We Christians bring light to the world by loving every man as we love ourselves. Don’t we?

The world has always valued the opposite things that God does. Since the beginning of time, power and honor were awarded very differently by man as opposed to by God. The social order in Jesus’ time was harsh and unyielding. There was no middle class; it was the rich, the poor, and the destitute. Honor and position were just as important as money in determining lifestyle and treating others as their station demanded was very important with regard to one’s own well-being. A poor man who did not show deference and honor to a rich man could be stripped of what little he had.

Jesus, his disciples, and the apostles brought the radical message to the world that it had gotten the social structure completely backward. In fact, much of the persecution facing Jesus and the early church stemmed from them turning normal social order upside-down. After all, how could a man with one set of clothing and food enough for but one day be considered rich? And, of course, the teaching of the impossibility of a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven was infuriating. James, here in chapter 2, admonishes the scattered Jewish Christians for forgetting this teaching. He tells them that God himself honors the poor, while the rich blaspheme his name. He doesn’t leave it there, though. He goes on to say that showing partiality, or making distinctions among themselves, breaks the royal law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and invites judgment without mercy upon oneself. No wonder the book of James can be a little unpopular.

In our culture today, people almost instinctually give deference to those in places of worldly power. Doing this puts those who lack power, money, and means underneath them – in the words of this passage, beneath their feet. How many sins spring from the mindset that leads someone to show partiality? I think it helps to first consider how God sees his people. After all, God is the only one who can see rightly. As Hebrews 4:12 tells us,

…the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

I imagine God seeing each of us as a tiny flame, shivering with every breath of wind. He sees each flame as it is by nature, tainted by the poisoned candle of sin that fuels it. Each little flicker is corrupted at its heart. But he also looks at these tiny lights as he intended them to be – a bright reflection of his consuming fire. Each of us is sinful to the core and each of us is simultaneously made in our Creator’s image, wholly precious to him. We, as Christians, have been cleansed, and that poisoned candle has been replaced by the mercy of Christ Jesus’ sacrifice. It is his grace that now fuels us, but we must remember that, apart from him, we burn before God in the exact same way as everyone else.

So I ask, how do we view our fellow man? Letting myself answer that question with brutal honesty shames me. Sin has cast a veil over the glory of God that Creation breathes, but I often, in my pride, don’t even try to look past it. After all, do I look at those who cut me off in traffic, sing off-key in church… or even murder, as children of God, as worthy as I am of salvation? How often do I make an effort to see each individual person I encounter as an image-bearer of the God I love? One of my favorite quotes by C.S. Lewis addresses the terrible reality of trying to grasp people’s true nature in The Weight of Glory:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare…. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

James does not mince words as he tells us that to show partiality is to raise oneself to “judge.” Our faith in Jesus Christ is an acceptance of and reliance on God’s mercy in place of judgment. Moreover, Jesus tells us in Luke 6:38 that “with the measure [we] use it will be measured back to [us].” So, if we show partiality, thus becoming judges of God’s own people, we have remitted our claim on the mercy by which we are saved. Basically, we renounce the pardon that our faith gives us if we treat the poor and scorned as less worthy of God’s love. Living under the law of liberty through faith in Christ means forsaking the worldly measures of status, honor, and position. If we judge others by these worldly standards, we are putting ourselves under earthly law. James and Jesus both make it clear that no one will be successful in gaining righteousness through any law. We are justified through faith and not on account of anything we have done. So, if we truly believe that we are utterly worthless aside from God’s saving grace, how can we place ourselves over any other person?

Christian faith is the great equalizer. Every person who is saved by faith in Christ Jesus must first renounce his sin and abase himself before God. In order to receive salvation, we must acknowledge that we are completely incapable of gaining it ourselves. When we show partiality, and thus judge our fellows’ worth of honor, we are not just elevating ourselves to “judge.” Instead, James says here, we are exalting ourselves. This is a lethal game to play. We, as earthly, sinful people, are terrible at viewing people’s virtue through God’s eyes, and even worse at judging our own.

In James 2:1-13, God tells us that we have no idea how to allocate honor properly and that all we need to remember is that we are alive solely due to the mercy of God and so we should love and honor everyone else above ourselves. This passage also tells us who the Lord has chosen to lift up – it is not those whom the world has already elevated, but the downtrodden, the forgotten, the despised. One must make oneself poor in spirit to gain the promised crown of life, because it is only those who recognize that they have nothing who will seek the kingdom single-mindedly.

And so, we circle back to the second greatest commandment. We cannot love each of our neighbors as ourselves and also use worldly standards to elevate or abase them. One of Jesus’ statements to his disciples that has always both called to and convicted me is in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” So, let us try to see people as they are in the heavenly reality. Let’s try to look past dirt, sin, and shame, both our own as well as our neighbor’s. If we can manage this, we will indeed stand out in the world, a light in a shadowy, dark place.