My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. (2) For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, (3) and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or “Sit here at my footstool,” (4) have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (5) Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who loved Him?

James, the half brother of Jesus and head of the church in Jerusalem, wrote this letter to fellow Christians as a pastoral letter. In the verses we study today, James is addressing the evils of partiality and deference based on outward appearances; judgment based on apparent wealth and material goods and/or position of power – or conversely, judgment based on lack of these things. This can be a subtle evil or sometimes blatant; we can falsely value “our own kind.”
The glory of the New Testament is that in Christ there is to be no distinction between “Greek and Jew”. Making judgments on appearance is wrong and those who do so are using themselves to judge others. . The New Testament consistently says that God chooses the saved apart from any merit or qualification on the part of those saved and God’s choice is based on His grace and purpose. James here is not defending the doctrine of sovereign election but is using this election as the reason why we are not to judge on external or social distinctions; only God knows the hearts of men/women.
Once again I would like to close with c.s. Lewis from The Weight of Glory. “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all politics. There are no ordinary people.”