The Law Gives Freedom
Series: Kinetic Righteousness
September 26, 2021 - Jeff Gokee
We're going to read out of James two, starting in verse one. If you are able to stand, why don't you stand with me and let's read the word of God here.
James 2:1:
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
This is the reading of the word of God. And all God's people said amen. You may be seated.
So, I tend to talk a lot about India because it's been a place that really changed me. Twelve years ago, I went for the first time to lead a pastor's conference. And I felt like I met Jesus again in India. I met Jesus again among the poor, among the people that they just kind of push aside. They don't matter. And actually, really, one of the groups that really made a huge impact where I really felt the presence of God was with this leper colony that we got to spend time with.
That morning — now, this is my first time to India. I knew we were going to go go be spending time with these lepers. And I really thought that was kind of like an Old Testament kind of thing, like New Testament, you know, like it's a Bible thing. It's not like now thing. And so I was honestly pretty overwhelmed by the whole idea of like spend time with them, you know.
And if you don't know about leprosy, leprosy is a neurological disease that essentially kills your nerves and then limbs fall off. And so, you know, can I touch them? I was kind of nervous, overwhelmed by the whole experience.
So standing on the fourth floor, and they're going to bring, Harvest. India was bringing them to the campus. They live in these colonies because the country pushes them to these colonies. So they live in these colonies and take care of one another. So we were bringing them to the campus, so they they start showing up.
And so I go on this fourth floor, I'm like overlooking and I see all this commotion down on the street side where all the shops are. And as the lepers are showing up, the business owners are coming out — no joke — with brooms and and yelling. Right? And there's all this commotion. Right? And what I found out was that, you know, lepers had the worst karma, like the worst karma. And they don't want that bad karma anywhere near their business or they'll lose business.
And so they're like, “Get away, get away from my business, get away from here.” And they're like, literally with a broom because they don't want to lose their customers. And I don't know, as I was telling that story, if you felt something inside of you like, That's wrong. Do you feel that? Like there's something about that. There's something inside of us that tells us that's not right. That's wrong.
And I remember thinking like, Thank goodness that doesn't exist here. But it does, right? Like we all know it does. And, you know, one of the more dangerous places that happens is here in local churches, where we kind of shove people away and go, “No, no, no, you got to look like this, you've got to act like this.”
“No, no, no. You're going to taint this place.”
When in reality, the kingdom of God is like open doors.”Come all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest.”
And it's this tragic thing that James is trying to help us connect with. This deep truth that we know what's wrong. We feel it, but we are unaware of why oftentimes we keep perpetuating the same problem. And what James is trying to do, throughout his whole letter, is trying to say this, “The gospel is good news.” Because it is about a God who extends a generous, holy eternity-changing mercy to anyone who will receive it.
And not only that, when we receive it, the other part of the good news is, we now extend it back, that we become mercy multipliers because we've experienced that mercy. We've experienced the overwhelming holy nature of that mercy that we now multiply. That's called kingdom economics. Right?
There's this passage in Luke 12 that a lot of us know. It says, “To whom much is given, much is required.” And sadly, what most people do with that passage, they go, "Oh, that is just about money.” Like we we like to do that.
How many of you love Skittles? How many? We love Skittles. Raise your hand if you love Skittles. OK, how many of you like to pick a color with Skittles like you like. I like the red ones. I'm a red guy. Right. So I like the red ones.
So this is what we've done with Christianity on the whole. We just go like, “Oh, I like the red ones. I'm not saying I don't want to eat the rest of the Skittles, because they're all Skittles. I just like the red ones most.”
This is what we do. It's Skittle Christianity. It's Skittle Christianity. “I like this part. But I don't know if I really want to do all that.” Right? And as it relates to this particular passage in James, and what Luke is trying to say as a result, as much as it's helping us understand about kingdom economics is like this: “To whom much is given, much is required.”
That's all of you. All of you. Your mercy is to be multiplied. Your finances are to be multiplied. Right? Because we will use that passage and say, “Oh, this is about money.” No, it's not. It's a whole life passage. Your mercy. To whom much mercy has been given, much mercy is required to give back. That's kingdom economy. This is what Jesus died for. This is what Jesus displayed.
