James 1:17-27 Commentary

Were you to ask North American citizens of the 21^st century, “What is God like?” you might get, especially in some culturally diverse areas, as many as 15-20 answers. Some of them would reflect long-standing religious traditions. Others might reflect a kind of DIY theology. And some answers might reflect an atheism or agnosticism.

Few Christians would turn quickly to the book of James for answers to the question of God’s identity and character. After all, many of God’s people largely think of it as a book of ethics. In fact, this epistle seems to some of Jesus’ followers so bereft of theology, including soteriology, that they traditionally either shied away from it or turned it into a kind of advocate for some kind of works righteousness.

In fact, the Spirit did inspire James to write a great deal about the shape of the life that’s part of Christians’ grateful response to God’s saving grace. Yet the apostle firmly grounds those summons in good theology. James even largely begins both his epistle and this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson by offering a partial answer to the question, “What is God like?” So, preachers might choose to let the Spirit help us focus our preaching on James 1’s theology. The Spirit may even graciously use that to help listeners prepare to listen for God’s Word in the ethics that follow.

In verse 17 James professes, “Every good [agathe] and perfect [teleion] gift [dosis] is from above [anothen], coming down [katabainon] from the Father of lights [Patros ton photon].” This reflects an ancient cosmology that envisioned heaven not as a realm but as a geographic locale somewhere far above the earth. But Christians should not allow what we think of as outdated cosmology to deflect our attention away from James’ central point: God is the generous source of every good gift. Every good thing God’s dearly beloved people have has been given to us by the God who loves us so deeply.

Jesus’ friends sometimes think of those “good gifts” as material, physical or relational. We think of positive answers to our prayers for good health, healthy relationships or material blessings as examples of God’s good gift to us. We’ll spend more time thinking about that understanding of the nature of God’s good gifts later in this commentary.

For now, we note how James professes that God’s generosity is not hampered by a changing nature or character. God does not “change [parallage] like shifting shadows [tropes aposkiasma].” Jesus’ followers can rely on God to continue to grace us with every good gift because God won’t change God’s mind about us or God’s plans and purposes. While it sometimes feels as if nearly everything is like shifting shadows that are constantly changing, God’s character never changes.

In fact, while humans’ understanding of God sometimes changes, God does not change. While our understanding of God is sometimes flawed or incomplete and, as a result, sometimes changes, God remains utterly reliable. God’s dearly beloved people can count on God to be “the same, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). “There is,” as The Message paraphrases verse 18b, “nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle.”

Among our unchanging God’s greatest gifts are God’s gracious decision to adopt us as God’s sons and daughters. God, according to verse 18, “chose [bouletheis] to give us birth [apekyesin] through the word of truth [logo aletheias], that we might be a kind of firstfruits [aparchen] of all he created.”

This is, of course, rich and evocative imagery that echoes some of the Scriptures’ most beloved images. When James insists that God chose us, there’s no hint of coercion. The God who never changes graciously chose of God’s own free will to incorporate us into God’s own family. God, professes James, did this through God’s “word of truth,” a claim that echoes language of God creating everything that is created by the power of God’s word.

When the apostle speaks of “giving birth to” those whom God chosen, Christians hear echoes of Jesus’ stirring words that so mystified Nicodemus. After all, in John 3:3 he told Israel’s curious religious leader, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” While these words still puzzle and sometimes divide Jesus’ followers, we sense that James is at least describing the new life with which God graces us.

The apostle rejoices in how God’s good gift of graciously choosing God’s dearly beloved people makes us a “kind of firstfruits.” This agricultural imagery also resonates with other Scriptures. Firstfruits were the first and best parts of their harvests that God’s Israelite people offered to God in gratitude for God’s sustaining gifts. The Message paraphrases “firstfruits” as referring to God’s adopted sons and daughters as “the crown of all” God’s “creatures.” That suggests that while Genesis records God as creating people in God’s image last chronologically, we are, in a sense, God’s crowning achievement.

As a result, God expects God’s “crowning glory” to thankfully respond to God’s amazing grace in appropriate ways. God desires what verse 20 calls a “righteous [dikaiosynen] life.” While English translations may seem to unmoor such a life from God’s character, the Greek literally refers to this righteousness as the “righteousness of God. That suggests that the Spirit gifts Christians with a life that imitates God’s righteousness.

