The Rich And The Poor
THE RICH AND THE POOR
JAMES 2:1-7
God loves to turn our values upside down: how do you respond to his ways?
The problem of the right attitude to rich people exercised James greatly. Paul tells us there were not many people of influential position in the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 1:26ff.), and this would no doubt have been true fairly universally. There is no reason for doubting that the first converts to Christianity came largely from the depressed classes. They were poor people, even slaves. According to the accepted standards of their day, they had been used to giving special honor to the wealthy and the well placed. When they became Christians, they quite naturally carried the attitude over into their new life. This natural human tendency must have been strengthened by the equally natural human tendency to be very concerned about the few rich people who were converted. They would tend to be highly respected in the little Christian assemblies and to be given special consideration and honor.
This kind of treatment is not easy to reconcile with a proper Christian understanding of life. If all people are sinners, and all stand in need of God’s salvation, then no one, no matter how wealthy they are, is anything other than one needing God’s mercy. James reminds his readers that the kind of behavior that singles out the rich for special consideration is contrary to important Christian teachings. It means that the people who do this have set themselves up as judges, as they make distinctions between one believer and another, and, moreover, “judges with evil thoughts” (2:4).
It is also the case that the poor more commonly than the rich are “rich in faith” (2:5). This does not mean that God rejects the rich. Rather, it arises from the fact that all too often those who have great material possessions give way to the temptation to put their trust in them. They cut themselves off from humble, dependent faith. James adds one practical point. It was the rich, not the poor, who were usually responsible for the oppression which overtook the Christians from time to time. As a class it was the rich rather than the poor who blasphemed the name of God by their behavior (2:7). In an affluent society such warnings are very much to the point.