This is what James is trying to help this beautiful church, this first church, up and going. If you know that James is one of the earliest books written in the Bible, he wrote it about twenty years after Jesus died and rose again. And he's coming to this small Jewish community who's living in a gentile world that doesn't look like them, doesn't act like them. And he's trying to say, “Hey, listen, we are now defined by this mercy and we need to go multiply this mercy.” And he's very, very honest all throughout his book about how to do that. He's trying to move us to righteousness.
But he's doing it in this very awesome, bizarre way, because he's Jesus's brother, half-brother. He watched Jesus grow up. He saw what Jesus looked like as a kid when he saw what he looked like as a son, as a carpenter. We don't have a lot of historical reference about all that, but James was there as Jesus was being raised. He was living in that annoying home where the mom kept going, “He's the messiah,” you know, and he's like, “I hate that.” Right?
But James was also there when Jesus died. James probably dealt with the fact that he wasn't like Jesus keeps saying and proclaiming over the last three and a half years, that he is the Messiah, and James is like, “Yean, but he’s like my brother.” Like he wants to believe it, but, you know, there's like this tension and then all of a sudden he like goes throughout out these villages and he sees the kingdom economy that's being displayed for the world.
And then he sees Jesus on the cross extend his hands and say, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” Mercy. And James is coming to this young church and going, “Multiply it, multiply it. Stop taking advantage of it. Multiply it. I know. I was one of them. I know. I struggle with it, too. But he changed the world. That's good news.”
And he's inviting us all into that. James is trying to define what righteousness is. As he observed it in his brother, Jesus.
Suresh, who’s the president of Harvest India, has this great quote, one of my favorite quotes, and he says this: “Everybody’s doing, but nobody's getting anything done.” He’s specifically talking about believers. Everybody's busy doing, but nobody's getting anything done. James would have been like, “Amen!” Right?
Because what Suresh is saying is we're all busy doing the wrong stuff and we're busying ourself. What are we doing to do kingdom impact? Make a difference in this world? Because I'll tell you what our culture is telling you. It's telling you to create partiality. It's telling you you've got to be on this side, or this side is telling you you got to pick a politician. It's telling you have to pick a policy. It's telling you you have to pick a party. You have to pick a race. And Jesus is like, “Stop it!” James is like, “Stop it.”
“I died for the world. My mercy extends to the world. It extends to blue and to red. And I love them all!”
As goofy and crazy as we all are, he loves us all. And he's like, “If you have experienced that mercy, you will multiply that.”
I hope you're feeling the conviction I have been feeling all week long. This is a beautiful freedom that we've been given. And I'll tell you what, you've heard these passages before, haven't you? We know the truth, don't we? But why is it that we continue to run against this good news that that Jesus has given to us, that James is trying to help us understand?
My wife — we've been married this year, I think 23 years. Awesome — and my wife at 40, like so many of us, we’re, you know, thinking that, you know, “I feel great.” And then all of a sudden, her eyes started going and she didn't want to really deal with the fact.
How many of you hate the optometrist's? Hate it. She hates the optometrist's. I mean, loathes it. And I'm sure they're wonderful people, but she despises that place. Right? And so she decided that she'd just figure it out. But then we go out to eat, right? And we're sitting and she's trying to do the menu and she's doing one of these bits like, you know, like. And so I got to run out to the car. I got to get her readers, like bring them back in. And I'm like, “Why don't you just get Lasik?”
And she's like, “I'm not letting them do touch my eye.” But she got glasses. She got prescription glasses and she puts them on.
And this is what James is inviting us to do. We're living in this kind of blurry theology. And you see the theology of Jesus that James is trying to help us understand is not this ethereal truths. It's practical ethics that we live out. And mercy is moving us forward.
But will we listen? Will we do it? Will we put on the lenses that he's trying to give to us so we can see clearly the path before it, that we would lean not into our own understanding, but in all of our ways, acknowledge who? Him! And what will he do? He'll direct our paths, and that's what we need.
