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FAVOURITISM

James 2:1

My brothers, you cannot really believe that you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, and yet continue to have respect of persons.

‘RESPECT of persons’ is the New Testament phrase for undue and unfair favouritism; it means pandering to others because they are rich or influential or popular. It is a fault which the New Testament consistently condemns. It is a fault of which the orthodox Jewish leaders completely acquitted Jesus. Even they were bound to admit that there was no favouritism with him (Luke 20:21; Mark 12:14; Matthew 22:16). After his vision of the sheet with the clean and unclean animals upon it, the lesson that Peter learned was that with God there is no partiality (Acts 10:34). It was Paul’s conviction that both Gentiles and Jews stand under the same judgment in the sight of God, for with God there is no favouritism (Romans 2:11). This is a truth which Paul urges on his people again and again (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25).

The word itself is curious – prosōpolēmpsia. The noun comes from the expression prosōpon lambanein. Prosōpon is the face, and lambanein here means to lift up. The expression in Greek is a literal translation of a Hebrew phrase. To lift up someone’s countenance was to regard that person with favour, in contrast perhaps to casting down the person’s countenance.

Originally, it was not a bad word at all; it simply meant to accept a person with favour. Malachi asks if the governor will be pleased with the people and will accept their persons, will show them favour, if they bring him blemished offerings (Malachi 1:8–9). But the word rapidly acquired a bad sense. It soon began to mean not so much to favour a person as to show favouritism, to allow oneself to be unduly influenced by a person’s social status or prestige or power or wealth. Malachi goes on to condemn that very sin when God accuses the people of not keeping his ways and of showing partiality (Malachi 2:9). The great characteristic of God is his complete impartiality. In the law, it was written: ‘You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour’ (Leviticus 19:15). There is a necessary emphasis here. A person may be unjust because of the snobbery which flatters and panders to the rich, and may be equally unjust because of the inverted snobbery which glorifies the poor. ‘The Lord’, said Ben Sirach, ‘is the judge and with him there is no partiality’ (Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 35:15).

The Old and New Testaments unite in condemning that partiality of judgment and favouritism of treatment which comes from giving undue weight to a person’s social standing, wealth or worldly influence. And it is a fault to which everyone has a tendency in some degree. ‘The rich and the poor have this in common:’ says Proverbs, ‘the Lord is the maker of them all’ (Proverbs 22:2). ‘It is not right’, says Ben Sirach, ‘to despise one who is intelligent but poor, and it is not proper to honour one who is sinful’ (Sirach 10:23). We do well to remember that it is just as much a sign of favouritism to pander to the mob as it is to flatter a tyrant.