needy in your land. (Deuteronomy 15:11, NCV)
God is looking for humble persons, giving grace to people who cannot offer something in return. It is easy to be merciful to people who will turn around later and scratch our backs. It is altogether a different thing to give without any expectations of response.
2. A logical reason: Favoritism comes from a materialistic heart.
Money does change us. Research by the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management found that even the mere suggestion of getting more money makes people less friendly, less sensitive to others, and more likely to support statements like “some groups of people are simply inferior to others.”
Another series of studies from the University of California at Berkley concluded that wealthier people tend to be less compassionate towards others in a bad situation than people from lower-class backgrounds.
Some people are willing to put up with being treated unfairly, just so they can be the recipients of a rich person’s wealth and position. Favoritism ignores the sin in others in order to gain something from them. That is stinking thinking.
3. A biblical reason: Favoritism is a violation of God’s law.
The entire law is summed up in two commands: Love God. Love neighbor. Favoritism is a violation of loving our neighbor. Therefore, to discriminate on any basis is to disobey God.
Who is my neighbor? The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us that any needy human being we encounter – no matter their social or economic status, their ethnicity, race, gender, religion, or anything identifying them as different – is to be helped when we have the opportunity to do so.
Ernest Gordon was a P.O.W. who wrote a book about his experiences in a Japanese concentration camp in 1942. The Japanese were ruthless and horribly treated their prisoners. With barely any food to survive, the law of the jungle ruled amongst the prisoners. But a Christian prisoner operated with a different set of rules. He continually shared his food with other prisoners to the point where he actually starved to death because of it.
The other prisoners could not understand why this guy would do such a thing, until they found a Bible in his few belongings. One by one the prisoners read his Bible and found in it the principle of love and not showing favoritism. Eventually, the entire camp changed and came to know Christ because of one man’s humble spirit to be generous with what he had.
Speak and Act with Mercy
Words are important, and are to be full of grace, seasoned with salt. An active faith without merciful words is not really faith at all – it is an excuse to keep a galloping tongue going. Showing mercy, instead of favoritism, is the way love expresses itself.
The stench of showing favoritism goes away with a cleansing bath of God’s mercy in Jesus Christ. God is the expert in:
Turning people from only associating with those they are comfortable with, to lovingly reaching out to people very different from themselves.
Changing people from the stinking thinking about what they can continually obtain and consume, to people who are loving and generous with their words and their physical resources.
Putting to death a proud spirit that looks to get ahead and accomplish an agenda by any means possible, to giving new life through humble repentance.
Let’s make it our goal to give grace, to be like Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Tim Ehrhardt 