Sermon & Translation by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 19 Mar. 2023
As we pick back up on James ch. 1, remember that the context is James writing to Jewish believers in Jesus shortly after His resurrection, and they are undergoing various trials.
He encourages them (and us) with the words of v.12 A man who is steadfast in a trial is blessed, because, after he has proved himself genuine, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those who love Him.
The Greek root for “trial/temptation” in verses 2 and 12 is repeated four times in v.13 and again in verse 14. As I maintained in my previous sermons on James chapter 1, I believe that these “trials” refer to any situation where you are faced with the choice to either trust God or not trust God. This could be in the context of dramatic persecution, but it also happens in all the little decisions of everyday life.
As I have noted before, and as we will continue to see in the book of James, what is going on in our minds – especially what we think about God – is crucial to how we act during these tests. In James 1:13-18, James reminds us that in order to keep from wandering off course and failing our tests, there are things we should not believe about God and things we should believe about God.
And no one should say while being tested that it is from God that I am being tested, for God is not tempted by evil, and He Himself tests no one.
When we face a test, we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that God can stray into evil or that God is trying to get us to do something wrong. Both of these ideas must be rejected.
But wait a minute. Although 90% of the times that this verb for testing/tempting/trial occur in the Greek New Testament refer to the Jews testing God, or Satan testing someone, there are actually some passages indicating that it was God who put someone to the test! For instance,
In John 6:5-6, Jesus asked Philip a question to “test” his faith – would Philip turn to trust in God, or would he trust in human resources? – “...Jesus... seeing a great multitude coming… said to Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ But this He said to test him, because, as for Him, [Jesus] knew what He was going to do.” And Philip didn’t do so well on that test.
But two thousand years previously, Abraham was tested by God, and he passed that test because he trusted God “in faith,” according to Hebrews 11:17-19 “In faith, Abraham, when he was being tested, would have offered up Isaac... even his only-child… after reckoning that God is able to raise up [persons] even from among the dead...” (NAW)
So if the Bible says that God tempted Philip and Abraham1, how can James say that God doesn’t tempt anybody? Here is my2 stab at explaining the apparent discrepancy: I think that the same Greek word is used to describe two different kinds of trials, one more like our English word “test,” and the other more like our English word “tempt.”
In other words, in all the instances in which this Greek verb is used of God “testing” people, it is not an occasion where God is trying to get humans to do something wrong, it is simply an occasion where God gives humans an opportunity to choose to exercise faith in Him.
In other circumstances, the same Greek word is used of the Devil actually trying to get somebody to disobey God, and that’s not something God does. That comes out in v.14 – it’s not God that lures us away from the truth and carries us away into sin and death, rather what does that kind of tempting is our own fallen human lusts. And that is the kind of tempting that James is saying that God does not do.
“God is not the author of any man's sin. Whoever they are who raise persecutions against men, and whatever injustice and sin they may be guilty of in proceeding against them, God is not to be charged with it… Those who lay the blame of their sins either upon their constitution or upon their condition in the world, or who pretend they are under a fatal necessity of sinning, wrong God, as if he were the author of sin.” ~Matthew Henry
Scripture teaches rather that God does the opposite of tempting to sin. He invests Himself in getting us not to fall into temptation,
by encouraging us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer that we won’t be tempted,
and by coming alongside us to help us fight against our temptations to sin, as it says in Hebrews 2:9 “[Jesus] Himself has suffered, having been tested; by such means He is able to come to the rescue with those who are being tempted.” (NAW)
And God even says that He has control over whether or not a temptation is allowed to affect you, because He promises in Rev. 3:10 “Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth (and Rev. 2:10 makes clear that it will be the Devil actually pulling off that trial/temptation), and in 1 Cor. 10:13 we see that God even has control over the intensity of the temptations which He allows to affect you: “...God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tested above what you are able, but rather He will make together with the test also the way out for the ability to undergo [it].” (NAW)
