⁹But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. ¹¹For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

The royal law comes into play in how we treat people of wealth and how we treat the poor. When we treat the affluent better than the disadvantaged, we are breaking the royal law. It bears repeating: preferential treatment of the rich is tantamount to demeaning and insulting the poor. Focusing on worldly status and wealth is denying the much greater and more significant spiritual status and spiritual riches that all believers share in Christ. When this happens in the church, it is reprehensible, a contradiction against God’s law!

While living according to the royal law is described as “doing well,” James flips the coin and says that not living that way is absolutely sinful. And this applies to preferential treatment in the church. Of course, it also applies to more than just wealth. Any time we measure or treat people by class distinction, social position, or worldly possessions of any sort, we are seeing and acting like people who do not know God and His ways.

James goes on to capture the essence of the law of God: it is a complete whole, the breaking of any part being consummate to breaking the whole. If a person breaks one point of the law, no matter how seemingly small, he has broken the law—period! If one is hanging by a chain over a fire pit, it does not matter how many links break or even the relative size of a single link that breaks; if the chain is broken in any way, the entire chain is broken. The consequences are identical for the person hanging by the chain!

So James argues from the greater to the lesser. We quickly recognized the logic that if a person keeps 99 percent of the Mosaic law but breaks just one of the rules, say murder, he is guilty. James leaves it for us readers to draw the obvious conclusion. If committing murder is breaking the law, and treating the wealthy better than the poor is breaking the law, then in both cases, the law is broken! As is the case with all sin, no matter how “big” or “small,” God calls it transgression against the law.

Christians, if we love the Lord God with our whole heart, mind, and strength, then we should love our neighbor as ourselves. And that means we should treat all our brothers and sisters in Christ within our local church equally, just as we would want to be treated. This is the royal law of love.

Lord, I confess to loving myself more than others. Give me the strength to move beyond my self-slavery to become characterized by the royal law of love.