James 1:16-21
“Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”
It is often observed, as a general rule, that wives want their husbands to change, while husbands want their wives to stay the same. It is said that wives are unhappy if their husbands don’t improve in their habits. And it is said that husbands are unhappy if their wives start doing new and different things.
I’m not sure how true any of this really is, but these thoughts do prompt us to ask a deeper question. What about God? Do we want God always to stay the same? Or do we want God to change?
Well, in all the ways that really count, God does not change. As today’s lesson from the Epistle of St. James expresses it – with respect to “the Father of lights” who created all the stars and planets – “there is no variation or shadow of turning.” Another translation says that with God there is no variation “due to change.”
The times and seasons change. The weather and the temperature change, as the earth cycles through spring, summer, fall, and winter each year. But God, who stands above all this, and who controls it, does not change. He is always the same.
Do people here below tend to think that it is a good thing, that God does not change? Well, it depends. Farmers, and those who consume the food they produce, don’t mind having predictable planting, growing, and harvesting seasons each year.
In St. Matthew, Jesus tells us that our Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Nobody minds that, and everybody would like those unchanging blessings from an unchanging God, for all who live upon the face of the earth, to continue in perpetuity.
But in some ways, people often think that they would like God to change. People often think that God should change the requirements of his law. They want him to lower his standards, and to ease up on what he demands of human beings, because what he requires and demands is too severe, and too hard.
God’s moral standards for us are pretty strict. As Jesus explained the full meaning of the law of God and of what it demands, in his sermon on the mount, he concludes with this statement: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
St. James, elsewhere in his Epistle, adds this thought: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”
And so, a common objection arising from fallen men, who are stung by these requirements for perfection and complete obedience, is that these requirements are impossible to fulfill. And our common human sinfulness is often pointed to, as an excuse for our lack of perfection.
After all, as St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Romans, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” And by nature, we are all in the flesh.
Paul also writes that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” How is it fair, then, that God demands from us what we are not able to fulfill?
He seems to be setting us up for failure, by saying, “Be perfect,” when he knows that we cannot be perfect. So, how can it be a good thing that God does not change, and that there is no variation with him?
Well, when God first created man and woman, he created them in his own image and likeness, with pure hearts, uncorrupted minds, and obedient wills. In the Garden of Eden, when the Lord said to Adam, “Do this,” and “Don’t do that,” this was not burdensome on Adam at all.
Adam and Eve were without sin. They were able to be perfect, and to do everything God told them to do. And they were perfect.
They cheerfully complied with God’s directives to them; and they cheerfully complied with God’s one prohibition: that they not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
They didn’t think that they were missing out on anything, or that they knew better than God, but they honored God’s good and gracious will. In their original state of innocence – as God created them – they obeyed God’s unchanging law: without failure, and without complaint.
Our first parents received God’s gifts to them with thanksgiving, and they joyfully lived out God’s purposes for them. They were happy that God was good, holy, and righteous. And they were grateful that he had created them to be like him in those ways.
This is the way things originally were in Eden. This was the way things originally were with the human race that God created, and with which he established a relationship of love and fellowship. And this is what God had a right to expect would always be the case, in his relationship with humanity, and in humanity’s relationship with him.
There was nothing unfair about how he made man, and there was nothing unfair in what he expected from man. All was harmonious and full of life. That is, all was harmonious and full of life, until Adam and Eve changed.
God didn’t change, but they did. Humanity changed. We changed. “In Adam, all die,” as St. Paul states in First Corinthians.
And Paul writes to the Ephesians that all who are sons of Adam are, by nature, “sons of disobedience,” who live in the passions of their flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and are “by nature children of wrath.”
Why does God need to lower himself and his standards to where we are now, in our sin and degradation? He didn’t compel us to sin, and he doesn’t compel us to sin now.
This was and is our choice: our collective human choice, in Adam and Eve; and our individual personal choice, every time each of us decides to do or say the wrong thing, rather than what our conscience tells us would be the right thing.
St. James speaks to this in the verses of his Epistle that immediately precede the beginning of today’s appointed lesson:
“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and [is] enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
God doesn’t need to change in order to accommodate this. Indeed, as the holy and righteous Lord of all that is good and pure, he cannot change. He cannot go back on his word. He cannot compromise with sin and evil. He cannot tolerate it or embrace it.
So, the expectations of his law remain what they have always been. The bar that he set for Adam – which Adam in his original righteousness could easily negotiate – is the same bar that he sets for us. God, in regard to these things, does not change – even if we, in our sin, might think that we want him to.
But God also does not change in his enduring love for his creation. And in his love, God found a way to be reconciled to fallen humanity without violating or compromising his holiness and righteousness.
In Christ Jesus, God’s Son became a man. And according to God’s plan for the redemption of the human race, the man Christ Jesus, who was without sin in his own person, became – by imputation – the worst of sinners, and the stand-in and the representative of all sinners.
God, of course, had always planned to do this. And the Prophet Isaiah had already described it, several centuries before it happened in human history:
“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… …he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – everyone – to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. …”
“By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? …he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.”
In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul explains that “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,” God “condemned sin in the flesh” – when he condemned his Son in sinful humanity’s stead.
And because God has already condemned sin – our sin – in Christ, and in Christ’s death, God will therefore not condemn that sin again, by damning us personally for it as our disobedience and imperfection deserve. Instead, he will forgive us and will accept us and embrace us, as we come to him in Christ, by repentance and faith.
As this gospel invitation is held out to God’s beloved creatures, we can be confident that God will not change his plan or break his promise. We can be confident that God will give what he has pledged to give, by grace, through his Son.
The death and resurrection of Jesus cannot be undone. And therefore God’s redemption of humanity and his reconciliation with humanity cannot be undone.
God will impute his Son’s righteousness to you and will clothe you in it – even as he imputed your sin to Jesus on the cross. God will bestow the Spirit of his Son upon you, and cause you to become a new creature in Christ.
God will call you back to the fellowship with him from which humanity turned away in Eden, but which God – in his unchanging love – has always wanted to restore. In you, he has restored it. That’s what St. James is talking about when he writes:
“Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will, He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”
God, in general, does not change. And God, especially in the Person of his Son in human flesh – the Lord and Teacher of the church – does not change. The Epistle to the Hebrews states:
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings.”
Jesus teaches his disciples that they should always be willing to forgive one another, especially when there is repentance, even if – in human weakness – the sins and the repentance are often repeated. St. Matthew tells us of a time when
“Peter came up and said to [Jesus], ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”
In saying this to Peter, Jesus was also saying something about himself. Jesus was telling Peter – he was telling us – about his willingness always to forgive, whenever forgiveness is needed.
When your conscience, perhaps overcome with guilt and remorse, tells you that God is tired of forgiving you, and has given up on you, don’t believe it. That is not coming from God’s Word.
You may think – in fear – that God has changed, and has lost his patience with you. But he has not changed. He will forgive, and he will heal.
Whenever the absolution of Christ is spoken, you can believe it. That absolution is true for everyone since it comes from the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And therefore it is true for you. It is always true for you.
Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” has not been rescinded. The authority of the loosing key that Jesus entrusted to his church and its ministers, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them,” has not been taken back.
According to Psalm 145,
“The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.”
The Lord is always like this for you, in Christ. The Lord always does this for you, in Christ.
“Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.” Amen.