NOTES for Jam 2:1-13
In today's passage from his general epistle, the apostle James speaks about partiality, and for him it is a manifestation of human sin in the Church, inadmissible and grievous. Developing his thought, the apostle turns to sin and the law as such, a theme to which the apostle Paul also constantly turns. Here the apostle James tells us several very important things from a practical point of view. Using human partiality as an example, he concludes that whoever keeps the whole law but sins in one point becomes guilty against the whole law. Thus the apostle rejects the common view of God's Law as a set of prohibitions and prescriptions that must be fulfilled one by one, and the more the better. The Law is not simply God's will about what we should and should not do.
It is the Creator's will that we be alive and holy before Him. This is what distinguishes it from human laws. For the apostle, then, the key point is not what is forbidden and permitted, but the One who forbids and permits.
The final verses of today's passage contain an altogether exceptional revelation. The apostle speaks of us as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom. At first glance, this seems like a contradiction. We are used to opposing law and freedom, because we think freedom means disobedience to law or the absence of legal limits on our self-will. The apostle has in mind something qualitatively different. The law of freedom is the law of responsibility for one's choice and one's actions before the face of the One who is Truth itself. And this law gives astonishing dignity to the human person and to human freedom. In this law the main thing is to be like the Lawgiver, whose mercy surpasses every boundary. Mercy, the apostle says, triumphs over judgment. What an unexpected, bright, and beautiful hope for all of us sounds in these words. For if it were not so, destruction would be destined for us all.