We are currently preaching through the book of James on Sunday mornings at our church. Our text for this past week was James 2:1-13, where James encourages his readers to avoid the sin of partiality. The chapter begins with the following admonition,
My brothers and sisters, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.
James 2:1
This passage contains one of my favorite aspects of the Bible: God often calls us to simply imitate who He is and what He has done for us in the gospel. It makes sense, considering His call to “be holy as I am holy” (Lev. 19:2). Everything that He asks us to do compels us to be more like Him. And we become more like Him by imitating, as far as we are able, who He is and what He has done for us. Let me explain.
We are told throughout the scriptures that God does not show partiality (Rom. 2:11; Deut. 10:17; Job 34:19; Acts 10:33). He does not show favoritism. He treats everyone equally, regardless of nationality, physical appearance, talents, position, family, etc. Thus, if we want to imitate God and be holy as He is holy, we should refrain from showing partiality. But what does that look like?
Continue reading “Partiality & The Gospel”
In Bible and Mission, Richard Bauckham seeks to respond to postmodernism’s rejection of universal metanarratives in favor of particulars by demonstrating that the Bible consistently moves from the particular to the universal, and thus, particulars are the means by which God achieves the universal. In other words, Bauckham wants to show the reader that the Christian faith is not just another universal truth claim that can be dispensed with in favor of particular or diverse expressions of religion, but that the Bible contains a series of God-ordained particulars that open the door to His universal kingdom. By establishing this movement from the particular to the universal in the Bible, Bauckham hopes to provide the reader with the ability to read the Bible in a way that takes seriously its missionary direction by taking both the particular and universal seriously, and achieving the latter via the former (11).
JARRETT FLETCHER 