Prejudice
Text: I Timothy 5:21
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Define prejudice as the defines it — to pre-judge, to judge without the facts — and explain why he says it can only exist in ignorance.
- Explain why the treats prejudice as a serious charge in I Tim. 5:21 and identify the analogy he draws to preaching another gospel.
- Name the five effects of prejudice from Section II and identify the most extreme: prejudice crucified Christ.
- Identify the two specific examples the gives in Section III of what prejudice prevents people from seeing: the one body, and the conditions of pardon.
- State the two remedies the outline offers for keeping free from prejudice and explain why prayer is included.
Thesis
Prejudice is not merely a personal failing — it is a spiritual sin of the first order, comparable in gravity to preaching a false gospel, capable of closing eyes against truth, capable of crucifying the innocent, and capable of keeping the prejudiced soul out of heaven. It is the characteristic sin of sectarianism, and its specific form in the religious world is the refusal to examine what the Bible says about the one body and the conditions of pardon.
Burden
The outline grounds the sermon in I Tim. 5:21 — a text addressed to Timothy about judicial impartiality in church proceedings. He uses it to identify prejudice as the parallel sin to preaching a false gospel (Gal. 1:8-9). Both involve rejecting God's power — the false gospel by replacing it, prejudice by refusing to see it. The burden is to press the hearer toward the examination that prejudice prevents: What does the Bible actually say about the one body? What does the Bible actually say about the conditions of pardon?
Introduction
"I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality" (I Tim. 5:21). The charge is delivered under the most solemn possible witness: God, Christ, and the angels. What is being charged against is partiality — the Greek prosklisis, literally "leaning toward," the inclination toward a predetermined conclusion before the evidence has been heard.
What is prejudice? To pre-judge; to judge without the facts. It is founded on ignorance and can only exist in ignorance — either the ignorance of the facts not yet examined, or the willful ignorance that refuses to examine them. Both forms disqualify the person who holds them from the role of competent witness or fair judge.
I. This a Serious Charge (I Tim. 5:21)
The outline establishes the gravity of the sin before identifying its effects.
A similar charge to "Preach the Word" (II Tim. 4:1). Both charges are delivered by Paul to Timothy with urgency; both concern the integrity of what the church does with the truth. One concerns the faithful transmission of the truth; the other concerns the fair reception of it. The preacher who will not deliver the whole truth, and the hearer who will not receive it without bias, are committing sins in the same family.
A great sin to preach another gospel (Gal. 1:8-9) — because it rejects God's power. Paul pronounces a double anathema on anyone who preaches a distorted gospel. The reason is that the distorted gospel cannot save — it replaces the power of God with something else, and that something else has no power to do what the gospel does. Preaching a false gospel is not merely theological error; it is the rejection of the only power capable of saving anyone.
Prejudice is a parallel sin — how great, how guilty. The person who holds a prejudice so firm that no amount of evidence can reach them has made themselves the substitute for God's authority. They have appointed their own prior conclusion as the judge of the evidence. They reject God's truth not by arguing against it but by refusing to see it. The gravity of the sin is equal to preaching a false gospel because the effect is identical: the person remains outside the truth that could save them.
A juror must be free from prejudice — a competent witness must be too. The outline uses legal categories to establish the standard: in a court of law, a biased juror is disqualified. The person who has already decided the verdict before hearing the evidence has invalidated the proceeding. The same standard applies to the examination of Scripture: the person who approaches the Bible with a conclusion already reached cannot be a competent witness to what the Bible actually says.
II. What Prejudice Will Do for One
The second section traces the consequences of prejudice through five specific effects, each grounded in Scripture.
Makes one disrespectful, angry, a mocker (Acts 7:57; 17:32). Acts 7:57: the council members who heard Stephen's sermon "cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse." Acts 17:32: when Paul preached the resurrection at Athens, "some began to sneer." Both responses are prejudice in action: the argument is not answered; the arguer is silenced or dismissed. The person who can only respond to an uncomfortable truth with anger or mockery has demonstrated that they do not have an answer.
