"My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality" James 2:1-13 NKJV
Partiality fits into the category of, prejudice, bias, more favourable to something or someone, class distinction, snobbery, lack of respect, discrimination and favouritism. God has no favourites, not at all, not even Jesus. He loves us the same (John 17:23). It may seem that He has at times, especially when people appear to be doing much better than us. But, he has no favourites at all.
Verse 2 reads:
'For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, 3 and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, "You sit here in a good place," and say to the poor man, "You stand here", or "Sit here at my footstool," 4 have you not shown partiality among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?'
This is a perfect example of favouritism, in fact, discrimination and we should never practice this.
I remember when I was pastoring a particular church and we ran a Day Centre which was open 7 days a week to feed and clothe the homeless, people with addictions and really, people just down on their luck. Many of them used to come to the church services, which was great, and quite a few of them came to know Jesus as their Lord. However, a certain official within the organisation who I used to meet up with periodically, asked me if I would consider having two services -one for the church members and another for the people from the Day Centre. He felt that it was not good to mix the two sets of people because they were smelly and they could be tempted to steal purses and handbags. I was shocked but replied, 'If you can show me in the bible where Jesus would do this, then yes, I would consider it.' This kind of closed the conversation down and I think, that day, I became a marked man.
We should never show partiality towards people. We don't know where they have come from or what they have been through. Let us not forget what the writer of Hebrews says in Chapter 13:2,
'Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing, some have unwittingly entertained angels.'
This is an amazing verse. You never know who you are dealing with. Let that be a lesson. God sees all that we do. He hates discrimination. This is why He wants us to love each other, as He has loved us.
Let us never be tempted to avoid the one who is left out of the equation - the one who is down on his luck. Some are con men, that is true, but they may not be, it may be an angel that you help; and God is right there with you anyway.
Copyriight 2021 Grahame Howard
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