Respect of Persons - UPDV Updated Bible Version

"Respect of persons" — partiality, favoritism, the eye that weighs the litigant before it weighs the case — is condemned across the canon as a perversion both of God's character and of the human bench he sets up to mirror it. The same idiom binds Old and New Testament treatments: "to respect the person of," "to show favoritism," "to know faces." The doctrine is doubled. Yahweh himself shows none, and the people who answer to him are not to imitate the partiality that is foreign to him. The wisdom books anatomize the temptation, the prophets indict its practice, the Mosaic law forbids it under oath, and the apostolic letters lift it into the order of the Christian assembly.

Yahweh Shows No Partiality

The doctrinal floor of the topic is laid in the Deuteronomic confession. Moses describes Yahweh in courtroom vocabulary: "For Yahweh your⁺ God, he is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the awesome, who does not regard persons, nor takes reward" (De 10:17). The Chronicler turns the same fact into the charge laid on a reformed judiciary under Jehoshaphat: "Now therefore let the fear of Yahweh be on you⁺; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with Yahweh our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes" (2Ch 19:7). The argument is that the human bench answers to a divine bench whose first feature is impartiality.

Job applies the doctrine to social rank as such — the highest persons in the realm have no claim on the divine eye. Of God: "[Him] who says to a king, [You are] vile, [Or] to nobles, [You⁺ are] wicked; Who does not respect the persons of princes, Nor show favoritism to the rich more than the poor; For all of them are the work of his hands" (Job 34:18-19). The reason given — "all of them are the work of his hands" — is the creation premise: the maker has no second category of creature to favor. Job himself argues from the same ground when defending his own conduct toward his slaves: "If I have despised the cause of my male slave or of my female slave, When they contended with me; What then shall I do when God rises up? And when he visits, what shall I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?" (Job 31:13-15). The same fashioning hand precludes partiality in either direction.

The wisdom of Sirach reads the matter the same way. The sacrificial system cannot be turned into a transaction with a partial God: "Do not bribe [him], for he will not accept [gifts], And do not trust in a sacrifice of extortion; For he is a God of justice, And with him there is no partiality" (Sir 35:14-15). And the eschatological corollary, that "the righteous Judge executes judgement. Yes, the Lord will not tarry, And the Mighty One will not refrain himself, Until he smites the loins of the merciless" (Sir 35:22), follows directly from the same impartiality.

The apostolic letters take this Old Testament confession and press it as the ground of Christian ethics. Paul: "for there is no favoritism with God" (Ro 2:11), with the immediate corollary that those inside and outside the law are judged on the same terms — "For as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law" (Ro 2:12). Across the same letter, "there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same [Lord] is Lord of all, and is rich to all who call on him" (Ro 10:12), and the protest against any partiality in the divine court — "What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid" (Ro 9:14). To the assembly at Galatia Paul reports the apostles' parity in similar terms: "from those who were reputed to be somewhat--whatever they were, it makes no matter to me: God does not accept man's person" (Ga 2:6).

Peter's pastoral application names the same standard for the Christian sojourner: "And if you⁺ call on him as Father, who without favoritism judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your⁺ sojourning in fear" (1Pe 1:17). The fact that calling God "Father" does not exempt the caller from impartial judgment is the steel of the verse.

Masters and Slaves Under One Master

A specific Christian application of the doctrine surfaces in the household codes: the master is not the partial party in the room because his own Master is impartial above him. To slaves and masters together: "knowing that whatever good thing each one does, the same he will receive again from the Lord, whether slave or free. And, you⁺ masters, do the same things to them, and forbear threatening: knowing that he who is both their Master and yours⁺ is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him" (Ep 6:8-9). The same argument is restated to the Colossians without softening: "For he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done: and there is no favoritism" (Cl 3:25). The corollary commandment to masters is the just-and-equal rule: "Masters, render to your⁺ slaves that which is just and equal; knowing that you⁺ also have a Master in heaven" (Cl 4:1). The slave's wrong and the master's wrong are weighed at the same bench.