Closes one's eyes against knowledge and truth (Matt. 13:15; II Cor. 4:3-4). Matthew 13:15: "For the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them." The closing is voluntary — "they have closed their eyes." II Corinthians 4:3-4: "our gospel is veiled... to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving." Prejudice is the form that blindness takes when it is chosen rather than imposed.
It makes one dishonest and untruthful (Matt. 28:11-15). After the resurrection, the chief priests gave money to the soldiers and told them to say "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep." The prejudice that had rejected the living Christ now paid to suppress the evidence of the risen Christ. Prejudice, when threatened by the facts, produces dishonesty as its defense.
It crucified Christ (Matt. 27:21-26). This is the most extreme form of the sin: prejudice taken to its logical conclusion produces the murder of the innocent. The chief priests and elders had already decided; the evidence of Jesus's ministry, teaching, and identity was available to them. They rejected it. The crowd that cried "Crucify him!" did so not because they had examined the evidence and found it wanting — but because the leaders who had rejected it told them to cry.
It will keep one out of heaven. The person whose prejudice prevents them from seeing what the Bible teaches about salvation — about the one body, about the conditions of pardon — will die in the condition that prejudice maintained. There is no remedy at the judgment for the conclusions that prejudice refused to examine in this life.
III. It Is the Sin of Sectdom
The third section applies the analysis of prejudice to the specific religious failures it produces in the hearer's own context.
The one body (Rom. 12:4-5; I Cor. 12:20; Eph. 4:4). The Bible's teaching on the unity of the body is not obscure: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all" (Eph. 4:4-6). What keeps one from seeing this? Prejudice — the prior commitment to the legitimacy of a denominational system that the New Testament does not authorize.
"Faith only" excludes love, repentance, baptism, obedience. What keeps one from seeing this? Prejudice. The doctrine of faith alone has been used to eliminate from the conditions of salvation everything that the New Testament includes alongside faith: repentance (Acts 2:38; Luke 13:3), baptism (Acts 2:38; Mark 16:16; I Pet. 3:21), love (Gal. 5:6: "faith working through love"), obedience (Heb. 5:9: "the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him"). The person who cannot see these texts is not lacking intelligence; they are lacking willingness to examine what prejudice has protected from examination.
IV. How to Keep Free from Prejudice
The outline offers two remedies — brief but sufficient.
Do not exalt opinion above faith. The person who treats their own theological tradition as the authority by which Scripture is measured has inverted the proper order. The tradition is to be evaluated by the Scripture; the Scripture is not to be filtered through the tradition. When opinion becomes the master and faith becomes the servant, prejudice has been institutionalized.
Receive the truth from any source. Pray to know the truth. The person who will only receive truth from a source they already trust has made their prior approval of the source the condition for receiving the truth. But truth is truth regardless of its source. The willingness to receive it from an unexpected direction is the test of whether one actually wants the truth or only wants confirmation of what they already believe.
Pray to know the truth. This is the deepest remedy because it addresses the will rather than the intellect. The person who prays to know the truth — sincerely, not as a formality — has placed themselves in the posture of the learner rather than the judge. Jesus promised: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Matt. 7:7). The truth-seeker who asks God is asking the one who has the truth and is willing to give it.
Application
The sermon places two specific questions before the hearer:
What have you closed your eyes to? The prejudice that Acts 7:57 describes — covering the ears and rushing at the person speaking — is the dramatic form of a decision that most people make more quietly. Where in your examination of Scripture have you arrived at a conclusion before reading the text? Which passages have you avoided because you know what they say and you do not want to deal with it?
What does the Bible actually say? About the one body: is there one, or many? About the conditions of pardon: what did Peter actually say at Pentecost? What did Ananias actually say to Saul? What did Paul say to the Philippian jailor? These are not speculative questions — they have clear answers in the text. The answers are only unavailable to the person whose prejudice has prevented the reading.
