Thou Shalt Favour Everyone!

“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”    

— JAMES 2:1 (NRSV)

When we do our acts of favouritism we demonstrate weakness in our characters. And where we favour one over another we lack love for the one we don’t favour, whilst we flatter the one we favour.

Favouritism is exclusivity, and with few exceptions – including an important one, for instance John 14:6 – exclusivity has no role in the kingdom of God. John 13:34 helps us; we are commanded to love one another. Besides Jesus targeting believers loving other believers, we have the opportunity to love one another to the extent of the whole world.

In other words, Thou shalt favour everyone!

So we should find no excuse in failing to love, for to favour everyone equally is to treat everyone with a special treatment, that to which they find special. They define it, not we.

Favouring Everyone by Love

Love comes in so many shapes and sizes,

It meets every need of a needy humankind,

Within each facet of love there rises,

A fascination of majesty that soothes the mind.

Love of myriad form there is that meets minds to the sparking of hope and joy. The gift of serving or the serving of a gift; these are kindnesses of love we are free to bestow. Love of common and uncommon kinds reminds us of the goodness of God demonstrable over the face of the Earth. We are always free to partake of love; to give and receive it.

It may seem a cliché to say that love is a choice. It is. It is a cliché when we make of it a magical something to do by talking about it and not doing it. But love is as simple as doing loving things as we’re led by the Holy Spirit, without any sense of partiality.

If we can only see that there are so many deeds of love, translated into kindness and compassion and practicalities of help, etc, that we ought to make no room for deeds that are devoid of love.

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Because we can love, having been commanded to love, and being blessed to love as others are blessed to be loved, we should favour everyone. Such a love goes beyond the partiality of favouring a few. Love looks past such injustices as partiality and prejudice and personality. When we favour everyone, equally, we please God.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.