divisively We’re all tempted to sin, but we’ve only got ourselves to blame. Only good comes from God!

Those who demonstrate that they genuinely love God by enduring through the various trials of life will be rewarded with eternal life. During trials, some will want to accuse God of tempting them to sin. Not the case, says James. Rather, there’s only one person to blame when we are tempted to sin: ourselves. Only good comes from God. The greatest evidence of His goodness is our very salvation. Salvation is a good and perfect gift given to us wholly by God’s own will. What we could never achieve ourselves due to our sin nature has been achieved for us through the word of truth.

INTRODUCTION

When I entered West Point in June of 1997, I was given four authorized responses to upper-classmen’s questions. Those responses were: yes sir/ma’am, no sir/ma’am, sir/ma’am I do not understand, and my favorite now, no excuse sir/ma’am. West Point draws kids from all over the country with various backgrounds, parental upbringings, and cultures. They have to teach these new cadets how to communicate directly, clearly, and respectfully very quickly. These four responses serve that purpose. The fourth response gets at the universal tendency we have to make excuses, to try to get out of taking responsibility for our actions. Perhaps the church could stand to benefit from these four responses as it relates to the Lord! Perhaps if Adam and Eve had adopted the “yes sir” response, they wouldn’t have even needed the “no excuses” response.

James says in today’s text that when they have stood the test, they will receive the reward. But he warns them not to be deceived as it relates to sin and temptation. In sin you’ve only got yourself to blame, because only good comes from God!
Let’s read the passage and then I’ll pray and jump into it.

JAMES 1:12-18

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

THE CROWN OF LIFE

In verse 12, James says Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. Remember James is speaking to people who are suffering for their faith and James is encouraging them to be steadfast under trial. Being steadfast means being spiritually tough, standing in adversity.

James says this man is blessed. Blessed means happy, but it’s not what we usually think of when we say happy. This is more than the feeling you get when your wife brings home your favorite dessert. This is a feeling that comes from the Lord. This is a happiness associated with suffering, another paradox. James continues in verse 12, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.

The crown is not a king’s royal crown; it’s a laurel wreath which was given to a victorious athlete. It was a victor’s crown. This crown that God has promised to give is a symbol of spiritual victory. It’s an emblem of our endurance through the trials of life. And it will be given to us by the King of the universe! Imagine that.

It’s not just a crown, it’s the crown of life. Or it might be interpreted the “crown that is life.” In other words, the crown that the king is going to give to all who endure is eternal life. The reward is entering into the presence of God for all eternity. Who will receive the crown of life? James says that God has promised [it] to those who love him. This isn’t so much a prescription for how to get eternal life as much as a description of those who have it. Love for God, which motivates the Christian to endure the tests of life, is evidence that a person has a saving faith. In other words, it proves that this person’s faith is genuine. It demonstrates that this person is really a child of God and will receive that promised crown of life.

GENUINE CHRISTIANS LOVE GOD

A genuine Christian is not someone who at one point in their life prayed the sinner’s prayer. Rather, he or she is a person who demonstrates true faith by an unshakable love for God. This love is not destroyed by trials in life; it’s actually strengthened because with each trial the faithful Christian tastes and sees that the Lord is good. Their love for Him intensifies and purifies through the testing process.

Trials test our faith, they reveal it for what it is. This means how we respond to trials matters. There are two ways to respond to trials. One is to ask for wisdom from God and respond with faithful endurance. The second is to turn to sin and fail to be steadfast. Some Christians experience trials and when they respond sinfully they blame God for the temptation. They imagine that since God allowed the test that caused them to feel tempted and to give in to sin, God must be responsible. James destroys this argument in verse 13.

Before we look at verse 13, I want to remind you of our father Adam, from whom we have all inherited the sin nature. After Adam disobeyed God in the Garden, he had the audacity to blame God for giving him Eve. “The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’” Genesis 3:12 We may find that laughable, but the reality is none of Adam’s children want to accept blame for our failures. We all want to find someone else to blame just like he did. And sometimes the only one we can think to blame is God. James makes it clear, that is never an appropriate response.