And so he starts off first with basically this proposition, this petition of we need to prohibit, as believers, we need to prohibit partiality. He says this in verse one.
And I love the way he says this. “My brothers and sisters, believers,” and you can feel it. I want you to feel it. Sometimes we don't humanize the scriptures enough. Right? Be there in the room when he's saying this. Feel the feels. And he's like looking over these people as a spiritual father. And he's just looking at them going, “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus — my brother — we must not show favoritism. We've got to stop this. We've got to stop doing that.
And then he does the story in verses two through four, a story that honestly Jesus has told. And you can imagine, like, you know, Jesus is such a great storyteller and James is like, I'm just going to pick up that legacy. And so he tells the story. He tells the story about the rich man who walks in. Right? And he's got these clothes, his very colorful clothes. And he's got rings. In fact, they would wear multiple rings when they would walk in to try to say to everyone, “Hey, I'm a big deal.”
How many of you have heard — raise of hands — of peacocking? Anyone ever heard of peacocking? Right. You ever gone to a zoo? Like peacocks are ugly birds. They're not beautiful birds. And then all of a sudden everyone's like, “What an ugly bird.” And then they're like, “Oh, yeah.” Right? Feathers up, right? Everyone's like, “Whoa! My gosh!” Right? They’re peacocking. Peacocks are prideful birds. Right? Because they're like, “Oh, you don't think… well, check this out!”
Right? But that's literally what's happening in this area. This man is walking into the synagogue and he's peacocking. He's going like, “Look at my bright clothes. Look at my gold rings. I'm a big deal.”
And here's the problem. The church doesn't go, "Hey, man, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord.” No, we go, “Oh, have a seat right here in the front. Hey, could you guys move over? This big deal person’s coming in."
And then the contrast is this. There's a poor man. He walks in. And everyone’s like “Uh, that guy again. Hey, just find, just in the back. You can sit on the floor. I don't care. Just so inconvenient.”
We know that story, right? We feel that story. But why isn't that story changing us? Why isn't it just wrecking us? Because I think we struggle with an understanding that there is no partiality in the kingdom of God. There is no place for it. Jesus came to us. God came to us, Emmanuel. And what did he do? Did he go hang out with all the politicians? No. He met with the religious. He met with government people. Right? But what he did is, he went and hung out with the Samaritans. Why? Because the Jews hated the Samaritans. Hated them, despised them, called them lower than dogs.
And what did Jesus do? He takes them to a Samaritan village. And the disciples are hungry. They're like, “We're hungry. We got to get some food.”
He's like, “Just go into town.”
And they're like, “No.”
“Just go into town. You’re hungry. Go get some food.”
“But if we eat, we’ll be unclean.”
“Just go get some food.”
And he has this conversation with the Samaritan woman. Right? He tells a story about what? A good Samaritan. He's bringing conflict because they liked this partiality. They liked these, you know, “You're over here. They’re over here. We're good. You're bad."
And Jesus kind of flips the script because he’s like, “In my kingdom, it doesn't work like that. There's equality in my kingdom.” Right? He hangs out with the lepers. In modern day, it's the same thing. We put lepers in villages. We try to get sick people away. “I don’t want that all over me.” And what did Jesus do? He goes to the leper, touches the leper, heals the leper. Goes to the poor, goes to the vagabond, is called and lives like a vagabond. Is called a glutton and a drunk, a friend of sinners. He goes to Zacchaeus, and says, “Dude, I want to go to your house for dinner.”
And everyone's like, “He's the worst. That guy's the worst.”
And he's like, “I came to seek and save the lost."
Mercy upon mercy given out to all of us. Displaying for us what the kingdom of God is all about.
And you can almost hear James as he's going through this, “Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters.” He's going like this, “I get it. I thought he was crazy, too. I thought he was crazy too, but he’s not. He's changed the world.”
And that's why it's good news that we're all being invited into. Right? Paul says this. I love that Paul kind of jumps on it and goes, in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, nor slave nor free. There was neither male or female. For you all are one in Christ Jesus.”
That's good news. That's rejecting the plurality and the favoritism in our culture, is that we all have access to Jesus. And his love wasn't just for one people group, one political system, it was for the world.
