02.02. Chapter 2 - Verse 08

James 1:8. If ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scriptures, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well.

Now he comes to discover the ground upon which they did thus preposterously dispense their respects. It was not charity, as they did pretend, but having men’s persons in admiration, because of advantage. For this verse is a prolepsis, or a prevention of an excuse foreseen, which might be framed thus: That they were not to be blamed for being too humble, and giving respect there, where it was least due; and that they did it out of relation to the common good, and a necessary observance of those ranks and degrees which God hath constituted among men. The apostle supposeth this objection, and answereth it partly by concession: if you do it in obedience to the second table (the tenor of which the apostle expresseth by that general rule ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’), then, such respect, rightly regulated, and ‘according to the scriptures,’ is but a duty; partly by way of conviction: your inordinate respect of the rich, with contempt of the poor, is such a flattery and partiality which the law doth openly condemn. The poor, and those whom we may help and relieve, being in the law, or scripture-notion, as much, yea, rather more, the neighbour than the rich.

If ye fulfil, τελεῖτε.—If ye do squarely and roundly come up to the obedience of the law, that part of it which is the rule of outward respects. The word properly signifies, ‘if ye perfectly accomplish.’ Sincerity is a kind of perfection. The Papists, among other places, bring this for one to show that a just man may fulfil the law of God. In this place it only implies a sincere respect to the whole duty of the law. The royal law.—So he calleth it, either because God is the King of kings, and Jesus Christ the King of saints, Revelation 15:3; and so the law, either in God’s hands or Christ’s hands, is a royal law, the least deflection from which is rebellion. You would not easily break kings’ laws. God’s laws are royal laws because of the dignity of the author of them. The Syriac interpreter favoureth this sense, for he translateth it ‘the law of God;’ or they may be called so from their own worth: that which is excellent, we call it royal; or else because of its great power upon the conscience. Men’s laws are but properly ministerial and explicatory; God’s is royal and absolute. Or ‘the royal law,’ to show the plainness and perspicuity of it, like ‘a royal way;’ or, as we express it, ‘the king’s highway.’ So it is said, Numbers 21:22, ‘We will only go by the king’s way.’ Suitable to which expression, ‘the royal law’ may imply the highway and road of duty. Or, lastly, a royal law, to note the ingenuity of its precepts. The command of God, that is to guide you in dispensing your respects, doth not oblige you to this servility; the duty of it is more royal and ingenuous.

According to the scriptures; that is, as the tenor of it is often set down in the word. The form here specified is often repeated, Leviticus 19:18. The Septuagint, in the translation of that place, have the same words with our apostle. It is often repeated by our Lord, see Matthew 22:39; and often by the apostles, see Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14. The full import of this rule we shall anon open.

Ye do well.—The same form is used, Php 4:14, and implieth that then they were not blameworthy, and might justly be absolved and acquitted from the guilt charged in the context. And by the way we may hence gather, that the apostle doth not simply forbid a respect to the rich, but a respect sordid and invested with the circumstances of the context.

Out of this verse observe:—

Obs. 1. That the vilest wickedness will have a fair covert and pretence. Sin loves to walk under a disguise; the native face of it is ugly and odious. Therefore Satan in policy, and our hearts deceived by ignorance and self-love, seek to mask and hide it, that we may spare ourselves, which should press us to the greater heed. Never seek a cover of duty for a vile practice, and to excuse checks of conscience by some pretence from the law. It is Satan’s cunning some times to dress up sins in the form and appearance of duty, and at other times to represent duty in the garb of sin: as Christ’s healing on the Sabbath day. Be the more suspicious, especially in a matter wherein your private advantage is concerned, lest base compliance be reputed a necessary submission, and unjust gain be counted godliness. Examine the nature of the practice by the rule, Is the royal law appliable to such servility? And examine your own hearts. Is my aim right as well as my action? It is not enough to do what the law requires, but it must be done in that manner which the law requireth. Matter of duty may be turned into sin, where the respect and aim is carnal.

Obs. 2. That coming to the law is the best way to discover self-deceits. If it be according to the law (saith the apostle), it is well. Paul died by the coming of the commandment, Romans 7:9; that is, in conviction upon his heart; saw himself in a dead and lost estate. So Romans 3:20, ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin;’ and therefore we should often talk with the commandment, consult with it in all practices.