An illustration that comes to mind is from the choral festival I attended last week. One of the choir pieces we sang was an arrangement of the hymn, “How Firm A Foundation.” That hymn ends with a great crescendo, “That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!” Well, to emphasize the message, the composer inserted a dramatic pause in the middle of the last word. This posed quite a challenge for all of us who were familiar with the hymn and who were not used to pausing in the middle of the last word. It also posed a challenge for our conductor to figure out how to get 100 vocalists to simultaneously pause in the middle of singing that word. We had some rather funny episodes during practice times as our conductor exaggerated his hand motions more and more to get everybody’s attention at the ending, and half of us would forget and sing “forssssssssssssssssssake”! Finally, on the night of the concert, our conductor took a real risk in letting us perform that piece, because there was no way to fake that ending; if we got it wrong, it would be utterly embarrassing to him as a conductor and to us as a choir, and it would totally ruin the mood of worship for the hundreds who gathered to hear us. It was a test of sorts: would we follow our conductor’s hand motions, or would we bomb out? I, as a choir member, wasn’t so sure, as it came time to sing that song in the concert. We sang to the ending of the piece, and the conductor started making really big hand motions, and we swelled our volume to the maximum as we sang, “I’ll ne—ver – for—sake!” and every voice synchronized perfectly in that dramatic pause, and the glory of our Lord was exalted, and it was a beautiful moment! When we face tests like this, God, like our conductor, knows exactly what kind of training we need to pass the test, and, even though there is a risk of failure (like in Philip’s case), God lets us take that risk in order that we may follow Him into a level of glorifying Him beyond anything we’ve ever done before (like Abraham did). That’s the kind of test of faith God gives.
But Satan and the world and our flesh set up a different kind of test, and that is to follow them to new levels of separation from God.
Rather, each one is tested when carried away and enticed by his own lust, then, after the lust has conceived, it bears sin, and the sin, after it has been accomplished, gives birth to death.
First of all, we must recognize that it is our own desires which are at the root of sin.
That what James says later at the beginning of chapter 4: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?” (James 4:1, NKJV)
This matches what Jesus said in Matthew 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil rationalizations, murders, adulterous affairs, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, [and] blasphemy; the things that profane the man are these...” (NAW), and so, for that reason, Jesus said in Matthew 5:27 "...everyone who looks at a woman for the purpose of desiring/lusting after her already has committed adultery with her in his heart.”
That also matches the description of the first sin in Genesis 3:6 – it all started with a desire to eat the fruit God had forbidden: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…” The taking and eating of the fruit was merely an extension of the desire. So that’s why sin has to be confronted when it is merely a desire to disobey God, before it becomes outward actions of disobedience against God.
We have to grow in maturity to recognize when our desires are out-of-line with God and ask God, as the book of James said earlier, for the wisdom to see what is going on in its true light - to see the deadly consequences of letting wrongly-formed desires entice and carry us away into deeds of sin.
If you are a fish in the lake, sin is the “fishing lure” “tempting” you to bite into it. You must control your appetite for those fishing lures, because they have hooks in them, and they have a nasty habit of “dragging you out” of the lake and onto the fisherman’s dinner plate! The danger is that real and visceral!
Achan saw that fancy Babylonian coat and that wedge of gold” in Jericho, after conquering the city with his fellow-Israelites, and the desire to possess those things grabbed his mind. What if he had said, “Wow, I can’t believe how strong the desire is to take for myself what God has forbidden; I’d better light fire to this place and get out quick! “Hey Joshua, I need some accountability here. You said we can’t take any of this stuff, right? O.K. well, you might ought to check my pockets before we head home just for good measure.” (Joshua 7) Thirty-six families would have kept their fathers and husbands instead of losing them at the battle of Ai.
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.” (1 Tim. 6:9, NKJV)
By the same token, sins in the thoughts cannot be considered harmless and allowed to remain at home in your mind. Sinful attitudes must be confronted, because thoughts are the seeds of actions. If a seed of lust is allowed to rest in your mind, it will conceive and give birth to sin.
When I was in Uganda on a short-term mission with the TentMaker Project, I was warned that the mosquitoes there carry malaria parasites. Now, I could have said, “Ah, bugs are bugs, I won’t worry about it if a mosquito bites me. They’re so small; what harm can they do? No need to sleep inside a stuffy mosquito net slathered with stinky insect repellent at night. Don’t be such a sissy.” And if I had, I could well have spent the rest of my life battling intermittent spells of debilitating fevers and blood poisoning, like some of my friends have, because when an infected mosquito lands on you and cuts through your skin, it plants malarial sporozoid “seeds” into your bloodstream, and those things mature and reproduce until they kill some people. By analogy, wrong desires inevitably reproduce sin until it kills you!