And James is like, ‘Do you feel that?”
Paul is like, “Do you feel that? Feel it deeply in your soul?”
Because there is equality at the foot of the cross. Jesus died so all could be set free. All could experience the redeeming mercy and grace that he wants to extend. And now he hands you and I the baton, and said, “Will you multiply this? Will you go do this?”
And as I was talking about this passage with a friend this week, he was like, “I love this passage, but it's so frustrating.”
I'm like, “Why?”
He goes, “Because we all know that this is a problem. We all know it's a problem.”
And I said, “Well, what do you think?”
And he goes, “I think we were looking at it wrong. I think the reason why we want to be associated with that rich person is because it makes us feel good. Like we don't want to be associated with the poor.”
We want to be associated with the rich because, with the rich, then I get popularity. I get power. I get influence. Right? But with the poor, it's like there's no impoverished people in India that are influencers on Instagram; because our culture doesn't want that. You don't want that. You reject that. “No. If you were good, then you would be doing this. You would look like this.”
And we want to be associated — whether we want to believe it or not — with the winning team. And who's winning? The rich are. The popular are. The powerful are. So my ego, my insecurity wants to go here.
And meanwhile, Jesus is born in a barn in Bethlehem.
And I got to be honest, the struggle for me this week is realizing I would have been in the crowd screaming, "Crucify him!”
Have you ever been in the crowd? Thank you. Put yourself there, you should. I realize I am hard wired for partiality. Like, all of a sudden, this guy, everyone starts talking about Jesus and what he's doing, I'm like, “What is this guy? We've got a system. We got to, you know…”
I really believe — and I wish I didn't believe that about myself — but I do think I would be in the crowd and I'll be mocking and jeering at him. Meanwhile, he's extending his hands and going, “Mercy, mercy on you. Mercy on you. Mercy on you.”
James knows this. James experienced this. That's why he keeps coming back to this church, going, “Could we just talk? Can we work through this together? Because the problem is that we keep perpetuating partiality.”
And that's why in verses five through eleven, he's going, “Can't you see this is a problem? This is this is a significant problem.”
But what we need to deal with — and this will unleash us — we always think about poverty in the context of money, but we don't think about it in the context of relationship. We don't think about it as it relates to health. The poverty is so much bigger, and we don't want to see ourselves as weak, except that the scriptures keep telling us, “You’re weak, you're weak, you can't do anything to earn the grace of God.”
And we hate that. We want to convince ourselves that the more powerful we become, the more influence we have, that we're going to be better. And the truth is, it's a lie that Satan has created from the beginning of time to distract you from the mercy of God.
And that's why James just keeps coming back and going, “This isn't going to work. As we move this good news forward, it's not going to work for you to continue to be distracted by this. You have to deal with the fact if you've broken one law, you've broken them all. And for the wages of sin is death. All have fallen short of the glory of God.”
I think Isaiah says, “All of our good deeds are as filthy rags before a holy God,” but we struggled with that. And it's why we struggle to see hurting people, impoverished people. And many — not just economically— in all different aspects, because we're not dealing with our own spiritual poverty.
And the mercy of God is trying to wake us up to that truth. This is so much bigger than rich and poor. It is the context of this passage. And it was a huge problem in the first century church, and it's a huge problem today. But we all have to deal with the fact that we are poor and we need Jesus. We have to deal with that. And he's desperately trying to help them understand that.
And the one word that really stood out to me in this passage — and I've missed it all the other times that I've kind of worked through this passage — was in verse seven. It says this, “Are they not the ones (talking about the rich, or if you want in our culture, just the world, the kingdom of this world) Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of whom you belong?”
And that word belong got me this week. And I started studying it and I was like, “Wow. When you receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you belong to him.”
You know, we adopted our daughter Mika when she was four years old from the state of Arizona. And we went through the whole thing and the judge, and he was like, you know, “You're a Gokee.” And we're like, "It's so cool.”
