Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. JAMES 1: 13-21
The world comes to a great many conclusions about why we
find ourselves in bad circumstances and why our reaction is often to do what we
know is wrong. We steal because we are poor, we kill because we were not cared
for, we commit adultery because we were not given what we needed, and so the
world says it is not our fault. It says it is our parents fault, our cultures
fault, our environments fault, our situations fault, and ultimately concludes it
is God’s fault.
James contradicts such nonsense with the truth that sin
comes from our own lust and it is this lust within us that causes us to be
tempted when situations arise. James and the other authors of the general
epistles give us fundamental understandings that are the most vital if we are
to ever understand how to live in the new covenant which Paul was used to give
to us. Paul himself calls these authors, including James, “the pillars” at
Jerusalem.
How can we fully understand Paul’s cry of wretched man that
I am who will deliver me from this body of death? If we do not first understand that James says
our own lust makes temptation and when we give our self to it sin is conceived and
matures into death then we will think Paul is so humble and pleasing to YHWH.
We will go on to say of ourselves since we agree with Paul that we too are
wretched then YHWH will also be pleased with us.
However Paul was not lifting himself up as an example of
pious asceticism; but was saying we are only delivered through Yeshua YHWH’s
Messiah who is our husband and master. James gives us this same basic
understanding. Men are made of the earth and James is clear that no good or
perfect gift has its source from the earth but instead it comes down from the
Father.
All that a man can produce is deadly for though he may do
good he also does evil. If I were to kill a man and then spend the rest of my
days doing good for his household no amount of good would make up for my evil.
If I take a glass and fill it ninety percent full of pure water and ten percent
with poison it is all poison and not at all pure.
It is this that makes it necessary for our good and pure
life to be only in Messiah who came down from the Father that we might be born
new of His Spirit. All men have at some time been mad at themselves and others because
of sin but that anger and any action it generates cannot make us or others righteous.
The prophets of old by witnessing of Messiah have told us
that man’s heart is deceitfully wicked and that there is a way that seems right
to a man but ends in destruction. This leaves us with our only option to receive
by faith the Fathers gift of being made one with Messiah. It is only by this
that our old man is carried to his death in Yeshua’s cross and the Fathers life
breathed into Messiah becomes our own life.