GOD WILL NEVER TEMPT YOU TO SIN

James says in verse 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. In other words, no one should rationalize in his mind that because God sent a trial to test their faith and they gave in to sin that God was even indirectly responsible for the failure. James says God cannot be tempted with evil, literally God is “untemptable.” Evil is repugnant to God because He is holy. He is completely immune to sin. As such, God is never going to introduce something with the intention of causing one of His own to sin. He’s never going to tempt us to do that which is repugnant to Him. Rather, James tells us something sobering, there’s something within us that predisposes us to sin.

Let’s look at verse 14. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. It is our own desire that leads us into sin. James isn’t talking about desire in general. There are lots of good and healthy desires, like desiring the Lord. No, when the New Testament addresses desire in the context of sin, it is specifically referring to fleshly, carnal, sinful desires. This is an important message for us today, but it’s increasingly unpopular to acknowledge individual responsibility for sin. In fact, it’s unpopular to even frame the conversation with the word sin, let alone to imply that a person who sins is individually responsible for it. James makes it clear: this is nonsense. The only person responsible for your sin is you. You are tempted to sin because there is a sin nature in you. You and I are tempted because we have that desire within us.

But hold up! Where is the devil in this statement? Peter tells us that the devil is “like a roaring lion” prowling around looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). Yet James won’t even give us the courtesy of claiming, “The made me do it.” Which by the way, was Eve’s response. Nope, James puts the responsibility for your sin squarely on you.

WE ARE LURED AND ENTICED

Notice the language James uses here, when he says we are lured and enticed by our own desire. I’m no fisherman, but I cannot help but imagine a spinner bait with its shiny beads and rattles and flippers dancing through the water as it’s being reeled back in, it’s barbed hooks present, but hidden from sight. To that bass at the bottom of the pond, it looks so good. Until that first bite. Desire lures us away from safety and protection and short-circuits our minds. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his book, Temptation, that in the moment of desire “we don’t hate God, we just forget about Him.” We forget the consequences and our minds get so fixated on what we desire, that’s all we can think about. And when desire is allowed to run its full course, it gives birth to sin…and ultimately to death.

Look at verse 15. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. What a warning for us today. When what you desire is made available and you refuse to resist the opportunity, but rather allow desire to give birth to sin it feels so good at first. This is the message of Proverbs 9:17, “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” Solomon was speaking specifically of the adulterous woman, warning his son not to follow down that path of sin because death was right around the corner. Verse 18 says, “But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.”

In an ironic twist the birth conceived in desire leads to death, not life. James, like Solomon, wanted to make it abundantly clear: sin is no joke. At first it may seem that whatever you’re dabbling with is harmless and innocent. But, before long, it has you craving more and more. Sin hardens your heart and your conscience slowly over time. You engage in what you justify as innocent sin. You take a little more than you should. You go a little further than you know is acceptable. You cross the line just a little bit. You might feel guilty, but you rationalize it in a thousand ways. Your conscience gets seared, just a little. You might confess this sin in prayer, but you don’t really repent of it because you don’t really think it’s a big deal. Secretly, you long to go back to it.

WHEN THE GUILT WEARS OFF, DESIRE COMES BACK

Nevertheless, you feel a little dirty, a little guilty which keeps your desire at bay for a while. After some time goes by you get over your last failure and you begin to desire it again. This time, however, you find that just crossing the line is no longer a rush. Now what was crossing the line is the new line. To get the same excitement and satisfy the desire, you have to go even further.

Over time we keep hardening our conscience & resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit, until one day we wake up and our whole world is hopelessly consumed by it. Our desire gives birth to sin and sin grows up and brings forth death. We play with sin as if it’s no big deal until one day it kills us. We imagine we can control sin, flirt with it, handle it, mess around with it without paying the price. But Solomon asked, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” says Proverbs 6:27-28. No one wakes up one morning thinking, “I’m going to do something today that’s going to kill me tomorrow.” No, it’s a process, a slow fade.

