IT is characteristic of this Epistle to employ the expression “royal law “; nor is it the only peculiar phrase that fell to it with striking propriety. We have already “the perfect law of liberty” in chap. 1:25, and we have “law of liberty” again in chap. 2:12.
“If however ye fulfill law royal according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well; but if ye have respect to persons, ye work sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors” (vers. 8, 9).
This is admirable. The feeble saints of the circumcision, most of them poor, had so forgotten early fervor of faith, as to cringe before the wealthy, and this even in their assemblies if a rich man entered therein. Yet were they not rich in faith, the poorest of them? Were they not heirs of the kingdom which He who chose them promised to those that love Him? What inconsistency to give themselves the air of valuing a little money, of closing the eye of faith to their own hopes of glory, though the least recollection of the Lord of glory dispelled those natural thoughts and brought back the promise which detects the false glitter of the world as it is.
The third book of Moses had from early days asserted that great moral principle as far as Israel were concerned; but where was the heart to prize it? where the nature capable of carrying it out unswervingly? Certainly it is not in the mind of the flesh, which is enmity against God and is no better really for man. “Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.” Nothing more true or trenchant. The fullness and the manifestation of it is in Christ, sent into the world that we might live through Him. This we cannot do till we receive Him from God, believing on His name. Then we live, and live to God; for he that believeth on Him hath life eternal. There is no other way. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the witness that God gave of his Son. And this is the witness that God gave us life eternal, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
The believer then alone has this life, and loves according to Christ, Who, when challenged, gave the first place to loving God, but also pressed in the next place loving one's neighbor. Here in this world of need and misery even the law-teacher had not obeyed it, and asked, Who is my neighbor? To the Lord it was all plain enough. He came in love to seek and save the lost at all cost to Himself. Now that He is on high, His love is active in His own, and in them only. For as the apostle shows in Rom. 8 those that are in Christ walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh which is lawless and selfish, the very opposite of love or of any other good. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus it is that freed the believer from the law of sin and death. Sin is no longer a law, the power of death was broken by Christ risen from among the dead; and He is our life. Such is one reason (ver. 2) why there is no condemnation for those in Christ. God cannot condemn that life which is now ours in Him. But then what of our evil nature, the flesh? The second (ver. 3) meets this. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin (i.e. as a sin-offering) condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law, its righteous import, might be fulfilled in us who walk not after flesh but after Spirit. For it is only the believer who has the new life and the efficacy of Christ's death in annulling his evil nature that walks according to the Spirit, loving God supremely and loving man so as to suffer or even die for his good.
It is not that James brings out what was left for the apostle of uncircumcision. But he does Characterize this grand moral claim of God as regards the neighbor as a “royal law.” Before it respect to persons is sentenced to death. The command to love one's neighbor towers above any transient or artificial distinctions among men. Who or what are the rich to wish it set aside in their favor? And what mean any rich in faith among the poor by ignoring it? It is a royal law, says our Epistle. Those who fix the eyes of their heart on our Lord Jesus, will not fail to fulfill it. It were a sad descent to look away from Him in glory as He is to the gold-ringed man of wealth.
Even Jacob before the Lord Jesus came did better when brought into the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He was not dazzled, any more than he petitioned for his family. But “Jacob blessed Pharaoh.” “And without all contradiction,” says Heb. 7:77And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better. (Hebrews 7:7), “the less is blessed of the better.” May the poorest of the saints be strengthened to cherish undimmed the consciousness of his blessedness and the hope of the glory where the Lord is, and whither he himself is bound!
Respect of persons is a violation of love and a transgression of the law that insists on love, as is added in the verse that follows. If a believer be poor, there is no ground in this why he should pander to worldliness, despise his poor brethren, puff up the wealthy, and dishonor the Lord of glory Who has shown us the clear contrary. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8:99For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)). “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Weigh Phil. 2:5-95Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: (Philippians 2:5‑9). As our Epistle declares, to have respect of persons is to work sin and to be convicted by the law as transgressors; as the Epistle says, Love worketh no ill to the neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.