Without prejudice, no partiality

I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality. - 1 Timothy 5v21

I recently saw, for the umpteenth time, the Andy Griffith episode (The Andy Griffith Show is an American comedy from the 60s set in a small North Carolina town called Mayberry. The story line focuses around the small time sheriff, Andy, and his loveable, but often inept deputy, Barney) where Barney arrests the entire town while Andy is gone for the day. When Andy gets back Barney has both cells completely filled with his victims, packed like, as Andy puts it, sardines.

As the victims are paraded before Andy for sentencing we see that all the arrests are dubious at best. Barney has even arrested Andy’s Aunt Bea and his son Opie. One of the next victims is the town mayor, who was arrested for vagrancy.

When questioned about the arrests of Aunt Bea and the mayor, they commented about how Barney spouted things like, ‘no partiality or favouritism.’ At the end of the episode, after they had a change of heart from making Barney the butt of their jokes, the town put themselves back in jail. The mayor makes a speech about how lucky they are to have a deputy who does his duty without partiality.

A funny episode, and in another one Barney gives the governor’s car a ticket for parking illegally. It makes for great humour, but in some ways Barney had it right. It didn’t matter to him who it was, if a law was broken, they had to pay the price.

Paul addresses that issue here. Though he was writing to a young pastor, the truth is still truth in dealing with people. We all have family and friends and people we tend to like more than others, even in the body of Christ and even in our local assemblies. When conflicts or issues arise we are tempted to side with either the first side of the story we hear, or the party who we ‘like’ the best.

Paul makes it clear, do the things you are called to do without any prejudice and without any partiality. We can’t let our bias affect how we deal with things. It makes no difference if it my best friend or the brother I have to choose to love, we apply the word of God as our measuring rod.

It is tempting to ‘go after’ those we disagree with and protect those on ‘our side.’ When we allow this kind of thinking to creep in we are fleshly, proud, ungodly, and wicked. In our dealings, we must deal from God’s perspective. He shows partiality to no one, and we don’t follow His example.