And it was like real. But it became really real when we went around the corner and we walked in this office and they wrote a birth certificate, and on the birth certificate, it said that Patti was the biological mother. Like Patty's name is on there as Mika's mother. She's a Gokee. That's her identity. That's who she is. She belongs to the Gokee family.
You and I, we're Christians. Christ is our Savior. God is our Father. It's him that we belong to. We do not belong to this world. We are aliens in this world. But we keep pretending and acting. And James is like, “Stop! Stop! Just live like the one you belong to. Let him bring you life.”
And so he transitions into this whole beautiful point about about the laws, the different laws that govern us. So he first starts off in in verse seven and he says, “You need to go by the royal law.”
And the royal law was to love your neighbor as yourself. This was taking a play, Jesus did, remember this story where they come and they say, “Hey, summarize the whole law.” And Jesus basically quotes the Shemmah, adds components to it. And one of the things he added was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and then love others.”
This was the wholeness of what gospel was. Was this — the mercy of God. I love God. I receive his mercy and I extend that mercy out. And I love other people. This is the fulfillment of the entire law.
And James is like, “When we live this way, we are living as people of mercy. We are multiplying mercy. We are living in kingdom economics.”
And this is what he's empowering us to do. But then he moves on to this other law in verse 12. It's the law of liberty. And this verse says, this, "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.”
This law wasn't this overwhelming law. It was a law that brought freedom and clarity. Right? We have a law summarizing all 613 laws, very complex. And Jesus goes, “Let me make it easy for you. Love me and love other people.”
It's that clear. And that clarity helps us to move forward. And what we're called to do, it brings us freedom.
I do a decent amount of marriage counseling, and I'll have husbands and wives who will come in and sit with me. And ultimately, at some point, the wife will say, “He should just know. He should just know.”
And and I'm looking at the dude's face and he's like, “Uhhh.” I want to tell you, we are simple, men are simple creatures. You are setting us up for failure. If you just go, “Well, he should just know, he should just know I'm not in a good mood. He should just know I hate flowers.”
Like, we don't know. We don't know. It's so confusing. Tell us what to do. Right? We're like puppies, right? Stop peeing in the house. Right? Men are like puppies. “Just tell me what to do. To the best of my ability, I want to serve you.”
But when our wives are like, “You should just know,” you're like setting us up for failure, right? Because we need clarity.
I tell my wife all the time, “I'm the worst guesser in the world. If you make me guess, I'll get it wrong and it'll be frustrating.”
So, you're welcome. I just saved you thousands of dollars in marriage counseling.
Don't make your husbands guess. Be very clear. “Listen, you're being an idiot. Stop it.”
“Oh, OK. Well, I've got to figure that out,” right? Right.
So we don't have that with this law. The laws that God has given to us through Jesus is saying, “Let me summarize all of this and say this. Love me, love the other people. And when you do that, you are moving forward.”
The good news of Jesus Christ. I love this quote by one of my favorite commentators named William Barkley. And he says this. This is so beautiful.
“Unlike the Pharisees and the Orthodox Jew, the Christian is not a man whose life is governed by external pressures of a whole series of rules and regulations imposed on him from without. He is governed by…
This is beautiful. Receive this.
…He is governed by the inner compulsion of love. He follows the right way, the way of the love to God and to love men. Not because of any external law compels him to do so, nor because any threat of punishment frightens him into doing so, but because the love of Christ within his heart makes him to desire so.
It's this. When we fully come to understand that we were impoverished, we are poor and we needed saving, we experienced the rescue — his mercy, which helps us love him. And as we love him, we cannot help but loving other people. It compels us, not because somebody tells us to do it. Well, there's this law that's thumping us on the head. It's going, “Be released. Be loved. Receive the love and give the love. Receive the mercy, give the mercy. Kingdom economy. Keep multiplying that over and over and over,.”
Which leads us into this law of mercy in verse 13, “Because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
In this period of my life I have come to understand my depravity. More than any other time in my life. I stand before you as a man who is trying his best to pursue after the Lord. I often get up, and James 3 talks about, “Teachers beware. Just beware that you hop up here…”
And everyone thinks I got it all put together. Don’t. Like I'm trying. I should be a statistic. I should statistically have had an affair on my wife and led into really painful, awful addictions, and hurt a lot of people — and my kids included. I feel the mercy of God. I cannot believe at this point in my life.
