Sunday message · James, Unlearning Religion series
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Message Summary
Continuing the series on James and unlearning religion, Pastor Phillip Santillan takes up James 4:11–12 and one of the most common charges against followers of Jesus: that they are judgmental. Judgmentalism, he says, is a human problem: we are quick to spot it in others and blind to it in ourselves. Yet many people say they tried church and found Christians judgmental. Phil sees an opportunity to redeem the character of God’s people by living like Christ in the circles of influence we already have.
Having addressed actions, James now addresses words, which can either help people know Christ or prove we have no faith. The word translated “criticize” or “slander” literally means to speak against, like the Israelites speaking against Moses in the wilderness. One commentator says James has in mind personal attacks and church debates that sink into name-calling and questioning one another’s faith. Phil adds that anyone hurt by such dissension is in good company, since the first church had it too.
When James speaks of the law, Phil holds that he means it the way his older brother Jesus taught it: love God with all your heart (Deuteronomy 6:4–5) and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). Instead of standing beside their neighbors in love, James’ readers had set themselves above them in the place of the one lawgiver and judge, a kind of idolatry. To see where James learned this, Phil turns to Jesus’ story in Luke 18:9–14 of a Pharisee who thanks God he is not like other sinners and a despised tax collector who begs for mercy. Jesus’ hearers would have expected the Pharisee to be the hero, but the tax collector goes home justified.
We all set standards we can meet and judge those who fall short, Phil says, and churches have excluded people over clothes, politics, music, drinks, past mistakes and even the way they pray. So he wants everyone at Clarity to know that Jesus deeply loves the people sitting all around them, and that no one will be kept from God’s grace by man-made rules or spiritual comparison. He shares a story from Larry Osborne’s Accidental Pharisees about a naturally calm believer who has barely grown and a hothead from a brutal home who has grown enormously. Comparison never has all the facts, and since we cannot see what God sees, we are to leave the judging to him.
Jesus loved both the Pharisee and the tax collector, Phil says, so the real question is where our hearts are. Do we lean toward the Pharisee, living up to man-made rules and holding others to them, or toward the tax collector, aware of our own need for God? James’ question, who are you to judge your neighbor, had an obvious answer: love them. Jesus said our love for one another will show the world we are his disciples (John 13). This is simple but not easy, Phil admits, and he urges the church to “struggle forward into the grace of God,” choosing love over judgment.