But set within its context, these verses appear to make little sense at first glance. Because they’re the final part of a jigsaw that begins by telling us to “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds” (1:2), that warns against being double-minded and unstable in our faith (1:8) and lays bare our innate weakness, being tempted when we are dragged away by our own evil desires and enticed (1:14).
Where have all the good gifts gone?
James wrote as one of us - just as Elijah was (5:17). A man who knew his own fallibilities and tendency to sin and failure. And he wrote as one who had seen up close and personal the sheer goodness of God in his Son, Jesus, the half-brother of James. Somehow all these words hang together, we just need to see how.
James wrote as one of us - just as Elijah was (5:17). A man who knew his own fallibilities and tendency to sin and failure. And he wrote as one who had seen up close and personal the sheer goodness of God in his Son, Jesus, the half-brother of James. Somehow all these words hang together, we just need to see how.
Often the most helpful thing to do when we come across that kind of perplexing teaching is to ‘park it’, to let it just lie there, in our hearts and minds, and to wait - to wait on the One whose wisdom and timing are not suspect. On this occasion, the help we might so much need is perhaps only a few verses away.
The jarring opening call to consider trials as pure joy is partly offset by the reminder that God is not absent from them but has a purpose for us within them, that he is working perseverance in us, that we might be mature and complete (1:4). The statements of verses 17 and 18 then develop that thought in significant ways:
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.”
The jarring opening call to consider trials as pure joy is partly offset by the reminder that God is not absent from them but has a purpose for us within them, that he is working perseverance in us, that we might be mature and complete (1:4). The statements of verses 17 and 18 then develop that thought in significant ways:
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.”
James sets our experiences in life, even - and perhaps especially - our struggles, within the larger frame of God’s purposes and God’s character. His work, that which we can see clearly as well as those aspects that remain hidden from us, is defined by his goodness and by an unhindered, unblemished completeness. There is no lack in all he has planned for us and no aspect of it is ‘shady’. We must not allow our pains to deceive us into thinking he is somehow less than the God he is. All that he allows into our life will ultimately contribute to the completing of the grace that saves and beautifies us.
All this is because the gifts, the opportunities to trust him and lean into his ways, come from the One who is the Father of the heavenly lights. The One who orders all our days, the One who ordains times and seasons for our benefit. Seasons may change - indeed, they must - but throughout every moment of all the changing scenes of life, be they trouble or joy, he does not change like shifting shadows. There is not the slightest hint in his being of any movement away from utter faithfulness, no capitulation to force of circumstance.
No storm, however severe, will compel him to change course and downgrade his commitment to be our God and for us to be his people. We are, and ever will be, his treasured possession, a first-fruits of all he created.
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Loved with everlasting love,
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Loved with everlasting love,
Led by grace that love to know,
Spirit, breathing from above,
Thou hast taught me it is so.
O this full and perfect peace!
O this transport all divine!
In a love which cannot cease,
I am His and He is mine.
Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o'erflow,
Flowers with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine.
His for ever, only His;
Who the Lord and me shall part?
Ah, with what a rest of bliss
Christ can fill the loving heart!
Heaven ad earth may fade and flee,
First-born light in gloom decline,
But while God and I shall be,
I and His and He is mine.
(George Wade Robinson, 1838-77)