The shape of that righteousness speaks directly to some of the 21^st century’s deepest problems and needs. In that way it’s a gift to both God’s people and the times in which we live. James 1 offers a description of the most meaningful and purposeful life we can live. What’s more, in a culture that doesn’t like to listen to anyone, James summons Christians to be “quick [tachys] to listen [akousai].” In a culture whose collective tongue and temper seem to have hair triggers, the apostle invites us to be “slow [bradys] to speak [lalesai] and slow [bradys] to become angry [orgen]” (19).

God’s righteousness is, in other words, just the opposite of our culture’s. As God is quick to listen to God’s people, but sometimes slow to angrily respond, so James invites us to be far quicker to listen than to either speak or lose our temper. The Message paraphrases this summons so beautifully and poetically: “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.”

James seems to link unholy and destructive anger (bradys) to what follows in verse 21. He introduces it, after all, with the Greek word gar (“for”). It’s not completely clear, however, whether the link is to “anger” or “the righteousness that God desires.” What is clear is what James summons God’s chosen people to discard. In verse 21 he challenges us to “Get rid of [apothemenoi] all moral filthiness [rhyparian] and the evil [akias] that is so prevalent [perisseian].” The apostle invites his adopted brothers and sisters in Christ to put aside or cast off all moral filth and depravity that is unrighteous, as well as both so destructive and common.

Instead, we let the Spirit deeply implant in us the “word” [logon] that can “save” [sosai] us. This language lends a kind of agricultural flavor to Christians’ response to God’s grace.  After all, it’s almost as if James invites us to weed out filthiness and wickedness and let the Spirit sow in their place the Word the Spirit uses to help rescue us from a destructive way of living.

When that word is deeply rooted in God’s dearly beloved people, it impacts the way we live before God and with each other. However, James reminds us that such rootedness requires the Spirit-fueled right kind of attentiveness to the Scriptures. Jesus’ followers don’t just “listen to” [akroatai] God’s Word that rescues us. We don’t, in The Message’s words, “let the Word go in one ear and out the other.”

That kind of hearing of God’s Word, adds the apostle, is a bit like looking [katanoounti] at one’s face in a mirror [esoptro], and then promptly forgetting [epelatheto] what you look like as soon as you walk away. It’s as if the apostle is warning Jesus’ friends that the idea of forgetting what we look like is no more absurd than just hearing God’s Word without letting it impact our daily lives.

Basically, James reminds us that God’s dearly beloved people don’t just hear God’s saving Word. We also act on and in response to it. “Do [poietai] what” God’s Word says, James insists in verse 22. “Look intently [parakypsas] into the perfect law [nomon teleion] that gives freedom [eleutherias] – not forgetting what they have heard but doing it [poietes] – they will be blessed [makarios] in what they do.” That gift from God, preachers might want to point out, is not automatically material, but purposeful in the sense that it offers the most meaningful kind of life we’ll ever live on this side of the new earth and heaven.

What further shape does that righteous, blessed life take? It carefully controls its tongue by what verse 26 calls keeping “a tight rein [chalinagogon]” on their tongues [glossan].” Those whom God both declares and makes righteous and blessed are those who very carefully watch what we say.

Christians, however, also keep a close eye on “orphans [orphanous] and widows [cheras] in their distress [thlipsei]” and keep ourselves “from being polluted [aspilon] by the world [kosmou].” We most appropriately respond to God’s grace by staying close to those who are hurting and away from all that would draw us away from God’s Word as well as faithfulness to it. Jesus’ friends, in other words, let the Spirit keep us close to God and God’s purposes and away from the evil one, his allies and his destructive ways.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his book, The Fruit of the Spirit, the biblical scholar Stephen Winward observes, “How we relate to and get on with others is the supreme test of Christian character. Progress in holiness can best be measured not by the length of time we spend in prayer, not by the number of times we go to church, not by the amount of money we contribute to God’s work, not by the range and depth of our knowledge of the Bible, but rather by the quality of our personal relationships … This is the most searching test of Christlikeness. How do I get on with especially . . . the people I dislike, the people who rub me the wrong way?”