SIN HARDENS OUR HEARTS

In Hebrews 3 we read this exhortation, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Hebrews 3:12-13 In this author’s inspired words, we read that what keeps Christians from wandering off in sin with an evil, unbelieving heart is not their own will-power. It’s not even the Holy Spirit. What is it? It’s the body of believers. Have you ever wondered why Christianity is such a corporate religion? Why didn’t God just make it so that it’s between you and Him? It’s certainly personal. So why isn’t it private? I believe it’s because of what we’re talking about here. It’s because when we try to live life on our own, we get hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. This is how we wake up one day asking, “How did I let it get this far?”

WHY DO WE NEED THE CHURCH?

But there’s an antidote! The author of Hebrews wisely understood the correlation between isolation and sin’s hardening effect on our hearts. He understood why we need to get around one another consistently and meaningfully. We need one another because our flesh is weak and our sin nature is strong. So, the author of Hebrews warned in the well-known, but often marginalized, command to not give up meeting together. “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hebrews 10:24-25

When we meet together consistently and build meaningful relationships, people know they can ask hard questions, and we know they do it because they love us and want to protect us. Conversely, when we keep people at a distance, either by not showing up, or by keeping relationships superficial, we place ourselves outside the protective umbrella of the body. We circumvent the process God put in place to pull us back from our wandering. And I get it, I’ve been hurt by people I care for. I’ve been betrayed by people I trusted. But I’ve gotten over it because I know I’m only hurting myself by refusing to trust people. I’m only giving my flesh what it desires when I reject accountability and I’m only fooling myself when I say I’m strong enough to be faithful alone. Brother and sister, when it comes to sin, we need one another.

DO NOT BE DECEIVED

Verse 16 serves as a transition from the deceitfulness of our sin to the goodness of God. James says, Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. James wants to make it abundantly clear as he transitions between verses 13-15 and 17-18: sin comes only from your desire and only good comes from God. James knows something about the human heart, which the bible says is “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick…” Jeremiah 17:9 We are prone to be self-deceived, never more than when we know we’ve failed and want someone to blame.

James continues in verse 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. God is the originator of all that is good. He always has been in every situation, and always will be, good. Whatever is good comes down from above as a good and perfect gift.

James calls God the Father of lights. God created the heavenly lights – the sun, moon, and stars. And from our human perspective, these lights are constantly changing. They appear at dawn or at dusk and then disappear. As they move across the sky they cast shadows and those shadows move against the light. Light is always changing. But not God with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. You will never, in any circumstance, be able to accurately say that God tempted you. God does not change and there has never been a desire for evil in God.

THE CREATOR IS FATHER

James portrays God as not only the eternally benevolent one, and not only the creator of lights, but notice James’ emphasis on God as Father. This is how God chooses to relate to His people. Like a Father, infinitely and eternally good. But this begs the question, “How can you and I, born sinners, have a relationship with the holy Father of lights?” James is going to tell us…just as He Fathered lights by His Word, so He brought you forth by His word of truth.

James says in verse 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth. Notice the repetition of the phrase, brought forth. Just as desire gives birth to sin and sin brings forth or gives birth to death, so the Father brings forth, or gives spiritual birth to His children. The bible is clear that in our sin, we are by nature objects of God’s wrath. But John said that God took initiative in our spiritual lives, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, the gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:12-13 He gave the right to become children of God, which means we did not previously have the right to call God our Father. Why did God give us this right to be called His children? His did this, James says, not under compulsion, but of his own will. It was His desire, to bring us forth. He gives us new life because other than Jesus, no human being since Adam and Eve has had the required righteousness necessary for relationship with our perfect Heavenly Father. Furthermore, no one can earn this righteousness. We need a new birth or there is no eternal life.

NO NEW BIRTH, NO NEW LIFE

Jesus made this clear in John 3:3 where we read the story of the pharisee Nicodemus who came to Jesus at night. Jesus looked at Nicodemus, who represented the best of the best, and Jesus responded, “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” You can’t add anything to your moral life to make you acceptable to God. Nicodemus, continuing with the play on words, responded to Jesus, how can a man be born again when he is old? He knew it was impossible for him to recreate himself. It is impossible for man. But with God all things are possible. This is why it relies on God, not you. It must be God who wills. It must be God who acts. It must be God who brings you forth.

