Many interpret the poor (James 2:5) as those who lack worldly goods. Others will say the poor are those who are not highly esteemed in the world, but even they seem to emphasize the idea that the Lord called many in the class of humanity known to be poor as opposed to the wealthy class of people. I believe James’ point is missed in that he at least often used the terms poor and rich in metaphor in his epistle. Certainly, the literal poor are lacking in this world’s goods, while the wealthy have them in abundance. However, James is using this mental picture to point to the idea that there were those during the first century AD who were not highly esteemed (the poor in spirit) among the churches of God (Matthew 5:3), and these were willing to lead by serving (Mark 10:43-44).
On the other hand, there were also those who were very highly esteemed (the rich in spirit; cp. Matthew 7:22), who desired to be great in the assemblies of God and wanted to be served (Mark 10:42); that is, they directed others to do as they commanded. Yet, of the two, God had chosen those who were poorly esteemed among the brethren (James 2:5). The problem, according to James, was that the believing communities were choosing to receive the very ones the Lord had not received, and they treated those whom the Lord had chosen with disdain (James 2:6).
According to James, it was a common practice for the rich man to take the poor man to judgment and oppress him, but for our purpose in this study, we need to consider that James used these terms often in metaphor. He isn’t, necessarily, speaking of the literal rich. Rather, the rich man in the present context is the false teacher who was rich in himself (cp. Matthew 7:22), and the law to which he brings the believer is the Mosaic Law. In other words, men would be oppressed and judged as a sinners, rather than justified and accepted. What James seems to be showing his readers is that they were rejecting the riches of Christ, which the poor-in-spirit leaders were freely offering them in abundance, in order to embrace the rich-in-spirit false teachers who wanted to oppress them and lord it over them for gain. Thus, because believers thought to judge the poor-in-spirit leader, as common or unclean[1] in the presence of the rich false teacher (James 2:1, 4, 6), they were being judged by the Lord in that by receiving the rich man they were drawn back into bondage.
It seems to me, that James may very well have been defending gentile leaders in the predominantly believing Jewish assemblies. These were the poor men who had been the lightly esteemed. Such men would have been targeted by any Jewish leader from Jerusalem, who had been sent in the name of the high priest to bring the assemblies under his control.
In saying they blasphemed the worthy name by which you are called, James is saying the false teachers were not believers in any sense of the word. We would not call them Christian today. They blasphemed (G987) the name of Jesus, which is another way of saying they slandered the name of Jesus. The same word was used by Paul to indicate how his name was slandered (1Corinthians 10:30) and by Peter to indicate how the faithful had been slandered (1Peter 4:4), and again by Peter again to indicate how the way of truth and Christian leaders had been slandered (2Peter 2:2, 10). Jesus’ name is slandered by false teachers who preach the Law. They are legalistically minded folks who say it is Christ who saves, but Christ cannot or won’t save anyone who doesn’t obey the Law. Believers who follow Jesus aren’t lawbreakers in any country, because they do as Jesus did (WWJD). To follow Jesus would offend no one, nor any law. A true believer is completely harmless, both politically and religiously.
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[1] Because the Lord had received gentiles together with Jewish believers without commanding them to be circumcised, or to become Jews, it was difficult for a strict Jewish believer to consider him clean (cp. Acts 10:34-35, 44-48; 11:1-4, 18).
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