That’s why God’s word has so many encouragements to fight against sin at the heart-level:
Prov. 4:23 “Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.” (NKJV)
Eph. 4:22 “...put off... the old man which grows corrupt according to... deceitful lusts” (NKJV)
Hebrews 3:12-13 “Keep watch, brothers, otherwise there will be in some of y'all an evil heart of unbelief in apostatizing from the Living God, rather encourage one another throughout each day – as long as it is called ‘today’ in order that some of y'all might not be hardened by the deceitfulness of his sin.” (NAW)
2 Tim. 2:22 “Flee... youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” (NKJV)
The Greek verb root is planaw, which means “to wander off-course, to err,” and it is the same root from which we get the English word “planet,” because of the way the planets do not follow straight arcs across the nighttime sky like the moon and stars do, but rather appear to wobble around due to the fact that they are revolving around the sun like we are.
This Greek verb is in the present tense, which generally denotes continuing action, and thus it could mean, “You have been wandering astray, but that needs to stop.” (Or it could possibly mean that our proneness to wander is so ubiquitous that we constantly need to correct ourselves lest, in a moment of inattentiveness, we be led astray.)
This command relates to the previous verses about being led astray by lusts into sin.
One of the most common lies that our minds embrace when it comes to sin is that it isn’t that bad.
When Eve took the fruit which God had forbidden in the Garden of Eden, her desire for the fruit and her desire to be like God overcame all fear of that unknown concept of death which God had threatened. “It can’t be that bad,” she must have thought. But sin leads to death.
While under the endorphin rush of porn or flirting with a real person, it’s hard to connect the sins of idolatry and adultery to the death of everything good in your life; it is deceptively disconnected so that we will be led astray into bondage to Satan and death. But we must not let ourselves be deceived concerning the inexorable consequences of committing sin.
As the Apostle Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 3:26, KJV)
1 Corinthians 15:33 “Do not be led astray, Bad company corrupts good manners.” 6:9-11 “...Do not be deceived: Neither the immoral nor idol worshipers, nor adulterers, nor gays nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards nor abusive [speakers] nor graspers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of y'all, but you washed yourselves, but you were made holy, but you were made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (NAW, cf. Rev. 21:8)
Galatians 6:7 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (NKJV)
There is no other outcome! Don’t let anyone fool you into disconnecting sin from death in your mind!
This prohibition in James 1:16 also relates to the subsequent verses about believing the truth about God so that you won’t be led astray. We need to remember constantly that God is good and trustworthy and will give us everything we need to endure each trial if we’ll just ask Him.
Later on in James 5:19-20 We again read of the Apostle’s concern that we not wander astray into deception: “Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.” (NKJV) How do we get turned back from wandering into deceit? By returning to the truth, and the truth is in the Bible!
In Matthew 22:29 “...Jesus said... ‘You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God’” (NAW) This teaches us that meditating on the Bible and on the power of God can correct wandering caused by deception. So that’s what James does in...
From God comes the opposite of sin and death. From God comes “every good gift and every perfect endowment.”
Nowhere else in the Greek Bible do we see these phrases “good gift” or “perfect endowment,” but forms of the latter noun are found in two other New Testament passages, both describing spiritual blessings of eternal life – which, of course, only come from God!
Romans 5:15-16 “...if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is... justification.” (NKJV)
2 Peter 1:3-4 “...His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (NKJV)
It is also reminiscent of James 1:2, where God gives wisdom “generously and without reproach” (NASB) to all who ask for it, and of Romans 6:23 “the wages of sin is death, but the gift [different Greek word, but nevertheless a synonym - χάρισμα] of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (NKJV)
Now, in contrast to sin and death that come from our lusts, good things come from above – that is, from the Father of Lights.
In the Greek Old Testament, the word for “above” was one of the ways that the Jews referred respectfully to God without profaning His name, honoring Him as being lofty and exalted. They often combined it with the word “heaven,” which was another way of referring obliquely to God without saying His name, and James follows this Jewish tradition.
Later on, in James 3:14-17, he speaks again of that same wisdom that he had encouraged us to ask God for, and says again that it is “from above”: “...bitter envy and self-seeking... does not come down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic... But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” (NASB) These could also be some of the good gifts James was thinking of as he wrote.
