16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
INTRODUCTION
Last week I gave a fairly lengthy recap of the beginning of James’s letter (the stuff we’ve already covered). I’m going to give a much shorter one again this morning. It’s important to keep these things fresh in our minds because James continues his argument from the first 17 verses into v.18 (our text for today). But it’s even more important because doing so makes sure we don’t lose sight of the continual mercy, grace, and goodness of God through it all. To those ends, here’s the first seventeen verses of James in ten sentences…
James’s readers were being persecuted for their faith in Jesus. James wrote to help them live in light of the fact that God was using their trials to make them more like Jesus (2-4). James’s readers were struggling to know how to honor God in their persecution. James wrote to help them live in light of the fact that God gives wisdom to all who ask Him for it. (5-8). James’s readers were having a hard time with the low place in society they’d been dragged into. James wrote to help them live in light of the fact that God exalts the lowly (9-11). In the midst of all of this, and on top of all of this, James’s readers were being tempted by their own desires to sin. James wrote to help them live in light of the facts that God never tempts His people to sin, unchecked sin kills, and the crown of life belongs to those who remain steadfast (12-15). And James’s readers were prone to deception (especially with regard to the relationship between their uncomfortable circumstances and God’s goodness). James wrote to help them live in light of the facts that good comes only from God and God only gives good to His people (16-18).
In short, in love, James wrote to share truth with his struggling readers and to help them put that truth into practice.
In our passage for this morning, James continues on in this same mission by describing God’s greatest good: bringing His people out of death and into fellowship with Him! James wanted his readers to recognize the fact that since God did not withhold His greatest good from them, He would certainly not withhold any lesser good. In this short, simple verse, we’re given a surprisingly clear, behind-the-scenes view of God’s saving work in His people. Let’s pray, once again, for ears to hear, a mind to grasp, a heart to love, and a will to act.
GOD’S GREATEST GOOD
One of the questions I like to ask professing Christians is what they understand God’s greatest good to be. It’s very telling to hear someone describe the most significant thing they believe God could do for them. What do you think? What’s the greatest good you can imagine God giving you? Among the people I’ve asked this question to, some have simply confessed ignorance. Some have pointed to physical healing and health (either for them or a loved one). Some have suggested some form of earthly prosperity. And while the majority have spoken of heaven or salvation, almost none have explicitly pointed to God’s bringing about fellowship with Himself as His greatest good; which is what James has in mind here.
Another set of questions that I’ve found to be helpful diagnostic tools relate to how and why God saves. Again, there are a handful of common, mostly-true answers (typically, when we choose Him and because He loves us), but again, it’s not all that often that I meet someone who is able to confidently and biblically drill down very deep into the heart of the matter. James helps us with that as well in this passage.
In our verse for this morning, as another means of helping his readers navigate their current hardships in a manner pleasing to God, James points to the universal goodness of God by peeling back a couple of layers that don’t usually get peeled back. And by doing so, James offers us even more confidence in the goodness of God, even more reason to trust Him with every aspect of our lives, and both deeply rooted in the gospel.
18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
In simplest form, once again, James’s point here is that since God has given us the greatest gift of all—reconciliation with God—why would we ever doubt that He will also give us every lesser gift. Let’s consider the four key bricks with which James built that idea.
God Brought Us Forth
James wrote that God “brought us forth”. That phrase is an interesting one. As I pointed out last week (from v.17), God is the “Father of lights” in both a physical and spiritual sense. He is the physical Father of lights in that He created every star and light that exists in nature. And He is the spiritual Father of lights in that He is the source of all moral purity. Indeed, we saw that God fathered physical light in order to point to His more significant fatherhood of spiritual light.
In the same way, there is a physical and spiritual sense in which God “brought us forth”. He brought us forth physically in that He knit us—every person who has ever been conceived—together in our mother’s womb. Or, as Acts 17:24 says, God “made [Fathered] the world and everything in it…”. No one has been born into this world apart from God’s bringing them forth.
But just as all physical realities do, this type of bringing forth was designed by God to help picture and explain a deeper, spiritual reality. And it is the spiritual reality that James has in mind. Everyone who has been brought forth physically has an urgent need to be brought forth spiritually by God as well. But what does that mean? Physically, God brought us forth from His mind into the world. But what about spiritually? What did James say God brought he and his readers forth from?
Unlike what many believe today, our primary need is not to be brought forth from a sense of loneliness. Our greatest burden is not to be brought forth from a place of almost-but-not-quite or a second-rate life. We do not mainly need to be spiritually brought forth from a lesser version of ourselves, heartache, misery, weakness, poverty, addiction, a bad marriage, or depression. God may, and often does, bring us forth from all of those things, but none of them are at the heart of what James was talking about, even as none of them are our greatest spiritual need.
Rather than any of those things, James commanded his readers not to be deceived about the fact that God had brought them forth (along with all who call upon His name) from something far, far more serious…the condemnation, death, and damnation that their rebellion had earned them. What is merely embedded in James’s words is made clear in many other passages in the Bible.
