You guys were so helpful last time, so I was wondering if you could help explain this verse. What he means by “first fruits” and also what it means to be born by the “word of truth”. Thanks!
Here are a few observations fromone of my favorite Greek guys who did a serious study of James.
James 1:18 (Faith, Love and Hope: An Exposition of the Epistle of James): How God Re-Creates Man
… begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
—James 1:18b
To have a will is to have the power of logical reasoning. Furthermore, the exercise of the will results in action. That is what the next word in our verse tells us: “Having willed it, he begat us.” The same Greek word is used here as the one used in the 15th verse in relation to sin bringing forth death. It is the word apokuéō, which means “to be or to become pregnant.” James spoke of the conception and the birth of death, and now he speaks of the birth of life. Sin is responsible for death, and God is responsible for life—spiritual, abundant life. We come again to the mystery of conception and pregnancy necessary for birth.
To make this possible there must be two persons involved. True, James through the first word of this verse spoke of the will of God, of the determination of God to make you a new creature, but for this new spiritual life to begin His will alone is not sufficient. Yours is necessary, too, whether you submit your will willingly or unwillingly. Dwight L. Moody said,
Many men fold their arms and say, “If I am one of the elect—in other words, one of those God willed to be saved—I shall be saved; and if I am not, I shall not. No use bothering about it.” I have an idea that the Lord Jesus saw how men were going to stumble over this doctrine of election, so after He had been thirty or forty years in heaven, He came down and spoke to John. One Lord’s Day in Patmos He said to him: “Write these things to the churches.” John kept on writing. His pen flew very fast. And then the Lord, when it was nearly finished, said: “John, before you close the book, put in one more invitation. ‘The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.’ ”
Do not worry as to who are the elect and who are not. It was Henry Ward Beecher who used to say: “The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won’t.” What great truth there is in that. There is one thing which the omnipotent God does not choose to do, although He could do it, and that is to violate your will and come and dwell in your heart without being wanted. As He stoops down from heaven’s glory to reach you in your sin and trespasses, why do you not look up into His face and say, “I will receive Christ as my Savior. Come in today, come in to stay.” “But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12).
“Having willed it, he begat us.” James must surely refer here to all the believers, including himself. One hears a great deal today about the universal brotherhood of man. This is definitely against the teaching of the Scriptures. Only those are brothers who have been begotten by the will of God, those who have said yes to the Lord as He stretched forth His nail-pierced hands to save them. And what a brotherhood that is which is made up of the blood-bought children of God.
Before I go on, I should like to point out that this word “begat” is in the past tense, aorist, which would indicate the completeness and the permanence of this birth. I laughed one day when a good Christian woman said to me as she spoke of her brother, “He was born-again several times.” What a fallacy that is! In this physical world you can only be born once, and so it is in the spiritual world: you can be born-again only once. It is true there are degrees of spiritual growth, but life is given once by God and that life is complete in its makeup. Surely the One who gave it is able to maintain it. God gave us this birth from above, once and for all.
Now we come to that part of our verse which deals with the instrumentality of this birth. How are we born-again? The answer which James gives us is “through the word of truth.” There are any number of ways we can take this first word, lógō. It is the same word which John uses in his gospel, in the first chapter, to introduce Jesus Christ as being one with God and yet separate. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is true that the definite article is missing in connection with the word “God,” but rightly so; otherwise we would have a grammatical monstrosity, for the word “God” here is not the subject of the sentence, but the predicate. This Word was God, but at the same time He was a separate and distinct personality from God. He was the One who became flesh and dwelt among us.
He was none other than the eternal Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore in my interpretation of this important theological statement of the Apostle James, I wish to declare that I believe that the first and foremost meaning of this particular word lógō, ordinarily translated “through the Word,” is the Second Person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom alone God regenerates, re-creates the human heart and instills in it the divine nature. He, Jesus Christ, was the expression, the tangible, visible expression, of His will and His love. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). If you ever expect to be born again, it must be through Jesus Christ. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).
I have given you the biblical meaning of the word lógos, but I would like to mention also that the primary and probably the simplest meaning of the word is “expression, in the sense of a word,” the articulate sound which comes from the mouth of man to make known what is in his mind. It is the declaration of something; it is preaching. How are people saved? Simply through the preaching of the Word, the preaching of Christ. This is the age when people and churches are trying to change things. Instead of the simple preaching of the gospel they are trying to substitute religious motion pictures, religious drama, music, and a thousand and one other things. Let me, however, declare as emphatically as I can, on the authority of the Word of God, that there is no substitute for the preaching of the Word. “So then,” declares Paul, “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” God help us never to substitute anything for this God-given method of winning souls to Christ.
There is a lot of preaching today. There is oratory galore. There is very little of the Truth, however. Our verse declares that the instrumentality of the new birth is the “word of truth.” Now what is truth? I do not need to answer that. The Lord Jesus answered it Himself when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). People are born again through the preaching of the truth, the Christ. John Wesley used to ask the young men (whom he sent out on probation to preach) two questions: “Has anyone been converted?” and “Did anyone get mad?” If the answer was No, he told them he did not think the Lord had called them to preach the gospel, and he sent them about their business. When we preach the truth and the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, people either get converted or get mad. This is indeed a good test for many man-pleasing preachers of this generation.
What is the result of the new birth, of this re-creation by God? What are we, after we are born again by God through the preaching of Jesus Christ? We are “a kind of firstfruits of his creatures,” declares James. We have read that many times, but have we ever stopped to think about what it means? In the Old Testament the firstfruits of the harvest and of the first-born belonged to God, and the command was to offer them to God. These firstfruits, therefore, were the peculiar possession of God. Among His entire creation we are peculiarly His possession, for we were not only created by Him, but also re-created. A little boy who had lost his toy boat found it for sale in a store, and when he bought it, he took it in his hands and hugged it, saying, “My little precious boat, you are now twice mine; once I made you and once I bought you.” As God looks upon us who have tasted His grace and salvation, He says to us the same thing: “You are so precious to me, more precious than any other creature for once I made you and once I bought you with the blood of my Son.”