The Book of James

Chapter 2:10-13

Verse 10

Within the Law of Moses, there is the law of loving your neighbor as yourself, which became part of the Royal Law for Church-Age believers. (Leviticus 19:18; Galatians 5:14) James was writing to primarily a Jewish audience, so he used the Mosaic Law as an illustration. We know from Scripture that no one can keep the whole law. The word in Greek for keeps means to guard. So, what James was saying is that to God “sin is sin” and disobeying the Law means that you are breaking God’s law. Your particular pattern of sin is perhaps different than mine, but they are both sin. So, to say, for example, that you keep the Ten Commandments and therefore you’re okay in God’s eyes is dispelled because everyone stumbles in at least one point of the Law.

Verse 11

These two commandments are for illustrative purposes. James quoted from Exodus 20:13-14 and Deuteronomy 5:17-18 illustrate that all sin is a violation of God’s law. If a person breaks one of God’s laws, they are guilty of all. The person who commits adultery is just as guilty of being a lawbreaker as the person who commits murder. This was the purpose of the Mosaic Law; to show people they were sinners in need of a Savior!

Verse 12

Speak is a reference to the prohibition against sins of the tongue — gossip, slander, maligning, judging. One thing that characterizes a believer who begins to mature spiritually is the avoidance of the sins of the tongue.

Every believer will have an evaluation of their divine production at the Judgment Seat of Christ. The Law of Liberty gives believers the opportunity to choose to produce divine good without causing an unbeliever or a carnal believer to stumble.

It is God’s purpose to evaluate us before we spend time in eternity in resurrection bodies. The law of liberty is a divine law for the Christian life. The law of liberty says that grace gives you the freedom to serve God. It says that you are free to make grace decisions on the basis of Bible doctrine, that you are free to live your life as unto the Lord and that you are not accountable, spiritually, to another person.

The grace of God is described under the Law of Liberty (the Law of Freedom). You must have freedom in the spiritual life for grace production and the basic law for believers is liberty (freedom). There are four laws which can function in the Christian life.

1) the Law of Liberty — believers have the right to do certain things which will not cause them to sin nor enter into carnality. (I Corinthians 8:4, 9) However, believers should be careful when they are around people who might be influenced negatively by something that is normally meaningless to a believer.

2) the Law of Love — believers should avoid any activity that would offend other believers and become a distraction to their spiritual growth thereby causing them to stumble spiritually. (I Corinthians 8:13)

3) the Law of Expediency — in the interest of sharing the Gospel, a believer should refrain from doing certain things so that an unbeliever is not prevented from seeing the true issue in salvation which is to believe in Christ. In self-righteous arrogance, an unbeliever often superimposes their own erroneous ideas of Christianity or religious taboos on a believer and expects them to comply with those ideas, even if they are not forbidden by Scripture. (I Corinthians 9:18)

4) the Law of Supreme Sacrifice — this is the highest spiritual law of Christian behavior because it sometimes requires a believer to sacrifice legitimate activities of life in order to serve God in a certain culture or special circumstance, such as a foreign missionary. (I Corinthians 9:1-15)

Once we are born into the family of God there is a whole new set of rules: the Law of Christ, which are grace rules and grace principles. We must learn these things and function under them so that the object of our faith is always God and His Word, never our human ability or human talent. Human good is not liberty; it’s the bondage of legalism, when substituted for spirituality. Human good is identified as dead works because it is dead to God and dead to His plan. (Hebrews 6:1; James 2:20,26) Human good is never acceptable to God. (Isaiah 64:6) Human good has no place in the plan of God or the operation of grace. (II Timothy 1:9) Human good will not save mankind. (Titus 3:5) Human good produced by believers is revealed at the Judgment Seat of Christ and destroyed. (I Corinthians 3:11-16) Human good is the basis for the unbeliever’s sentence to the Lake of Fire at the Great White Throne Judgment. (Revelation 20:12-15)

When a person rejects Christ’s payment for their sin through unbelief, they can only stand upon their human good at the Great White Throne Judgment. They will be judged on that basis, not for their sins. At the Great White Throne Judgment, unbelievers will not hear anything about sin. Instead, they will hear about all the human good they performed and will realize they do not come up to the standard of God’s righteousness necessary to enter Heaven. Only through faith in Christ and Him alone can a person receive the righteousness necessary to enter Heaven. (Revelation 20:12-15; II Corinthians 5:21)

Verse 13

This is a very misunderstood verse. It is a reference to the Judgment Seat of Christ mentioned in the previous verse for believers only. Mercy is grace in action (doers of the Word). If you don’t live by grace, if you don’t think grace, if you don’t walk by grace, then you cannot produce divine good. The Greek word for shown is “poieo,” which means having done. What this verse is saying to believers is that if you have not “done grace in action” by producing divine good then you will be evaluated accordingly at the Judgment Seat of Christ (loss of rewards). Everything done in legalism, human good, human ability, human talent, will be loss of reward. There will be no human good in eternity; it will be burned up!

A believer who does not live by grace (mercy) cannot be rewarded under grace. Reward at the Judgment Seat of Christ is based upon the law of freedom and the action of mercy — grace in action. To do no mercy is a believer’s failure to function in grace. All grace function depends on the filling of the Holy Spirit and demands the consistent study and application of Bible doctrine.

The last phrase of this verse means that grace triumphs at the Judgment Seat of Christ. The only thing that a believer can boast at the Judgment Seat of Christ is the grace of God that enabled them to produce divine good. The whole purpose for eternal rewards is not to glorify the person who produced divine good. Grace production can glorify only the source of grace. Therefore, God is glorified when any believer is rewarded at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Therefore, a believer’s rewards glorify God since they are based entirely upon His grace. And grace triumphs over judgment!

Grace is designed to glorify God; it was never designed to glorify anyone else. Therefore, grace excludes human boasting, legalism, human glorification, human ability, human talent, as a means of glorifying God. God will be glorified by believers’ rewards, not those believers who receive them. The production of human good is destroyed at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Legalism is destroyed at the Judgment Seat of Christ, where God’s grace triumphs through His mercy/grace in action.