Ephesians 2:1-3 …you were dead in the trespasses and sins 3 … and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Colossians 1:21 …you, … once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds…
Colossians 2:13a … you, were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh…
It might not seem like it, but these three passages (and there are many more like it) describe the worst diagnosis possible. You might be more afraid of, or work harder to get away from, other things, but you shouldn’t be. Grace, if you believe God’s Word to be true, believe me when I tell you that there is nothing more horrific than the kind of death and wrath and alienation and hostility and evil mentioned here. There is no worse condition you can have on earth. It is right to tremble at this.
In other words, our condition isn’t like that of Wesley in The Princess Bride. We are not “slightly alive” or “mostly dead”. We are spiritually “all dead”. Dead to the point we cannot submit to God. We cannot even want to do so (Romans 8:7). This spiritual death that we’re all born into leads to an uninterruptable line of corrupted choices against God; rebellious, treasonous choices. And this kind of cosmic rebellion and treason is always punished by an even more serious kind of death—hell; everlasting conscious torment death.
Again, to even begin to grasp this is to be horrified. But it is only when we begin to grasp it, that we can rightly appreciate that it is this condition of helpless, spiritual condemnation—death—that James said God called them forth from. With that in mind, would you listen with me to the rest of the Colossians 2 passage?
Colossians 2:13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him…
This is what James was talking about. His main point at the beginning of v.18, is that by grace alone, through faith alone, in the substitutionary suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone, God spiritually brought forth His people, James and his readers, from their sin-wrought, spiritual death. God saved them. He rescued them. He caused them to be born physically and then again spiritually. The term we often use for this kind of bringing forth is “regeneration”—God regenerated them.
James wanted his readers to remember this greatest good of God for them, that they might not doubt the continual goodness of God toward them in every aspect of their lives, in the midst of their trials.
And so it is for you and me. We too are born physically alive and spiritually dead. We too need to be spiritually brought forth if we are not to know the greater death. That leads to the question of how God does this marvelous work. How does God bring His people forth spiritually? The next two clauses, the next two bricks in James’s argument, help answer that question.
God Brought Us Forth Of His Own Will
I’ve spent a good deal of time (formally and informally) working through the concept of free will. I’m happy to talk to you if you’d like to know a bit more about what I’ve come to believe on the subject. Here, however, I simply want to say that if passages like Romans 8:7 (“the mind that is set on the flesh…does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. “), Romans 9:16 (“it [salvation] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy”), 1 Corinthians 2:14 (“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned”), and our passage for this morning, James 1:18 (“Of his own will he brought us forth”)—if these passages are true—(and of course they are,) then either our usual understanding of free will is wrong or our salvation is not as tied to our free will as we think.
If, as these passages teach, we are dead in our sin such that we cannot choose God on our own, the ultimate means of our being saved from our sin cannot be our own ability to choose God. It is precisely because we cannot bring ourselves forth, therefore, that James’s words are such good news—Grace, God brought us forth.
In my experience, this is one of those places where we will either bend our understanding to match God’s Word or we will bend God’s Word to match our understanding. I plead with you today and always, to let God’s Word reign every single time it comes in conflict with your own wisdom. Don’t be hasty. Rather, be careful. Thoroughly study any passage that seems to go against your understanding of things. And then change your thinking to match God’s Word—whether about free will or anything else.
With all of that in mind, the second thing to see in v.18, is the fact that we were brought forth from spiritual death into eternal life, not ultimately by our own will, but by the will of God. We learned in the parent time of G2g last week that every other religion prescribes a manner in which we bring ourselves forth by our own wills. Christianity, however, describes the manner in which God brought us forth by His own will. We just learned the term “regeneration” (God caused us to be spiritually brought forth—born). Here we learn another, “election” (God brought us forth by His own will). And even if it requires some recalibration to see, that is the best news we could possibly hope for.
While this might not sit well with some of our sensibilities, and while it may force us to reconsider our understanding of certain aspects of our salvation and God’s word, the Bible consistently describes our salvation as a result of God’s election (Colossians 3:12; 1 Corinthians 1:27; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Ephesians 1:4; 2 Timothy 2:10; Titus 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1; 2:9; 5:13; Revelation 17:14) and election as (1) God’s right as God and (2) a great source of comfort for God’s people.
Practically, that calling us forth was of His own will, means that God did not need to save us. That’s humbling. It also means that apart from God’s help we would never choose to trust in Jesus. That is relieving. And it means that being saved (or being brought forth) is not based on our own merit or worth. He didn’t choose us because we deserved it. That is why we sing Amazing Grace.
God brought forth James and his readers, and all who are brought forth, of His own will. If you will ever be spiritually born, it will not be because you figured out the secret or because you were smart enough or because you did enough good deeds to earn God’s favor. If you have come forth, or will ever come forth, it will ultimately be because God brought you forth, of His own will, and for His own purposes.
