“You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light. Deuteronomy 25:13
When I was growing up in Iran, the grocery stores were similar to the farmer’s market stands of nowadays. Every store owner had his goods out in the open, and had a scale that he would use to weigh the meat, vegetables, or the fruit. The scales were the ancient kind that you had to put a standard weight to one side and put the item to the other side. When the two sides balanced then you knew how much the item weighed. Sometimes the measuring weight were just various sizes of stones!
Everyone made the assumption that the owner’s weights were accurate, and that they were the correct heaviness. For example, a 1 pound weight should be exactly 16 ounces. If the owner decided to have a weight that only weighed 14 ounces but used it as a 1 pound weight, he could cheat people out of 2 ounces every time he sold something. 2 ounces may not be enough for the customer to notice, but they are still cheated out of 2 ounces of their desired goods. On the other hand, the owner could decide to use accurate weights when his family and friends came to purchase goods because He wants to treat his own people right.
When we have a different standard of treatment of people based on our own personal preference or bias, we are using differing weights. For example, one person may call us and ask for our help, and we can find a few excuses not to get inconvenienced. However if our friend or our boss asked us for a favor, we can’t respond fast enough to help them out. We may even change our plans to accommodate the need. The person that we gave the excuse to, may or may not notice the difference of treatment, but we know and the Lord knows that we have differing weights!
The partial treatment could be in variety of areas. We may be quick to encourage and edify the abilities and gifting of our friends or those in visible positions. On the other hand, we are indifferent to the people who are not our friends or are not popular. The sad news is that the Lord may have shown us the ability of that quiet /unknown person, so we can be the only voice of encouragement in their life.
Unfortunately, partiality is all around us, and it is something we have to fight against in ourselves. We are not even immune to it in the body of Christ. Actually it is more hurtful when we, the people of God, operate in partiality. Let’s examine ourselves and see if we have differing weights in our bag!