Obs. 3. That the Lord’s law is a royal law. (1.) It hath a kingly author. The solemn motive to obedience is, ‘I am the Lord.’ Marcion blasphemed in saying the law came from an evil God. Many now speak so contemptuously of it as if they had a Marcionite’s spirit. The same Lord Jesus that gave the gospel gave also the law. Therefore it is so often said, Acts 7:1-60, that the law was ‘given by an angel;’ that is, the angel of the covenant. So Hebrews 12:25 to end; the apostle proves that it was the voice of the Lord Jesus that shook Mount Sinai. It is a known rule in divinity that the Father never appeared in any shape, and therefore that all those apparitions in the Old Testament were of the second person. (2.) It requires noble work, fit for kings; service most proportioned to the dignity of a man’s spirit. Service is an honour, and duty a privilege: Hosea 8:12, ‘The great things’ (it is in the vulgar honorabilia legis, the honourable things) ‘of my law.’ It is said of Israel that no nation was so high in honour above all nations, because they had God’s statutes, which was ‘their wisdom,’ Deuteronomy 7:1-26. The brightest part of God’s glory is his holiness; and therefore it is said, ‘Glorious in holiness;’ and it is our dignity to be holy. That must needs be a royal law that maketh all those kings that fulfil it. (3.) There is royal wages; no less than all of you to be made kings and princes unto God: ‘Enter into the kingdom prepared for you;’ and, ‘henceforth is laid up for me a crown,’ 2 Timothy 4:8. This is the entertainment that ye shall have from God hereafter, to be all crowned kings and princes. Oh! then, give the law this honour in your thoughts. Naturally men adore strictness. How great is the excellency of God’s statutes! Check yourselves, that you can no more come under the power of them. In the ways of sin you have a bad master, worse work, and the worst wages. There is a bad master: ‘His lusts will ye do,’ John 8:44; they are Satan’s lusts, he is the author of them. There is bad work; sin is the greatest bondage and thraldom, 2 Peter 2:18, the heart naturally riseth against it. Then there is bad wages: Romans 6:1-23, ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Well, then, press these disproportions, and say, ‘What evil have I found in God?’ Jeremiah 2:5. Hath God or sin been a land of darkness to me? I have served him these eighty years (said Polycarp), καὶ οὐκ ἠδίκησε μὲ, and he never did me harm. Reason with yourselves: Will you sin against a royal Lord, such royal work, such a royal reward?

Obs. 4. That the rule that God hath left us is laid down in the scriptures; there is the signification of his will, and from thence must it be sought: they are ‘able to make the man of God perfect.’

Obs. 5. The scriptures require we should love our neighbour as our selves. Paul saith, Galatians 5:14, ‘All the law is fulfilled in one word: love thy neighbour as thyself.’ All the law, that is, all that part of the law which concerns our duty towards others; or all the law, by worshipping God, in discharging our duty towards man, and so turning both tables into one. And Christ saith, Matthew 7:12, ‘This is the law, and the prophets’—that is, the sum of the whole word, and that standard of equity which is erected therein—that ‘whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them:’ for which saying Severus reverenced Christ and Christianity. But must a man love his neighbour with the same proportion of care and respect that he doth himself? The special love of a man to his wife is expressed by this, Ephesians 5:28, ‘So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies;’ and the Hebrew expression is the same in all other places: ‘Let him love his neighbour as his own body.’ And must he now love every one with those singular respects and proportions of affection that he beareth to himself and his wife?

I answer—The strictness of the precept should not amaze us. Christ raiseth it one peg higher: John 13:34, ‘I have given you a commandment, that as I have loved you, so ye should love one another.’ There is another manner of pattern: Christ’s love was intense, and the measure of it beyond the conceit of our thoughts: Yet as I love, so must ye love one another. But for the opening of this matter, I shall first show you, Who is your neighbour; secondly. What kind of love is required to him.

