Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

ality, so graphically described by James, and not to treat them according to
their standing and status, when the poor amble into an assembly.
Incidentally, if the “poor” would grasp their standing and status (Jam.
1:9!) as well, they would categorically deny their poverty and ever dwell on
their superior riches. This would be a miracle, indeed, especially if the Greek
term for “poor” implies that the class of people, to whom the term applies, are
very conscious of their abject need, would tend to regard themselves as second-rate
as a result of it, and find it easy to cower in the presence of anyone,
whom they deem superior to them (Zodhiates, I, 162). Self-knowledge is a
virtue. But it must be controlled by the reality of biblical truth. Even the
poorest of Christians can keep their heads high. They can, indeed, must, say
with proper humility in the face of divine election, and insist with appropriate
confidence by virtue of present salvation (Jam. 1:9), that they are “rich.”
Similarly, if the rich would fully “taste” and “cherish” their citizenship, they
would designate their riches as “poverty” in comparison, and rejoice in it as
poverty. Both poor and rich are “kings and priests” (Rev. 1:6). The poor may
be reminded that they are also kings, and the rich that they are first of all
priests.
All this suggests something quite anomalous, something that does not
seem to fit, in fact, something that does not make any sense whatsoever. If
you habitually discriminate against beggarly looking folks, even if you would
call that “putting them in their appropriate place,” you eventually cannot
avoid discriminating against one of God’s own. James reasons as follows. If
all the poor are routinely despised, eventually you will despise one of God’s
elect. In the process you show your blindness to their awesome riches, while
it totally escapes you that they are the beneficiaries of an inheritance the
magnitude of which defies the imagination. As I mentioned earlier, “you
don’t treat present or potential family members, brothers and sisters, for
whom Christ as the elder brother died and rose again, in this deplorable way.”
All this is unmistakable and hopefully eye-opening implication of the status
of the poor.
Of course, James does not indicate in this passage that “the poor” as a
category must per se be equated with the “pious” (Dibelius, 39). In fact, this
is nowhere taught in Scripture, not even in the parable of Dives and Lazarus
(Lk. 16:19-25). To extract such teaching from this parable is to draw an illegitimate
inference, because it ignores its central point, namely the emphasis
upon the horror of hell. In fact, even the text of James itself militates against
this interpretation. After all, the promise of God targets those who love him,
whether poor or rich for that matter. This is not a meaningless appendix, to be
treated as an afterthought. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This could
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