03 - James 1:16-25 Series

James 1:16-18

16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

James had just said that God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone with evil. Now James cautions the believers to not be deceived by people who teach falsely about God. There was deception in the early church as there is today as well. In fact Jesus told the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares because He knew that there would be deceivers in the church. (Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43). Once we allow ourselves to get deceived concerning the nature of God, it’s only a matter of time before we get back into our old life of sin, resulting in death.

Then he goes on to tell the believers that every good and every perfect gift comes from above, meaning, from Heaven, and comes down to us from God Himself. That is something we should never forget. Because God is good and perfect, therefore everything that comes from God is also good and perfect as well. Love, grace, mercy, wisdom, hope, joy, peace, eternal life and the like, all come from God. The opposite is also true – nothing bad or imperfect comes from God.

He then refers to God as the Father of lights, perhaps referring to God being the creator of the lights in the sky – the Sun the Moon and the stars. These lights serve mankind – no matter who we are, and how we live, depicting the good nature of God, irrespective of our lifestyles. Earlier Jesus had said, in Matthew 5:45, “That you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

At the time that these words were spoken, the only lights that were prevalent in the world would have been the sun, the moon and the stars. Other lights would have been those created by fire. It’s only 18 centuries later that the light bulb was invented and the word, ‘light,’ took on new meaning. So until then, the light that shone always caused shadows that were never stationary, as the source of the light was also not stationary. So what James seems to be saying here is that though the light that God created seems to be constantly on the move (though they really don’t move, but the earth does), yet the God who created them is unchanging. So if God is known to be good all the time, it means that His gifts too are good, and perfect all the time as well.

The quicker we come to this realization that all that God gives us is good and perfect, the quicker we will stop grumbling at or questioning what He gives us, and we will become grateful for his gifts and blessings in our lives. It’s a tragedy when we look at blessings and interpret them as anything other than blessings.

James goes on to say that God brought us new life, and this was His will/plan/thinking, meaning that He was not influenced by anyone to do this. This reminds me of what the Apostle John said in John 1:12-13, “12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John too was making a reference to the fact that our being born again had nothing to do with man’s will/planning/thinking but it was part of God’s plan. James says that God raised us to a new life through faith in the Word of Truth. The Gospel is the message of the truth of God’s love and salvation to the world. It’s the message of Jesus who was the Word made flesh, who was full of Grace and Truth (John 1:14) and also, ‘The Way, The Truth and The Life.’ (John 14:6). Those of us who put our faith in the work of Jesus on our behalf through his death, burial and resurrection, are now born of God (John 1:12-14).

Now we who have been born again are the firstfruits of a harvest as it were, and the hope is that many more millions will come to faith in God through Jesus just like we did. It is God’s will that all men be saved and that none perish, and so James refers to those early Christians who had come to faith in Jesus, as the firstfruits of a much larger soon-to-be, harvest.