James 2:10

Verse 8 calls the Scripture "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" the royal law. This summarizes the last six of the ten commandments. The first four are no doubt priestly in character rather than royal, since they are toward God. But royal character is what bears testimony toward men. Genuine love for neighbors will seek their greatest good: it is impartial, and concerned for the purest blessing of the one it loves. If it is only my rich neighbour I love, this is not proper love at all — I expose my selfish motives.

Nothing could be more sweeping than the statement in verse 10. At first sight some of us might question whether it is right. But we have to remember that the law is one whole, and cannot be divided. An errand boy carrying a basket of bottles may slip and break one bottle in his fall. His employer cannot fairly accuse him of breaking all of them, because every bottle is separate and distinct from the others. But suppose the boy carried the basket hung from his shoulder by a chain. If in falling he also broke one link of the chain, his master could fairly tell him that he had broken the chain.

Here the law is what crushes self-righteousness. The law is of God, so it cannot be anything but unbending, and it resents every attempt of men to dodge it... If there were true obedience, one claim of God would be as binding as another, and violence would be as hateful to us as corruption. To offend in one point violates God's authority and brings us under the guilt of breaking all... For sinful man to try to gain righteousness by the law, and to stand before God on that ground, is fatal ignorance of self as well as of God.

The law knew nothing of mercy. Its demands were so strict that it held an offender in one point guilty of all (James 2:10). Some people shelter under the idea that they are not aware of having broken all of God's laws, so they are not exposed to His just condemnation. That hope is empty and deceptive. It is not even reasonable. Think how a man judges his fellow man. Whoever breaks one of the laws of his country has committed an act of rebellion, and so deserves punishment. A man does not need to rob twenty times before a court calls him guilty. If he is proved to have robbed even once, he faces punishment as a lawbreaker. And is God less just than man?

Is this not the only obedience that can be acceptable with God? "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." True righteousness must be complete. Everything else is partial, and only "filthy rags." That holds even for giving away all one's goods to feed the poor, or giving one's body to be burned. Here, as everywhere, everything calls aloud for Christ. He is the only One who could undertake such obedience and glorify God.