To review briefly, James means by that pregnant phrase “the perfect law of liberty” the law of the Spirit and of life as opposed to the law of sin and death. The law of the Spirit and of life is the law, the only law, that grants liberty. To the extent that this kind of perfect law is known (impossible to know it perfectly here) is the extent to which the knower is at liberty. James also notes that the knower of this kind of law is a doer, and not a mere hearer, of the Word.

This also extends into a society. If a society sees the value of such a perfect law, then it will want to see that law—or at least its effects— inform all of the ways and practices of life, understanding that this is what ensures liberty, not only for a single person but for a people. The law of sin and death deceptively calls the perfect law of liberty slavery, even though it’s freeing, and even though it’s the law of sin and death that binds people into slavery.

James is interested in seeing his audience embrace the law of the Spirit and of life, to live according to its promptings and instruction so that they can leave off the habits of still living by the law of sin and death—as he mentions, anger, impatience, an unbridled tongue (which James says is a mark of self-deception). Later in James, we see warnings against, and spiritual antidotes for, partiality, love of money, and worldliness.

James wants his readers to be doers, and not mere hearers, of the Word. That means putting one’s faith into action instead of assenting to the doctrines of the faith without living by them. That doesn’t mean he expects his readers to be sinless. He later writes, “We all stumble in many ways” (Jas. 3:2, English Standard Version), and that means James includes himself. But it does mean that we can’t rest self-satisfied in not making progress in the Christian life, nor can we remain impervious to biblical correction. That’s a dangerous place to be, indeed.

Pure and Undefiled

What does James mean by being a doer and not just a hearer of the Word? He gives us an example. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father,” he writes, “is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jas. 1:27). Do you see his redirection? Instead of giving ground to his readers’ anger, impatience, and unbridled tongues—their all-about-me orientation—he redirects them from themselves and from the world system with its lusts and demands.

And he directs them toward, first, those whose suffering is far more acute than their own, and second, toward heavenly mindedness, which will keep them from continuing to get their white robes stained by the world. After all, isn’t it the world system, with its lusts and demands, as it remains the place where they park their hearts, that stokes their anger, impatience, and carping?

A doer of the Word, according to James, involves first an other orientation, especially in regard to those who are afflicted—those who have no say. And second, it involves a spiritual mindfulness of staying away from sin so that one lives a life that’s pleasing to God. This works across all kinds of people of different backgrounds, cultures, callings, and life situations. That means ministry to others, especially though not only the dispossessed, and self-ministry at pursuing obedience to God. That, James writes, is religion that’s pure and undefiled. When we operate from these as a radiating center, the anger subsides, the impatience is calmed and dissipates, the unbridled tongue is no longer wagging in its hot flames.

What we call entitlements or some call the welfare state didn’t exist in James’s day. Neither did women managers or CEOs. A woman who lost a husband to an accident, violence, or sickness was essentially bereft, as were her children. This is why in Old Testament Israel, God had made a provision for widows and their children, instructing that a kinsman of the deceased husband take the widow as a wife. James is not repeating this command, but he is telling his audience to be mindful of the bereft in their midst, certainly in the Christian community.

Different Yet the Same

Today, the widow and orphans may have their day-to-day needs met, perhaps just, but they also need encouragement that comes from the gospel. Do you know anybody like that with whom you can visit? Meanwhile, if we’re looking for something to do for ourselves, besides making money, James recommends an ongoing life project: keeping ourselves unstained from the world, even while we’re fully operational in it, and even if that brings us back to trials, which will, after all, make us steadfast.

Partiality. That’s James’s next topic, and he shows how it has no place in the kingdom of God. There are the rich and the poor. If the rich come into your fellowship, do you treat them with special favor while ignoring the poor? Then, James writes, you have broken the whole law of God. What does he mean by this? The Hebrew mind—and these are Hebrew Christians James is writing to—followed an ethically complex system of ways and means when it came to the law of God: The Ten Commandments provided the Hebrews, and us, with the baseline for our relationship with both God and our fellow man.

But James reminds his audience not of the ins and outs of case laws, but of the Golden Rule, the second greatest of the two greatest commandments, which together summarize the law: the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. One could also say that the sin of partiality is, as a subset, covered under the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” insofar as that commandment teaches us not to do any harm to our neighbor either by comission or omission.

But the second greatest commandment, the Golden Rule, that is, “the whole law,” is what James invokes. And what it teaches is that the way we would want to be treated by others—reasonably, respectfully, justly, and mercifully—is how we should treat others. This is what makes a church a peaceable place, and by extension, it’s what makes a social order healthy and habitable.

James’s Law Keeping

If the Hebrew Christians James is writing to do not commit murder or adultery, they may think they’re okay. But James is telling them that the Christian faith has to do with motives and the heart, not just refraining from obviously wicked sins. We know what the Lord Jesus says about murder and adultery from a motivational perspective, and not just from an actual taking of a life or being unfaithful to a spouse. The welling up of hate or the lustful look, he says, arise from the same dark, subterranean pool of the flesh or the natural man that actual murder or adultery do, indicating that we’re not led by the Spirit in these cases or at all in these areas.

And the same is true for partiality. Consistently ignoring someone or treating someone with disdain because they’re not potentially useful to you, while treating someone else with great fanfare or favor because potentially they can butter your bread or in some other way add value to your interests, is sinful behavior. It’s in disobedience to the second greatest commandment. And it’s not just first-century Hebrew Christians that fall into this. We do as well.

James’s audience would have been familiar with this admonition, although as it affected justice in the courts rather than in the church. Proverbs, for example, is laced with warnings not to ignore justice for the poor and disenfranchised, just because of that person’s poverty, that is, because he or she is easy to dismiss. The Word of God doesn’t say to show special favor to the poor, but to do justly. Likewise, there should be no special favor for the rich just because they are rich, or, what we’re hearing more of today, to show special disfavor to those who have more than others just because they have more than others—but, again, to do justly. Justice in the Bible is not about income inequality; it’s about equality under the law, which has its basis in equality under the second greatest commandment—love of neighbor that governs the second table of the Ten Commandments.

Visiting our disabled son at his group home in a New Jersey shore community one Sunday, my wife and I took Mark to a nearby church where we were among the few people who didn’t wear blue jeans. This particular teaching about partiality came up in the sermon. The pastor reminded the congregation that it works the other way around, too: because someone is dressed well, has a new car (we don’t), has a professional job, and speaks grammatical English doesn’t mean he or she’s to be disdained and judged.

Lifestyle choices have consequences, certainly, but poverty doesn’t automatically and thus always assume a lack of diligence and irresponsible way of living, any more than wealth always assumes greed and lack of concern for others. Theologian Sinclair Ferguson has said that wealth or poverty is neither blessing nor curse unless God make it so.

It’s the kingdom of God, notably but not only the organized church, where we see a true, viable, and robust pluralism—people of various backgrounds, races, economic standing, and cultural assumptions who have all these now newly interpreted along the lines of the gospel, or hopefully so. That’s the tie that binds, where otherwise there wouldn’t be any tie at all. Pluralism can be healthy only within a homogenous belief system; otherwise, we’re no different from the world, which James tells us has no place in the church.

Gerry Wisz is a writer, college instructor, and semi-retired public relations professional who, with his family, is a member of Preakness Valley URC in Wayne, NJ.