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.

A little first about the second half of the verse. Since, as it is in judicial cases: to the criminal is given a sentence somehow corresponding to the gravity of offence, but after is likely certain appeasement of his fate - by amnesty or by grace. Or another variant: the offence is achieved, but the offended party forgives the guilty, and the affair does not even reach at the court. In both situations we see that mercy is more effective, "more important" than judgment. It is what the apostle James means.

But from there ensues then what is said in the first half of the verse. If someone does not recognize in his own life (not in words, but by deeds) the primacy of mercy on the judgment (righteousness), then shall not also be applied to him in case of his guilt (and we are all guilty before God) the principle of righteousness: a judgment without mercy, with all the severity of the law. Shouldn’t we remember here what the Christ says "blessed are the merciful ", and not "blessed are the righteous".

In these words the apostle James reveals to us the great mystery of God's mercy. Justice and repayment according to deeds are important things; righteous judgment on our actions is unavoidable, like all the laws of the world. A brick thrown upward falls on one's head according to the law of universal gravitation. Sin brings about the disappearance of life... But the destiny of the world and of the human person is not limited to this just judgment. There is God's mercy, and it is higher and more important than judgment. The Synodal translation here conveys the meaning of the Greek word very precisely: mercy triumphs over judgment. This revelation is astonishing, and it has the most direct relation to our hope; and it is precisely this triumph of mercy that makes the world beautiful.

But for the apostle James it is important that we understand his thought correctly. The triumph of God's mercy does not mean that we can "allow ourselves" sin, relying on the idea that the Lord will "in any case" have mercy. Such a view appeared already in the apostolic age and was rejected then as well. The apostle emphasizes that mercy is effective to the extent that we ourselves are guided by it in our lives. If it is not "practiced," it remains inaccessible to us. This, in fact, is why the Lord singles out loving God and neighbor as the main thing for a human being.

The partiality of which the apostle James speaks to us today in his epistle brings into life a submission to purely earthly, human standards of honor and prestige. Yet the assembly of the faithful does not belong to this world; it is a manifestation of the heavenly world of the age to come. Therefore, if we act with partiality in the Church, we violate her very nature. In the Church’s historical existence, of course, the principles of economy and strictness are always combined: Christians must simultaneously strive to preserve peace and quiet and, on the contrary, judge solely and exclusively by the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet there is one path that enables us to move beyond the narrow and contradictory confines of partiality and impartiality. The apostle James calls it royal, kingly. It is the path of mercy toward one’s neighbor, which the rich and the poor, the honored and the despised, the clean and the unclean all need in different ways but equally. It is astonishing and important that the “law” of mercy governs our relationship with each separate, unique person, rather than providing a tool for “sorting” people according to earthly or unearthly respectability.