First, Who is your neighbour?—a question necessary to be propounded. It was propounded to Christ himself: Luke 10:29, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ The solution may be gathered out of Christ’s answer. First, In the general, every man to whom I may be helpful; and the term neighbour is used because our charity is most exercised and drawn out to those that are near us, the objects that are about us. But it must not be confined there: for Christ proves that a stranger may be a neighbour, Luke 10:36. All people that have the face of a man are called ‘our flesh,’ Isaiah 58:7, and ‘one blood,’ Acts 17:26—‘one blood,’ cousins at a remoter distance. Any man is a neighbour in regard of the nearness of our first original, and as he is capable of the same glory and blessedness which we expect; and so a stranger, an enemy, may be a neighbour by the gospel rules, and an object of such love as we bear unto ourselves, we being bound to desire his good, by virtue of his manhood, as we would our own. Secondly, There are more especial neighbours, who dwell about us, and are more frequent with us, whose necessities must provoke us to more acts and expressions of love; and as they are more or less near unto us, so are we to proportion our love to them: those that dwell with us before strangers. Thus the Hebrews preferred the men of their own nation before the Grecians ‘in the daily ministration,’ Acts 6:1-15. And then our kindred, and those of our family, before a common neighbour; as the apostle saith, 1 Timothy 5:8, ‘If any man provideth not for his own, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’ He speaks upon the case of showing pity at home. And then our children are in the next rank before them; and the wife of the bosom before them all: and accordingly must all acts of bounty and provision be dispensed. Thirdly, There are spiritual neighbours, and they are those who are begotten by the same Spirit to the same hopes, who are to have a special preferment in our affection; I mean, in that kind of affection which is proper to Christianity: and for all outward acts of bounty and love, they are to have the pre-eminence, our children and families only excepted, which, by the law of nature, in this case are to be looked upon as a part of ourselves: Galatians 6:10, ‘As we have opportunity, let us do good to all men; especially to the house hold of faith.’ In short, in the love of bounty, the poor and necessitous man is the special neighbour; in the love of delight, the godly man is to have the preferment: ‘My delights are to the excellent of the earth,’ Psalms 16:3. Which also is Bernard’s determination, Meliori major affectus, indigentiori major effectus, tribuendus est—the best must have most of our affection, the poorest most of our bounty: Luke 14:12-14, ‘When thou makest a feast, call not thy rich neighbours,’ &c. He doth not condemn honest courtesies, but reproveth the Pharisees’ error, who thought by these things to satisfy the commandment; just as these did here in the text, who would seem to make that an act of charity which was but an act of covetousness, and called that love which was base servility and compliance: and we still see that many esteem that Christian communion which is indeed but a carnal visit, and pretend courtesy to excuse charity.

Secondly, What kind of love is required in this expression, we are to love them as ourselves? I answer—The expression showeth the manner of our love, not the measure of it; a parity and likeness for kind, not for proportion. It cannot be understood in the same degree, partly because in some cases a man is bound to love his neighbour more than himself; as 1 John 3:16, ‘We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,’ my single life to save the whole community. And so we ought to help on one another’s spiritual good with the loss of our temporal: we may expose ourselves to uncertain danger to hinder another’s certain danger. The apostle Paul, in a glorious excess of charity, could prefer the common good of the salvation of all the Jews before the particular salvation of his own soul: Romans 9:3, ‘I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh;’ and Moses, for the general safety of Israel, could wish himself to be ‘blotted out of God’s book,’ Exodus 32:1-35. Cases may happen wherein a public good may be more considerable, and better in itself, than my particular happiness; and then in self-denial I am bound to love others better than myself. And partly because, on the other hand, in ordinary cases it is impossible I should be as strongly moved, or as industriously active, in another man’s case as I would in my own; therefore, as I said, the rule intendeth the kind of affection, and the way of it; that is, with what mind and in what course I should pursue the good of others—with the same heart and in the same way I would mine own; and chiefly aimeth at the prevention of a double evil usual among men self-love and injury: self-love, when men out of the privacy and narrowness of their spirits, only ‘mind their own things;’ and injury, when men care not how they deal with others. First, It preventeth self-love by pressing us—(1.) To mind the good of others: 1 Corinthians 10:24, ‘Let no man seek his own, but each man another’s wealth,’ their comfort and contentment, by all offices of humanity suitable and convenient to their necessities; especially to promote their spiritual good, labouring to procure it, praying for them, though they be enemies, as David fasted for his enemies, Psalms 35:1-28. But alas! this love is quite decayed in these last ages of the world. They are mightily infamed in the scriptures for self-seeking, 2 Timothy 3:2. One said,¹ The world was once destroyed, propter ardorem cupidinis, with water for the heat of lust; and it will be again destroyed, propter teporem charitatis, with fire for the coldness of love. These duties are quite out of date and use. (2.) To mind their good really, as truly, though not as much. The apostle saith, ‘Let love be without dissimulation;’ and St. John speaketh often of ‘loving in truth.’ Though we are not every way as earnest, yet we must be as real in promoting their good as our own, without any self-end and reflections upon our own advantage and profit. Secondly, It preventeth injury, by directing us to deal with others as we would have them to deal with ourselves; wishing them no more hurt than we would wish our own souls: I mean, when we are in our right reason, and self-love is regular; hiding their defects and infirmities as you would your own; pardoning their offences as you desire God should do yours; and in all contracts and acts of converse putting your souls in their stead. Would I be thus dealt with? If I had my own choice, would not I be otherwise used? In all our commerce it is good to make frequent appeals to our consciences: Would I have this measure measured unto my own soul?

¹ Ludolphus de Vita Christi. And thus I have opened the great rule of all commerce, ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself;’ whose intent is, as I said, partly to prevent self-love, by showing we must do others good as well as ourselves; and partly to prevent injury, that we may do others no more evil than we do ourselves.