Respect Of Persons
Concept“Respect of persons” is an older English phrase for favoritism — judging or treating people according to outward status, wealth, or connections rather than by an impartial standard — and Scripture uses it almost exclusively as a negative: God does not show it, and his people must not.
The wording translates two idioms. In the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 10:17 and 2 Chronicles 19:7 the phrase is literally “to lift the face,” a courtroom image of accepting a person’s standing rather than the merits of the case; in the Greek of Romans 2:11, Colossians 3:25, and 1 Peter 1:17 the noun is prosōpolēmpsia, “face-receiving,” with a verbal form at Acts 10:34. That much is established linguistic fact. What Scripture says with the term is consistently that God judges without it: he is “God of gods and Lord of lords… who doesn’t respect persons or take bribes” (Deuteronomy 10:17), and “there is no iniquity with Yahweh our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes” (2 Chronicles 19:7), a ground for warning Israel’s judges to act likewise. Job 34:19 gives the reason: princes and the rich have no claim over the poor, “for they all are the work of his hands.”
The New Testament extends the claim from judgment to salvation and to community life. Peter confesses at Caesarea that “God doesn’t show favoritism” (Acts 10:34), and the same episode says he “made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9); Paul states flatly that “there is no partiality with God” (Romans 2:11) and “no distinction between Jew and Greek” (Romans 10:12), and that wrongdoers receive back “the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality” (Colossians 3:25). 1 Peter 1:17 draws the ethical conclusion — the Father judges “without respect of persons… according to each man’s work” — while James 2:1–8 supplies the sharpest congregational test: to seat the rich prominently and “dishonor the poor man” (James 2:6) is to violate “the royal law,” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8).
Traditions differ over how far the principle reaches. In this tradition, Reformed readers hold that divine impartiality is compatible with sovereign electing mercy, while Wesleyan and Arminian readers argue that “no partiality” requires a genuinely universal offer of grace — a real and unresolved disagreement. Acts 10:34 and 15:9 are cited across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant teaching on the admission of Gentiles and, by extension, of all peoples to baptism. James 2:5 (“God chose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith”) is read in Catholic social teaching and liberation theology as grounding a preferential concern for the poor, while other readers insist that impartiality forbids any status-based preference, including a reversal of the world’s favoritism; the two readings are often held together rather than resolved. Colossians 3:25 and 1 Peter 1:17 are also invoked in church discipline and ordination debates, against favoring the wealthy or the powerful in the church’s courts.
AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.