John Calvin commented on this that, “[T]he goodness of God, when known by experience, ought to remove from them all a contrary opinion respecting him.”
The description of God as “the Father of Lights” doesn’t occur anywhere else in the Bible, so there is debate as to what exactly this title means. In light of other passages in the Bible, it seems reasonable to interpret it a couple of different ways:
Half of the time that the Greek word “lights,” in the plural form, occurs in the Greek Old Testament, it denotes the sun, moon, and stars (Jeremiah 4:23 and Psalm 136:7), and that is probably why the NIV added the adjective “heavenly” here3. God is the Father of these heavenly lights, in the sense that He created the sun, moon, and stars. The phrase about “no shadow of turning” seems to fit with the imagery of astronomy, because it is the “rotation” and “revolution” of the earth which gives us changes in the amount of light we get from the sun and moon.
The physical heavens often seems to blend together with the spiritual, heavenly abode of God in the Bible. This is consistent with the phrase “from above” earlier in this verse. And in Colossians 1:12, the same Greek word for “light” (in the singular) refers to the bright presence of God the Father in heaven, where Revelation 21:23 says they have “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.”
Another possible interpretation could come from Psalm 48:20 and Matthew 5:16, where “light” is a metaphor for “life,” in which case the meaning would be that God is the one who created the “light of life” in each human and therefore cares for each one of us well enough to give good gifts. Like Jesus said in Matt. 7:11 "Therefore, if y'all, while being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to the ones who ask Him?” (NAW)
James concludes v.17 by emphasizing the fact that God does not change. In His “presence there is no fluctuation or shading due to revolution.”
This ties in with what James wrote later in 3:17 “the wisdom that is from above is... pure... without partiality and without hypocrisy.” It doesn’t “shift” from truth and righteousness one day over to error and corruption on another day, like human governments do.
This is an important principle that we must keep in mind in order to resist temptation and endure trials. If God doesn’t change, then the rules don’t change, and our mission doesn’t change either, so we must simply hold steady through trials.
Perfection cannot be improved upon. God has no need to change, and that’s a good thing for us because we are constantly changing – physically getting older, mentally growing in knowledge, experientally feeling the vicissitudes of changing circumstances, emotionally up and down – and we are very liable to lose our perspective due to all our changes. We need the solid rock of the unchanging Christ to anchor us and give us an absolute reference.
Malachi 3:6 "For I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.” (NKJV)
Psalm 84:11 “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly.” (NKJV)
And v.18 tells us that God “exercised His will/made a choice/plan...”
This is an aorist participle in Greek, which usually describes an action that happened before the action of the main verb, so I think it is saying that God first exercised His will by making a plan to save us, and then He executed that plan, causing us to “be born” again and making us His spiritual children.
This same Greek root for “planning/willing/choosing” shows up in a couple of other places teaching the same doctrine of God’s election4:
Hebrews 6:17 “...God mediated with an oath, planning to show overwhelmingly to the inheritors of the promise the unchangeableness of His plan” (NAW)
Matthew 11:27 “… no one really knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills/plans to reveal [Him]” (NAW)
In contrast to our lusts which “give birth” to sin and lead to death, God “gives birth to us” and gives us eternal life and “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3).
John 1:12-13 “...He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (NKJV)
1 Peter 1:3 & 23 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead… y'all were not regenerated from a perishable planting, but an imperishable one, through the living word of God that is also remaining to eternity.” (NAW)
If this is God’s agenda, then He can be trusted to give us life in the midst of trials rather than distrusted when we encounter a trial, at the risk of our eternal death!
God gives birth to us “through the word of truth.”
In the Greek Old Testament, the Bible is called the “word of truth” in the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
And in the New Testament, the Gospel is called the “word of truth”:
Ephesians 1:13 “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation…” (NKJV)
Colossians 1:5 “...the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel” (NKJV, cf. 2 Cor. 6:4&7, and 2 Timothy 2:15)
And also there is an organic union between the written word of God (the Bible) and the personal word of God (Jesus Himself).
The Gospel is the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection,
and the death and resurrection of Jesus are the means by which God planned our salvation,
and this message was written in the Bible,
and we respond to the Bible’s message with trust in Jesus when we are born again.