The Magistrate's Charge

The Mosaic law translates the divine impartiality into a procedural rule for the courts. Two formulas dominate. First, the holiness code lays down the symmetrical rule, that the temptation goes both ways: "You⁺ will do no unrighteousness in judgment: you will not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness you will judge your associate" (Le 19:15). Partiality toward the poor in pity is forbidden alongside partiality toward the powerful in fear. Second, Deuteronomy puts the rule into the appointment of the judges themselves: "You⁺ will not show favoritism in judgment; you⁺ will hear the small and the great alike; you⁺ will not be intimidated by man; for the judgment is God's: and the cause that is too hard for you⁺, you⁺ will bring to me, and I will hear it" (De 1:17). And again at the appointment of regional judges: "You will not wrest justice: you will not show favoritism; neither will you take a bribe; for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous" (De 16:19). The same triplet — wresting justice, partiality, bribes — is the canonical bundle: where one is found, the other two run with it.

The wisdom books name the bench's instinct in proverbs. The forensic reversal that calls the wicked man righteous is intolerable; so is its mirror in the partial verdict. "These also are [words] of the wise. To show favoritism in judgment is not good" (Pr 24:23). And: "To show favoritism is not good; Neither that a [noble] man should transgress for a piece of bread" (Pr 28:21) — the tiniest bribe is sufficient corruption. Sirach: "Do not lay yourself down under a fool, And do not show favoritism before the mighty" (Sir 4:27). The wise man's instruction is to show no face to power, and his instruction to the just judge is the same: "Save the oppressed from his oppressors, And do not let your spirit be weary with right judgment" (Sir 4:9).

The Psalter brings the partial bench up before the divine bench. "How long will you⁺ judge unjustly, And respect the persons of the wicked? Selah. Judge the poor and fatherless: Do justice to the afflicted and destitute" (Ps 82:2-3). The court that loses its impartiality is itself put on trial.

The Prophetic Indictment

The prophets indict partiality as a covenant violation, not merely as a procedural lapse. Malachi names the priests' failure in the same idiom Moses had used of God: "Therefore I have also made you⁺ contemptible and base before all the people, according to as you⁺ have not kept my ways, but have had respect of persons in the law" (Mal 2:9). The priests' job had been to administer the law impartially; their respect of persons in its application has earned them contempt before the people they were partial toward.

Job's own protest in the courtroom mode anticipates the prophetic line: "He will surely reprove you⁺, If you⁺ secretly show partiality" (Job 13:10) — a friend who tilts his counsel toward power will himself be reproved by the impartial God whose case he was supposed to argue.

The Christian Assembly

The doctrine reaches its sharpest application in the Christian assembly. James asks the receiving congregation to scrutinize the seating chart. "My brothers, don't show favoritism in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory. For if there comes into your⁺ synagogue a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, and there comes in also a poor man in vile clothing; and you⁺ have regard to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, You sit here in a good place; and you⁺ say to the poor man, You stand, or sit there under my footstool; don't you⁺ then make distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?" (Jas 2:1-4). The argument runs from God's own choice — "did not God choose those who are poor as to the world [to be] rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him?" (Jas 2:5) — through the assembly's experience of the rich — "But you⁺ have dishonored the poor man. Don't the rich oppress you⁺, and themselves drag you⁺ into court? Don't they blaspheme the honorable name by which you⁺ are called?" (Jas 2:6-7) — to the verdict: "Nevertheless if you⁺ fulfill the royal law, according to the Scripture, You will love your fellow man as yourself, you⁺ do well: but if you⁺ show favoritism, you⁺ commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors" (Jas 2:8-9). Partiality is not bad manners; it is sin convicted by the law itself.

Paul's last instruction to his delegate makes the same point at the apostolic level. The discipline of the elders is to be administered without face: "I charge [you] in the sight of God, and Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing by partiality" (1Ti 5:21). The presence of God, of Christ, and of the elect angels is invoked precisely as the bench against which partiality cannot stand.

The Standard, Stated Plainly

The whole topic resolves to one sentence in Sirach, in the doxology of justice: "he is a God of justice, And with him there is no partiality" (Sir 35:15). The legal codes, the wisdom books, the prophets, the Psalter, and the apostolic letters all spell the same principle out in their own dialect, but the principle is one. Where Yahweh's character is impartiality, his people's law forbids partiality, his prophets indict it, his wise men ridicule it, and his apostles convict the assembly that practices it. The umbrella of this topic is held up by a single beam.