Clothed In the Impartiality of God

“My friends, if you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, you won’t treat people better than others.”

— James 2:1 (CEV)

It’s an amazing fact: faith in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ makes us to strip doubt away. That might read awkwardly. That’s intentional. Where there is light there is darkness no more. When there is pervading goodness, there is no need and no room for sin. When there is impartiality—no favouritism, nepotism, or influence unto manipulation for a certain person or people—there is unity and great deference to and for God. Where there is no doubt, there is faith in God.

We serve an impartial God who is ‘no respecter of persons’—what that means is God cannot and will not favour one iota of his creation over another one. He might extend favour, but he will not favour one or another beyond just and right means.

Our opportunity is to understand this about the nature of God—that being ‘no respecter of persons’ means he loves all equally and treats all even-handedly—and allow God to clothe us in his character of impartial love.

For, love that is partial is no real love at all.

***

‘Love’ that is partial is always a sin,

Because it proves our faith comes only from within,

That our faith’s not based on God who’s adored,

But we, alone, have become the lord.

Proof of faith in Jesus Christ,

One of them at least is to be precise,

We treat everyone the same as we can,

Everyone before us, every woman and man.       

***

It’s as plain as night time is to day, that treating some people more specially than others means some will inevitably not feel loved; they’ll feel rejected at our hand.

It’s different if we have a role to discern the performance of people; hopefully we’re helped by an objective measure. Then we execute our task and we have an unbiased reason for rating, selecting, and giving feedback. Not all will think it fair, but we must do all we can to be impartial.

People will only see us as safe to be around—the essence of trustworthiness—if we can prove to them that we worship the glorious Lord Jesus Christ by our straightforward approach of impartiality. That is to take everything on its merits alone.

***

Our credibility in Christ in never more assured than when we mirror the impartiality of God by favouring not one over another. We prove ourselves genuine disciples of Christ by our willingness to treat every single person on their merits.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.