The bible is clear about your state outside of Christ. Ephesians 2 paints a pretty grim picture of the sin nature, culminating with, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Spiritually dead people don’t do anything to make themselves alive. They don’t even realize they’re dead. “But God,” Paul continues in verse 4, “being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…” Ephesians 2:4-5

Of His own will God brought us forth, James says, by the word of truth. The word of truth is the gospel. Ephesians 1:13 says, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” Ephesians 1:13 God uses the power of the Word to bring us forth, to cause us to believe in Jesus and to be sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Romans 1:16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” The power of the word of truth, the Gospel, is what awakens the dead. It convicts of sin and causes us to call out for forgiveness.

WE ARE FIRSTFRUITS

God saves sinners so that they may enjoy the immeasurable riches of His kindness for all of eternity. But our own salvation is not the only reason He brought us forth. James continues, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. The will of God is that the people He brings forth would be a multiplying people, a people who take the same word of truth to others. James uses the firstfruit motif to illustrate this reality. This is really important for at least two reasons. First, the firstfruits of the harvest were set aside for God as His special possession. This implies that the people to whom James was writing, and that now includes you and I brothers and sisters, are set apart as God’s special possession. God set you aside for Himself. What does that do for you? Secondly, the firstfruit was a foretaste of the rest of the harvest. Those to whom James wrote were the first to be harvested, but they would not be the last. No, if they were the firstfruit, there would be more to come. And man has there been more? Try as they might, no government or power or evil agent has been able to stop the advance of the gospel in power.

ARE YOU A LABORER OR JUST A SPECTATOR?

You were brought forth by the will of God through the word of truth when another person, possibly a pastor but probably not, told you the greatest news in the history of the world. They said something along the lines of, “You’re a sinner and Jesus died for you and rose again from the dead so that you might be born again and given a new, righteous nature.” And the Lord caused your dead heart to come alive in Christ and you recognized your sin; you believed the Gospel, you cried out to Jesus for forgiveness, and called Him “Lord.” And no matter what has happened in your life, you’ve remained steadfast in the faith, even if you’ve stumbled, you’ve gotten back up, and you believe the Gospel today and you submit to Jesus as Lord today and you love God today. That’s what God has done in your life and He’s got others He wants to do that for, too. The question is are you willing to be a laborer in the harvest or are you content to be a spectator?

You might comfort yourself in your disobedience with the idea that you’re just ordinary an man or woman trying to get through life. “God wouldn’t have any use for someone like me,” you might try to convince yourself. But God uses ordinary folks taking an extraordinary gospel to the world to save sinners every single day. This is how God works. This is how He brings people forth by the Word of Truth. As Paul says, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” Romans 10:14

Did you know we just wrapped up a six-week evangelism course that Pastor Matt put together along with Josh Pugsley? I think they’re getting ready to start another one in a couple weeks. You might be able to learn something about this important work you’ve been called to. Did you also know that Mission’s Fest is coming up on March 12th & 13th? I genuinely think everyone that prioritizes this event is going to be encouraged and inspired to explore how they ought to live on mission right where they are. The harvest is plentiful, Jesus said, but the laborers are few. Let’s get to work.

James Bibliography

Calvin, Jean. (1995). Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: A Harmony of The Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke: And the Epistles of James and Jude. William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Doriani, Daniel M. (2007). Reformed Expository Commentary: James. P&R Publishing.
Hughes, R. K. (1991). James: Faith that works. Crossway Books.
MacArthur, John. (1998). The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series: James. Moody Publishers.

McCartney, Dan G. (2009). Baker Exegetical Commentary: James. Baker Academic.

Moo, Douglas J. (2015). Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: James. IVP Academic.

Richardson, Kurt A. (1997). New American Commentary: James. B&H Publishing