James wants his readers to see how strange their favoritism is. They had honored the rich and "despised the poor" (James 2:6), yet the rich were the very people treating them harshly. Barnes suggests the words may be meant ironically: you honor the rich, so look and see how the rich treat you. Barnes says the Greek is very expressive: "Do they not imperiously lord it over you?" The question asks them to check their own experience. Why court the favor of people who were hauling believers into court?

James does not wait for a reply, because his readers knew the answer from their own lives. He presses further with a second question: "Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?" (James 2:7). Then he points them to "the royal law," "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (James 2:8), and names their favoritism plainly: "if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin" (James 2:9).

The word translated "oppress" is katadynasteuo, which Thayer's lexicon defines as "to exercise harsh control over one, to use one's power against one." The only other place it appears in the New Testament is Acts 10:38, where Jesus healed "all that were oppressed of the devil." "Draw" is helko, to drag, and "judgment seats" are courts. Barnes says it was "undoubtedly the case that many of the rich were engaged in persecuting Christians," and "on various pretenses they dragged them before the judicial tribunals." Gill says this may be understood of "rich men that were unbelievers," either pagan magistrates or "their own countrymen, the Jews, who stirred up the chief men of the Gentiles against them," as in Acts 13:50, or else of rich professing believers who lorded it over the poor brethren of the church.

This question sits right after James shows how God chooses: He has chosen "the poor of this world rich in faith" (James 2:5). The readers had turned that upside down. They gave honor where God did not, and withheld it where God gave it. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary tells readers to "consider how often riches lead to vice and mischief, and what great reproaches are thrown upon God and religion, by men of wealth," and says this makes the sin of favoritism "appear very sinful and foolish."

James is not against people because they have money. Later in the letter he warns rich oppressors directly, saying the wages they kept back by fraud cry out and "are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth" (James 5:4). God hears the cry of the oppressed. His people should not flatter the oppressor and ignore the oppressed.