Conclusion
"To prejudge; to judge without the facts." This is the definition. The facts are in the text. The text is open. The God who placed the truth there promises to illumine it to those who ask. The only thing standing between the prejudiced person and the truth is the prejudice itself — which is, ultimately, a choice.
Stephen Decatur said: "May my country ever be right; but right or wrong, I'm for my country." The outline notes: "So with many about their denomination." National loyalty that exempts itself from examination is called patriotism; theological loyalty that exempts itself from examination is called prejudice. The remedy is the same: the willingness to follow the truth wherever it leads, even if it leads away from what was previously assumed.
Invitation
"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32). The freedom the truth provides is freedom from the prejudice that has kept the hearer in the wrong position. To know the truth about the one body, the conditions of pardon, and the answer to "What must I do to be saved?" — and to act on that knowledge — is the freedom the gospel offers.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). This is the truth Peter preached, Ananias delivered to Saul, and the jailor obeyed immediately. Prejudice has kept many from seeing it. You have seen it. Respond.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prejudice | prosklisis | inclination, leaning toward | inclination, leaning toward | used only here in the NT; describes the judicial bias that leans toward a verdict before the evidence is complete; the opposite of adiakritōs ("without discrimination," James 3:17), which describes the wisdom from above; wisdom from above is "without partiality and without hypocrisy." | I Tim. 5:21 |
| Pre-judge | the etymology of the English "prejudice" | the etymology of the English "prejudice" | prae (before) + judicium (judgment); to judge before the evidence is in; the definition is etymological, which grounds the discussion in the actual meaning of the word rather than its cultural associations. | the definition | |
| One body | hen sōma | one body, a single body | one body, a single body | not a federation of bodies, not a collection of bodies that all belong to the same family, but one; the number is absolute; the denominational system that multiplies bodies has no more New Testament authorization than the number "many" in place of Ephesians 4:4's "one." | Eph. 4:4 |
| Faith only | monon | only | James 2:24 is the only place in the Bible where "faith" and "only" appear in the same sentence, and the sentence says: " | James 2:24 is the only place in the Bible where "faith" and "only" appear in the same sentence, and the sentence says: "a man is justified by works and not by faith alone"; the doctrine of sola fide has inverted the one verse that speaks of faith and "only" in combination. | James 2:24 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "Without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality" — text | Text | I Tim. 5:21 |
| Preach another gospel — accursed | I.2 | Gal. 1:8-9 |
| Prejudice as disrespect — rushing at Stephen | II.1 | Acts 7:57 |
| Prejudice as mockery — sneering at the resurrection | II.1 | Acts 17:32 |
| Closing eyes against truth — voluntary blindness | II.2 | Matt. 13:15; II Cor. 4:3-4 |
| False report of the resurrection — prejudice produces dishonesty | II.3 | Matt. 28:11-15 |
| "Crucify him!" — prejudice produces injustice | II.4 | Matt. 27:21-26 |
| The one body — Eph. 4:4-6 | III.1 | Rom. 12:4-5; I Cor. 12:20; Eph. 4:4-6 |
| "Not by faith alone" — the only verse that uses the phrase | III.2 | James 2:24 |
| "Ask and it will be given" — prayer to know truth | IV.2 | Matt. 7:7 |
| "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free" | Concl. | John 8:32 |
| Baptism for remission — the truth prejudice prevents | Invit. | Acts 2:38 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 129. Primary text: I Tim. 5:21 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "prejudice1" → "prejudice?"; "a juror must be free from prejudice-a" → "A juror must be free from prejudice — a"; "lJ." → "II."; "lll." → "III." Doctrinal audit: prejudice identified as the mechanism preventing recognition of the one body (Eph. 4:4) and the conditions of pardon (Acts 2:38); "faith only" developed as the doctrinal result of prejudice — the one Bible verse that uses "faith" and "only" together says "not by faith alone" (James 2:24); the crucifixion developed as the ultimate historical consequence of prejudice in the hands of those in power; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
