Treat the rich and the poor equally
1 My brothers and sisters, if you truly believe in our glorified Lord, Jesus Christ, you will not discriminate between persons.
2 Sup pose a person enters the synagogue where you are assembled, dressed magnificently and wearing a gold ring; at the same time, a poor person enters dressed in rags.
3 If you focus your attention on the well-dressed and say, “Come and sit in the best seat,” while to the poor one you say, “Stay standing or else sit down at my feet,”
4 have you not, in fact, made a distinction between the two? Have you not judged, using a double standard?
5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, did God not choose the poor of this world to receive the riches of faith and to inherit the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?
6 Yet you despise them! Is it not the rich who are against you and drag you to court?
7 Do they not insult the holy name of Christ by which you are called?
8 If you keep the Law of the Kingdom, according to Scripture: Love your neighbor as yourself, you do well;
9 but if you make distinctions between persons, you break the law and are condemned by the same law.
10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one aspect, is guilty of breaking it all.
11 For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not kill. If, then, you do not commit adultery but you do commit murder, you have broken the Law.
12 Therefore, speak and behave like people who are going to be judged by the law of freedom.
13 There will be justice without mercy for those who have not shown mercy, whereas mercy has nothing to fear of judgment.
Faith is shown in action
14 What good is it, my bro thers and sisters, to profess faith without showing works? Such faith has no power to save you.
15 If a brother or sister is in need of clothes or food
16 and one of you says, “May things go well for you; be warm and satisfied,” without attending to their material needs, what good is that?
17 So it is for faith without deeds: it is totally dead.
18 Say to whoever challenges you, “You have faith and I have good deeds; show me your faith apart from actions and I, for my part, will show you my faith in the way I act.”
19 Do you believe there is one God? Well enough, but do not forget that the demons also believe and tremble with fear!
20 You foolish one, do you have to be convinced that faith without deeds is useless?
21 Think of our father Abra ham. Was he not justified by the act of offering his son Isaac on the altar?
22 So you see, his faith was active along with his deeds and became perfect by what he did.
23 The word of Scripture was thus fulfilled, Abraham believed in God so he was considered a righteous person and he was called the friend of God.
24 So you see, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
25 Likewise, we read of Rahab, the prostitute, that she was acknowledged and saved because she welcomed the spies and showed them another way to leave.
26 So, just as the body is dead without its spirit, so faith without deeds is also dead.
------------------------------------------------------------
Comments Letter to James, Chapter 2
• 2.1 Whoever makes a distinction between persons (2:4) is not Christian.
Distinction of class, of color: there is never a reason for showing favoritism and not respecting the rights of each person, for making her wait or treating her less well. There is at stake an instinct for justice that is linked with faith.
James speaks of distinctions within the Church and alas! Often it is there that they tenaciously cling. If in many countries the Church is much frequented by those who are socially well off, better educated, it is surely because of its choices: our practices have cast aside others until they are no longer seen.
Did God not choose the poor of this world to receive the riches of faith? The apostles who are our undisputed masters in faith were poor with regard to money and influence, but they were sufficiently rich in faith to sign it with their blood.
James says that the rich profane the name of Christ. He speaks perhaps of the rich unbelievers who ridicule the simple faithful, or perhaps of the wealthy Christians whose way of life draws criticism of the name of Christ. They profane the name of Christ and bring contempt on the Church.
James invites the Church to examine itself on the way we treat each other in our institutions: with whom are the pastors of the Church usually found, who are those with whom they feel at ease and in whom they confide. What terrible truth would be revealed by an investigation of these points!
The law of freedom: Paul, John, Peter and James all agree on the point that Christians cannot be satisfied with simply obeying the commandments, or respecting a master’s will in order not to get in trouble. No, Christians must have the free and intelligent generosity of volunteers whose only law is their commitment to Christ.
• 14. It is necessary to have faith to be saved, but following Christ cannot be theoretical; it must be shown in action, in deeds. Christ himself says the same thing in Mt 7:21: “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Let us look at the two examples that James takes from the Old Testament and let us compare them with Heb 11: 31, and above all with Rom 4 (Gal 3). It seems that James and Paul draw opposite teachings from the same examples. Paul says: Abraham was justified by faith and not by following the Law. James, on the other hand, says that they were saved by putting their faith into practice. Actually, in speaking of practices, Paul is thinking about the religious rites and observances of the Jews that are useless for salvation, and he says that faith is at the root of all Christian life. James, in speaking of practices, is thinking about deeds inspired by love. Paul said the same when he wrote: “Faith works through love” (Gal 5:6).
These apparently con trary affirmations of James and Paul were widely discussed at the beginning of the Reformation, when certain commentators bluntly affirmed that a person is saved by faith alone. Yet it would not be sufficient to show how we can achieve reconciliation between the words of Paul and James. There is clearly with them quite different ways of seeing and feeling and that is due as much to the diversity of human temperaments as to the richness of the Christian experience, which is not always the same for everyone. These real differences that we find even among the apostles encourage us to accept that others may think and express their faith in ways different from our own.