The goal of this spiritual birth is stated at the end of v.18: “in order for us to be a particular firstfruit out of His creations.”
The “firstfruit” is an allusion to the law in Leviticus 23:10 "...When y'all harvest the harvest, that's when y'all must bring the sheaf of first-fruits of your harvest to the priest.” (NAW) That would generally happen at the yearly Pentecost festival: The first stalks of grain would be just maturing at that time of year, and, in the Old Testament, the people of God were to give those first ripe grains and fruits of the harvest season to the LORD. Then, later on at Succoth, they would have processed the entire harvest and could compute 10% of that and bring that tithe to the LORD at the feast of booths later in the fall.
Now, when you consider to whom James is writing, the special meaning comes clear that these were the Jews who first heard the gospel preached by Peter in Jerusalem at the Pentecost festival in 33 AD and became the first major movement of Christianity5. They were a “kind of firstfruits” dedicated to God on that special Pentecost.
And if God planned and invested in the word of truth and gave birth for this, then these folks can know they are loved by God and desirable to Him and dedicated to Him, not destined for the cascade of sin and destruction. They need to believe this truth and not give in to temptation.
And the same is basically true of us, even if we are part of the harvest that came after after those “firstfruits.”
What we think about God will ultimately determine whether we stand by faith in Christ or whether we will fall to sin when we are tempted by the devil and when we are tested by God.
If we understand that it is the fallen desires of our hearts which we need to beware of rather than the plan of God, and if we challenge sin while it is merely an errant desire,
If we keep in mind that death is the inevitable result of sin, while God is the giver of all that is good,
and if we believe that God does not change, so He is successfully implementing His plan to make us His children and bless us with good gifts,
then we will pass the test with flying colors and bring glory to our Lord, through the genuineness of our faith which He has built into us.
Byzantine Greek NT |
NAW |
KJV |
Vulgate |
Murdock Peshitta |
12 Μακάριος ἀνὴρ ὃς ὑπομένει πειρασμόν· ὅτι δόκιμος γενόμενος λήψεται τὸν στέφανονA τῆς ζωῆς, ὃν ἐπηγγείλατοB ὁ Κύριος τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν. |
12 A man who is steadfast in a trial is blessed, because, after he has proved himself genuine, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those who love Him. |
12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord [hath] promised to them that love him. |
12
beatus vir qui suffert temptationem
quia cum probatus fuerit
accipiet coronam vitae quam repromisit |
12
Blessed
is the man who endureth temptation[s];
so that when
he is proved
he may receive |
13 Μηδεὶς πειραζόμενος λεγέτω ὅτι ἀπὸ Θεοῦ πειράζομαι· ὁ γὰρ Θεὸς ἀπείραστόςC ἐστι κακῶν, πειράζει δὲ αὐτὸς οὐδένα. |
13 And no one should say while being tested that it is from God that I am being tempted, for God is not tempted by evil, and He Himself tempts no one. |
13
Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted
of God: for God [can]not
be tempted
|
13 nemo cum temptatur dicat quoniam a Deo temptor Deus enim intemptator malorum est ipse autem neminem temptat |
13 Let no one when he is tempted, say, I am tempted of God: for God is not tempted with evil[s], nor doth he X tempt any man. |
14 ἕκαστος δὲ πειράζεται ὑπὸ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιθυμίας ἐξελκόμενοςD καὶ δελεαζόμενοςE· |
14 Rather, each one is tempted when carried away and enticed by his own lust, |
14
But |
14 unusquisque vero temptatur a concupiscentia sua abstractus et inlectus |
14
But
every man is tempted
by his own lust; and he |
15 εἶτα ἡ ἐπιθυμία συλλαβοῦσα τίκτειF ἁμαρτίαν, ἡ δὲ ἁμαρτία ἀποτελεσθεῖσαG ἀποκύει θάνατον. |
15 then, after the lust has conceived, it bears sin, and the sin, after it has been accomplished, gives birth to death. |
15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. |
15 dein concupiscentia cum conceperit parit peccatum peccatum vero cum consummatum fuerit generat mortem |
15
|
16 Μὴ πλανᾶσθε, ἀδελφοί μου ἀγαπητοί. |
16 My dear brothers, no longer be led astray! |
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. |
16 nolite itaque errare fratres mei dilectissimi |
