James 2:8-11: The Royal Law According to the Scripture
2024-06-23
James 2:8
If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: (James 2:8)
The “royal law according to the scripture” is the Lord’s second greatest commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” How is it royal? It is the chief law. The word “royal” is translated elsewhere as “nobleman.” King Herod, the one who killed James the apostle, wore “royal apparel.” “And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them” (Acts 12:21).
How else is this the royal law? It summarizes much of the Law.
Consider the following: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8-10).
From here, we see that love fulfills the law because it does not harm others. All the latter commands of the Ten Commandments all prohibit ways of harming others. The love for another not only refuses to harm another, but it also seeks the benefit of another.
Love to the neighbor is service. “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:13-14).
Consider the original context of the scripture quotation in Leviticus 19:9-18. Here describes how thorough this royal law goes. Any farmer must intentionally leave parts of his field unharvested so the poor and foreigners can glean from what remains. We do not steal, deceive, or lie to others, and afterwards, He says, “And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:12). Could it be that lying and deceiving others is like swearing by the Lord falsely and profaning His name?
Here, we again see not having partiality. You do not favor someone because of your own pity or own affiliation with him. We do not gossip and slander others. We’re not just nice to someone’s face and be inconsistent when they are not present.
And then, when we love our neighbor, we cannot even have a secret stronghold in our minds that thinks ill of him. Only the Lord will know if we fulfill this law. There can be no secret grudge (which James brings up specifically in James 5:9). At the same time, we rebuke our neighbors to save them from sinning (see James 5:19-20).
Then we think about how we love someone as ourselves. We love ourselves chief over all else. We must love them that much. We protect ourselves at all costs. We get ourselves whatever we want. We offer the same thing to our neighbors.
Consider the Golden Rule and how this can apply.
And do not forget that the standard of Christ brings the standard of the royal law even higher. “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34-35). And this is why it is even more called the “royal law”: It is the Law of the King, who perfectly practices it every time. He loved His neighbors more than Himself.
James says we will do well if we fulfill this law. How do we do this? Do not forget the context of the previous verses. We love the poor man in vile clothing. Unlike the rich man, who if you are nice to, might give you his favor and nice church offerings, the poor man can give you nothing in return.
Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:12-14)
Moreover, to fulfill this law in loving the poor neighbor, we give him what he needs. Later on in this chapter, we will discuss this (James 2:14-16).
James 2:9
But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. (James 2:9)
Partiality is therefore sinful. Selectively loving based on what they can give you violates this law. We are “convinced of the law as transgressors.” But we’re “not under the law, but under grace” might be your answer. But what law? This royal law is encapsulated within Christ Himself. To personify Christ in our earthly bodies is to love others.
Therefore, this is a call for the grace of God to work through us via the life of Christ. How does the Law still serve us? Recall the lesson from a previous study: “But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient...” (1 Timothy 1:8-9). “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). We see that we fall short of any Law issued by God. However, we ask the Lord for His grace to love others no matter who they are, for He is love.
James 2:10
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. (James 2:10)
The Law is a single unit. One infraction and you are guilty. If you stand before a judge in this world being guilty of a traffic violation, a world of doing good does not spare you whatever the penalty may be from that single law.
Consider also sins against God in the Ten Commandments. If you do not have any other gods other than the LORD, but you use His name in vain, you have offended God. You may not have bowed to a single idol in your life. You may not have esteemed any false God but served the LORD only. But that one time when you blasphemed the name of the LORD is just as much an offense to God.
This is one of those handy verses to show that someone who is unsaved is a sinner. All you need is “that one time” you sinned. Everyone knows they are not perfect deep down. There are some that refuse to admit they are sinners, but this verse makes everyone admit they have sinned at some point in the past and are guilty before God.
One might consider a scale from 0 to 10 on how righteous one is. Any one infraction puts you at something below the required perfect 10. This is a poor example though. It is more like this. You are either in one of two mutually exclusive camps, separated by an infinite chasm. One infraction and you are banished from God’s camp and placed into Satan’s camp.
But it is even worse than this. You were banished before you were even born. Adam’s sin spoiled the entire race. Consider Satan, the force behind the king of Tyre, “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire” (Ezekiel 28:15-16). Iniquity was found in Satan, and he was thrown out of the presence of God.
One touch of a dead body makes someone unclean, and whatever they touch becomes unclean. “Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean” (Haggai 2:13). One touch and you are completely defiled. So it is with our sin. Slightly impure is to be completely defiled.
James 2:11
For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. (James 2:11)
So it is with sins against human beings. One sin makes one guilty of all. If you did not steal from someone, bear false witness against him, did not covet any of his stuff, and did not commit adultery with his wife, but you killed him, well, you did not love this neighbor! (In this verse is the extreme example.) You could have been kind to him his entire life and never thought of harming him. But one day, you did evil to him. You did not love that neighbor perfectly.
Back to the original context, if you were kind to all the visitors of the assembly, but treated one better than the other because they were richer or because of some personal affiliation, we are guilty. We stumbled at one point in that royal law according to the scripture.