God Brought Us Forth Of His Own Will By The Word Of Truth
I hope I’ve helped you see that what James was offering his readers was something truly remarkable—the good news that God had rescued them from their sin and rebellion and made them alive in Jesus while they were powerless to do so on their own. I also hope to have helped you to see that while certain aspects of the manner in which God does that are different than we might have believed, they are better than we’d believed. And I hope to have helped you to see that the Bible is not subtle on these things.
But I also hope you are wondering what role we do play in our own salvation. If it is God who brings us forth, and if He does so of His own will, are we just robots? Do we have any real say in the matter? Grace, just as the Bible is clear on the things we’ve already covered, it is also clear that we must decide to follow Jesus. Nothing James or the rest of the Bible says suggests that we do not need to choose God, of our own will. Indeed, anyone who does not choose to hope in God, will not be brought forth; will not be saved. It is good to ask, therefore, how God does it. How does He bring us forth of His will? The third foundational brick in James’s argument is that God does so by the “word of truth,” which we must choose to receive. Look at the next clause in v.18.
18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth…
But what does that mean? What is the “word of truth” and how does God bring His people forth by it? The “word of truth” in this sense is nothing other than the gospel of Jesus.
Let’s read a little further in the Colossians 2 passage for a further explanation of what James had in mind.
Colossians 2:13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
At Grace, we’ve tried to unpack that even further in light of what the rest of the Bible teaches. We’ve summarized it all in six points. The word of truth, in the sense James uses it here, is the awesome reality that (1) God is greater than you could ever imagine (Psalm 145:8-9), (2) God created you to love and enjoy Him forever (Romans 11:36), but (3) No one loves and enjoys God rightly (Romans 3:10-12; 23), and (4) Because we do not love and enjoy God rightly we deserve to be punished (Romans 6:23), but (5) Because God is loving and fair and great He punished His own Son, Jesus, for our sins (1 John 4:9-10), and (6) We can be forgiven of our sins by trusting in Jesus (Romans 3:22).
Grace, God has determined to call forth a people for Himself, out of our spiritual death, of His own will. And He has determined to do so by making us spiritually alive—opening our spiritual eyes, and filling our spiritual hearts, in such a way that causes us to truly see things as they are, that we might really choose God. Prior to this, in our state of spiritual death, we had no spiritual eyes to see and no spiritual ears to hear. The gospel was folly to us. But when God causes us to come alive, and enables us for the first time to see Him for who He really is, ourselves for who we really are, and the salvation He offers for what it really is, everything in us longs for the mercy and grace of God. We must choose to trust in God, but with real spiritual sight, the choice is the most obvious one in the world. And He does all of that, once again, always and only through the word of truth, through the gospel.
Countless millions of people have heard these things over the past two millennia. Most have rejected it as folly. But every single person who has received this word of truth in faith, has been brought forth from spiritual death to everlasting spiritual life. Trust in God today that you too might walk in newness of life!
All of this probably means that much of what you have believed about how we are saved is true, but also that there’s more underneath it than you’d thought. It has been said that you are more wicked than you ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than you ever dared hope.
As I said in the beginning, James gives us a bit more of a behind the scenes view of our salvation than we’re used to. And the main reason for doing so is to give a suffering people hope. Do you see how James’s teaching does that? If his readers’ (or anyone’s) salvation depended ultimately on their own choices, they were without hope. But if their salvation depended on God’s choice, they were safe no matter what came their way. James wanted to make sure they weren’t deceived about this in order that they might be strengthened in joy through their trials. That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?!
James wrote to help his readers appreciate and live in light of the fact that because God had given them this greatest good—the good of their salvation—He would not withhold any lesser good from them. They could trust Him in everything since He accomplished this greatest thing for them.
God Brought Us Forth Of His Own Will By The Word Of Truth As Firstfruits
Finally, the fourth brick of James’s argument is that God brought us forth, of His will, by the gospel, and for a purpose.
18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
To be “a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” means that James and his readers were among the first to hope in Jesus, the first to know of the mystery of salvation that had been hidden for ages and generations (Colossians 1:26). Many more would come, including you and me, and the whole earth will eventually be restored by God, according to His will, but James and his readers were special. They were among the first harvest set apart by God, for God. This too was meant to give comfort, hope, and strength to the scattered saints.
While those in the early Church were firstfruits in a unique way, all who are brought forth are brought forth into God’s family. We are all His chosen possession, His special people, His sons and daughters. We all receive forgiveness of sins, freedom from corruption, the sanctification of our bodies and souls, and the sustaining grace of God. Ultimately, however, the greatest gift of God is that we are all brought into fellowship with Him. If you’ve been at Grace for any length of time you have heard many times that the best news of all isn’t that God gives us the things we might want, but that He gives us Himself to glorify and enjoy forever. He is the only true satisfaction for our souls. Nothing else can truly fill us.
And all of this is the fruit of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection on our behalf. Praise God, Grace. Find comfort and hope for times of trouble. Do not be deceived. If you are in Christ, God is for you in every way. Only good comes from God and good only comes from God. And in that knowledge, be not hearers only, but doers also.