Trailblazin Ministries

Born for This - James 1:18

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Wednesday, 20 June 2007

I had planned to speak on this verse yesterday, but there was so much that we were able to extract from James 1:17 that I wasn't about to elongate the devotion, especially knowing that this verse contains a lot of meat as well. Just as a brief recap, verse 17 gave us a display of the goodness of God (all good things come from Him) and that He is unchanging. Today, this idea is expanded upon when we look at our call to holiness and what God did in order for us to receive such in our lives. For that, we will look at our Scripture passage in James 1:18.

James 1:18 (NASB95) - 18 In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.

Much like the past few verses have been, verse 18 shows us further proof that God is not the originator of sin and temptation in our lives. This time, instead of showing us how we are the ones responsible for our sins, James takes a different approach here by showing us how God is the one responsible for bringing righteousness into our lives. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, every man has sinned and come up short in terms of being perfect and just in the sight of God (Romans 3:23); all throughout his letter to the Romans, Paul made that point extremely clear, so that is not even a question. Jesus Christ was the only one to come into this world after the fall and live a sinless life and to be fully righteous and just in the eyes of God; and no other man after Him will be able to do such a thing. It is with this viewpoint in mind that James writes this verse and even answers a few questions concerning our right standing with God and how He is the one that makes it happen in our lives through regeneration.

"In the exercise of His will..." is the first part of this verse, and there is a lot that we can extract just from these six little words. Primarily, what we see here is how it was within God's will for us to be made righteous and He was the one that executed a plan to make it happen. With this being at the beginning of this sentence, it sends a very important message that God is the one doing this, and nothing that we ourselves have a part in. So often, as humans, we like to think that we have a part in our being made right with God, but this verse shows us that it was definitely God, and not us. If we look a little closer and examine the Greek, we find that the phrase translated as "exercise of His will" is boulomai (Strong's #G1014) and Vine's defines it as, "to wish, to purpose, to will deliberately," which indicates a deliberate willing to make this happen. In layman's terms, it was God's plan to make this happen and He was going to make sure that it happened.

"...He brought us forth..." is the next portion of this verse that we want to look at. Here we see exactly what His will was to do. It was to bring us, believers, forth. In Greek this phrase is translated from the Greek word apokyeo (Strongs #G616) literally means to "beget" or "give birth to." In terms of this giving birth, what God is giving birth to is spiritual life within us. Remember, that Paul tells us that we were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1), therefore this bringing forth is the process by which we are born again and given life (Ephesians 2:5-6 and John 3:3-8). Because we were dead in our sins and we are not seeking after God on our own (Romans 3:10-12), it is only by a miracle of God that we are able to become born again; and, as we see here in this passage, it is He (God) that brought us forth into this spiritual life. Again, it was nothing that we were able to do on our own, as we were dead and by no means seeking after God, no matter how much we would have liked to think that we were.

"...by the word of truth..." serves as the adjacent piece to this regeneration puzzle that James is describing to us. Very simply, we are saved by the power of the Word of God. The Greek phrase used by James for "word of truth" is logo aletheias and is used several times by Paul in His writings. In its very broadest sense, "word of truth" is the whole of God's Word, the Holy Scriptures (the 66 books of the Bible). Romans 1:16 tells us that the gospel (the Word) is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe; this is exactly what is happening when James says that we are brought forth by the word of truth. It is only by God's word that we are able to come to a knowledge of God and subsequently become regenerated born again believers. Ultimately, for us today, this is how God has chosen to reveal Himself to us, with no new revelation, and it is by this means that we are going to become born again and given spiritual life.

The whole purpose of this is given to us in the portion of the verse that reads, "so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures." This particular passage can be taken in two different ways, so let's examine both of them very briefly. First, remember that James is a Jewish believer, as well as the audience to whom he is writing, and as Jews they were God's chosen people. With this in mind, the gospel message was first given to the Jews and through their acceptance of the gospel message, they were the first to receive the blessing of eternal life, which is likened to a firstfruit harvest in Old Testament Scripture where the first and best portion of the harvest was offered up to God as a blessing. In that regard, these believers of the early church (both Jew and Gentile) are the first fruit of the gospel's message and power, with the church of today and the future being the remaining harvest. In the other context, we can look at this as James speaking to believers as a whole. Within this context, the regeneration of believers is only the firstfruits of what is to come in God's new creation, which we find explained in the latter portions of Revelation and in 2 Peter 3:10-13.

Now that we've made it to the end of this verse, I hope that we all have a better understanding of God and His part in giving us righteousness. First and foremost, this passage is to show us how God has absolutely no part in our temptation and leading us to sin; if we believe that, then we have a wrong view of God. Instead, it was God's will and purpose for us to receive eternal life through the power of His Word so that we could be the firstfruits of His new creation. Even in that, we see that it is God who orchestrated this entire thing and did all of the leg work in drawing us to Him; it was only up to us whether we would accept the gospel and choose to believe its account. Glory to God for His regenerating power! He truly is an awesome God in whom there is only holiness and perfection! So let us keep this in mind when we are facing the trials of life, knowing that their purpose is for God's greater work in our lives. Amen.