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. |
17 πᾶσα δόσιςH ἀγαθὴ καὶ πᾶν δώρημα τέλειον ἄνωθένI ἐστι καταβαῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν φώτωνJ, παρ᾿ ᾧ οὐκ ἔνιK παραλλαγὴL ἢ τροπῆς ἀποσκίασμαM. |
17 Every good gift and every perfect endowment is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, in the presence of whom there is no fluctuation or shading due to revolution. |
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. |
17 omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum desursum est descendens a Patre luminum apud quem non est transmutatio nec vicissitudinis obumbratio |
17 Every good X and X perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of lights, with whom is no mutation, not [even the] shadow of change. |
18 βουληθεὶς ἀπεκύησεν ἡμᾶς λόγῳ ἀληθείαςN εἰς τὸ εἶναι ἡμᾶς ἀπαρχήν τινα τῶν Oαὐτοῦ κτισμάτων. |
18 After planning it, He gave birth to us by means of the word of truth in order for us to be a particular firstfruit out of His creations. |
18 [Of] his [own] will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. |
18 voluntarie genuit nos verbo veritatis ut simus initium aliquod creaturae eius |
18
He
saw fit,
and begat us by the word of truth; that we might be |
1In the Pillar Commentary, Douglas Moo added to this list Israel (Judges 2:22) & Hezekiah (2 Chron. 32:31/2 Kings 20:12-19). He also pointed out the striking similarity of this verse in James to the Apocryphal Sirach 15:11-20.
2This also seems to be the consensus of the commentaries I read later. For instance Calvin: “Here, no doubt, he speaks of another kind of temptation. It is abundantly evident that the external temptations, hitherto mentioned, are sent to us by God. In this way God tempted Abraham, (Genesis 22:1) and daily tempts us, that is, he tries us as to what are we by laying before us an occasion by which our hearts are made known. But to draw out what is hid in our hearts is a far different thing from inwardly alluring our hearts by wicked lusts.”
3Most commentators I read took this position.
4And there are several other passages which teach the same doctrine using the word “elect/predestine” such as 2 Thess. 2:13, Eph. 1:4, Rom. 8:28-30, etc.
5Rev. 14:4 and Rom. 16:5 also seem to use “firstfruits” in the sense of an initial batch of converts to Christianity. John Owen agreed with me here, but all the other commentators I read considered all Christians, not just the first ones, to be the “firstfruits.”
A Faussett: “...not in allusion to the crown or garland given to winners in the games; for this, though a natural allusion for Paul in writing to the heathen, among whom such games existed, would be less appropriate for James in addressing the Jewish Christians, who regarded Gentile usages with aversion.” (Vincent agreed, suggesting it denoted a priest’s mitre. Moo disagreed, as did Gill, who even suggested that it referred to the “Olympic games.”)
BThis verb is Aorist tense (“promised”), not Perfect (“has promised”). As for its subject, the majority of the oldest-known manuscripts (followed by the majority of Coptic and Russian versions) do not include a subject for this verb (“he promised”), and for this reason, the NASB almost brought itself to omit the subject, but couldn’t quite. The Latin and Syriac traditions, however, follow a dozen Greek minuscule documents which state “God” as the subject, and this is followed by the NIV (and the ESV followed the NIV as usual). But the vast majority of Greek manuscripts and lectionaries follow a minority of the oldest-known manuscripts which state “the Lord” as the subject, and this was followed by a minority of the Russian and Syriac versions as well as the KJV. I’m inclined to follow the latter, as it has the most Greek manuscripts and has been used from earliest times down to the present. But it doesn’t ultimately make a difference which is correct because “He,” “God,” and “the Lord,” all point to the same divine entity.
CNot used anywhere else in the Bible, but presumed to be an alpha privative of the word for test/trial/temptation. James Moo in the Pillar commentary noted that...
DJames Moo noted that these are fishing words in backwards order: “lured” and “reeled in.” Although not elsewhere in the NT, this word occurs in the Greek Old Testament and Apocrypha (Gen. 37:28; Jda. 20:31; 3 Ma. 2:23; Prov. 30:33; Job 20:15; 36:20)
E2 Pet. 2:14 & 18 are the only other places this word occurs in the Bible.