And so as a result of that, it's shifting things in me. Like, when people come and sit in my office with horrible, awful struggles, I used to judge them. I used to be like, “Get it together. What's wrong with you? You know the truth. Just do it.” Right?
I go, “I get it. I'm the chief of all sinners. And I have received the mercy of God,” and I want to go reciprocate that, and so I want to walk with people in their pain. I want to work with people in their depravity instead of judging them from a distance; because my King of kings and my Lord of Lords did not do that to me. He rescued me.
And this is the law of mercy and mercy triumphs over judgment. We are brought into accountability like in Matthew 5. Remember we just got through this series on righteousness. That “blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Blessed are those who are merciful to people.
And this is going like, “Extend mercy.” You're not ever going to be able to truly enjoy life and life to the full — this gospel good news if you are not experiencing the mercy of God — you're not going to be able to reciprocate that to a plural world, a separated, favoritism world.
And the good news is like, “No, we've got Jesus,” right? Amen. We’ve got Jesus and he loves us and he saved us. And he rescues us. Because reciprocation will happen as a result of us understanding our emancipation. We will continue to love and care for people as we come and deal with the fact that we were poor, broken, sinful. And he mercifully came and died on the cross for us. This is the law of mercy, and mercy triumphs over judgment.
If you committed your life to Jesus Christ, you are under the law of mercy. And mercy triumphs over judgment. But what you do with that is what James is trying to encourage and challenge us into.
Last night, my family and I went to a GCU soccer game. I'd never been — my son's a GCU student. I had I had never been to a soccer game at GCU. And we were having a great time. I mean, the goalie was like incredible. This dude was unbelievable. He was having the game of his life. Forty five seconds left. He makes this block. Then, all of a sudden, we're like, “What in the world?” And then all of a sudden the whole stadium just went quiet. And this goalie is laying on the ground. And the whole stadium, we watched people rush in on them. Players are crying. Like coaches are like, we're like, “What is going on? What is happening?”
For 30 minutes we're watching people care. We don't know if they're trying to resuscitate him. We don't know if he broke his… we don't know what's happening. And everyone in the crowd is going like, “Somebody’s got to do something.” Like, you know, everyone's going like, “Where's the ambulance?” And we were listening. Everyone's listening. And we're like, “What's going on? What's happened?”
Like that feeling of helplessness of like, “I want to do something. I want to help, but I can't help.” And the stadium is just quiet, completely quiet. And all of a sudden the fire truck shows up, way far away, and the firemen start walking on the field and somebody yells, “Run! You need to run!”
And so the whole crowd, that has just been quiet for 30 minutes, finally feels like they can do something. And they're like, “Run! You need to run.” And the guys are like, "You got to come over.” And the police and the firemen are just kind of walking. But everyone's feeling like, “You got to go, man! This guy's hurt. Something really bad has happened. You can't walk.”
You're the player on the field. Jesus is the one who ran to you, rescued you, came to you, extended his mercy to you. He ran. Look at the prodigal son. He doesn't stand on his front porch and say, “I'll wait for you to show up.” He runs to the son, embraces him and kisses him. This is the picture of the love and the mercy of God that is extended to each and every one of you. And when we finally understand that. We will run to others.
But so often we find ourselves in the stands feeling like, “Well, are we allowed to do something? Should we not do something?” Participate in crushing this partiality that's happening in our world. Extend mercy, because much has been given to you. Live in the kingdom economics, that Jesus so beautifully displayed to us. His upsidedown kingdom. When you have life and life to the full, it will be as a direct result of you dying and giving your life up the way he did.
And I feel it so deeply in my soul. And I desire for the local church to be a beautiful light on a stand for the world to see. But let us extend the mercy. Let us extend this narrative that says, “This good news that mercy triumphs over judgment. That's who our King is. That's who our King is, and that's what he's done for you and me out of great love and a great sacrifice.”
Let's go do the same. This is what he's inviting us into. This is what James is passionately preaching to these people.
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