Daily Devotion

Today's Bible Passage

 

Meditation

Once again James stresses the great truth that every gift that God sends is good. Verse 17 could be translated, “All giving is good.” That is to say, there is nothing that comes from God that is not good. There is a strange phenomenon here in Greek. The phrase that has been translated, “Every good and perfect gift,” is, in fact, a line of poetry. James may have had a rhythmic ear.

 

What he is stressing is the unchangeableness of God. God is the creator of the lights of heaven—sun, moon, and stars. The Jewish morning prayer says, “Blessed be the Lord God who hath formed the lights.” The lights change but He who created them never changes.

 

God’s greatest gift to us is regeneration. By the exercise of His own will He brought us forth into newness of life. God’s purpose was to present believers as a kind of first fruits. James and the other Christians of his generation were a foretaste of a great host of believers to come. The phrase of His creatures may indicate that believers are the first stage of the ultimate redemption of all creation, which is now under the divine plan since the fall.

 

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