FAlthough there are figurative uses of these words in the New Testament, the Greek text of Genesis 4 clearly establishes that sullambanw + tiktw refers to biological conception and birth.
GOnly here and Luke 13:32 in the Bible (Jesus said, “...I accomplish healings today and tomorrow...”)
HPhil.
4:15 (the Philippians’ financial support of Paul in prison in
Rome) is the only other occurrence of this noun in the NT.
Faussett:
“‘gift ... gift’ — not the same words in
Greek: the first, the act of giving, or the gift in its initiatory
stage; the second, the thing given, the boon, when perfected.”
Later
commentators noted that since this line is in a poetic meter,
perhaps the three-syllable dorema was chosen to fit the meter
and not because of a difference in meaning.
IThis adverb usually means “top” (like the temple curtain ripping from “top” to bottom), or “beginning” (like Luke investigated the Gospel from “the beginning”), or “again” (as in, “you must be born again”), but there is one other place outside of James in the N.T. where it is translated “from above,” and that is John 19:11 (“you would have no authority except it has been given to you from above”). James 3 goes on to use it in the same sense, and it is often used that way in the Greek O.T., especially in conjunction with “heaven”: Genesis 27:39 (“ the dew of heaven from above”), 49:25 (“blessings of heaven above”), Isaiah 45:8 (“Let the heaven rejoice from above”), Jeremiah 4:28 (“...let the sky be dark above”), cf. Job 3:4 (“...let not the Lord regard it from above”). (Brenton)
JThe plural form of “lights” occurs only four other times in the Greek Bible, half referring to a multiplicity of oil lamps ( 1 Maccabees 12:29, Ezek. 42:11), and the other half referring to the sun, moon, and stars (Jeremiah 4:23 and Psalm 136:7), which is probably why the NIV added the word “heavenly.” Two other possibilities are suggested in the three other N.T. passages which mention both “father” and “light”: 1) “Light” could be a metaphor for “life” as it is in Ps. 48:20 and Matt. 5:16, meaning “the Father who created human life,” or 2) “Light” could be a euphemism for “heaven” as it is in Col. 1:12 (“the saints in light”).
KSinaiticus and a handful of miniscules instead read estin (“it is”) which means practically the same thing.
LLit. “transition to otherness” Only here and 2 Kings 9:20 (describing Jehu’s “crazy” driving).
M
Hapex Legomenon.
Sinaiticus
and Vaticanus,
two of the oldest-known manuscripts spell this in the genitive case
(“turning
of shadow”),
but all the other
manuscripts spell it in the nominative case.
Together with the
previous word, it appears to be denoting the way we get shades of
light and darkness due to the rotation of the earth and due to its
revolution around the sun. Trope
is not used anywhere else in the NT, but it is in the O.T. in Exod.
32:18; Deut. 33:14; 1 Ki. 22:35; 1 Ma. 4:35; 5:61; 2 Ma. 12:27, 37;
Job 38:33; Wis. 7:18; Sir. 45:23; Jer. 30:27. The Deut. 33 instance
seems to be denoting seasonal changes, but all the rest have to do
with political “revolutions” where one leader loses in
battle to another.
Vincent:
“This is popularly understood to mean that there is in God not
the faintest hint
or shade
of change, like the phrase, ‘a shadow of suspicion.’ But
the Greek has no such idiom… Compare Plato, Republic,
vii., 530: ‘Will he (the astronomer) not think that the heaven
and the things in heaven are framed by the Creator in the most
perfect manner? But when he reflects that the proportions of night
and day, or of both, to the month, or of the month to the year, or
of the other stars to these and to one another, are of the visible
and material, he will never fall into the error of supposing that
they are eternal and liable to no deviation (οὐδὲν
παραλλάττειν)
- that would be monstrous.”
N“word of truth” is in the LXX of Ps. 118:43, 160 (that’s Psalm 119 in English versions); Prov. 22:21; and Eccl. 12:10.
OThis is the reading of half of the oldest-known manuscripts (That is, the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) as well as of the overall majority of manuscripts. The other half (That is, the Alexandrinus and Ephraemi Rescriptus) add an emphatic epsilon prefix (“his own” instead of “his”), which doesn’t substantially change the meaning.