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GOD’S CONSTANCY FOR GOOD

James 1:16–18

My dear brothers, do not be deceived. Every good gift and every perfect boon comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is none of that changeableness which comes from changing shadows. Of his own purpose he has begotten us by the word of truth so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits of his created things.

ONCE again, James stresses the great truth that every gift that God sends is good. Verse 17 might well be translated: ‘All giving is good.’ That is to say, there is nothing which comes from God which is not good. There is a strange phenomenon here in the Greek. The phrase which we have translated as ‘Every good gift and every perfect boon’ is, in fact, a perfect hexameter line of poetry – that is, a line with six stresses in it. Either James had a rhythmic ear for a fine cadence or he is quoting from some work that we do not know.

What he is stressing is the unchangeableness of God. To do so, he uses two terms from astronomy. The word he uses for changeableness is parallagē, and the word for the turn of the shadow is tropē. Both these words have to do with the variation which the heavenly bodies show, the variation in the length of the day and of the night, the apparent variation in the course of the sun, the phases of waxing and waning, the different brilliance of the stars and the planets at different times. Variability is characteristic of all created things. God is the creator of the lights of heaven – the sun, the moon, the stars. The Jewish morning prayer says: ‘Blessed be the Lord God who has formed the lights.’ The lights change, but the one who created them never changes.

Further, his purpose is altogether gracious. The word of truth is the gospel, and by the sending of that gospel it is God’s purpose that men and women should be reborn into a new life. The shadows are ended and the certain word of truth has come.

That rebirth is a rebirth into the family and the possession of God. In the ancient world, it was the law that all first fruits were sacred to God. They were offered in grateful sacrifice to God because they belonged to him. So, when we are reborn by the true word of the gospel, we become the property of God, just as the first fruits of the harvest did.

James insists that, far from ever proving a temptation, God’s gifts are invariably good. In all the chances and changes of a changing world, they never vary. And God’s supreme object is to re-create life through the truth of the gospel, so that all people should know that they belong by right to him.