Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to James · About this commentary
The Father of Lights
James 1:16-18
16 Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers. · WEB
The correction about God's character is given a positive form, and the argument turns on something that does not change.
Do not be deceived marks what has just been said as an error someone might actually hold. The letter treats a wrong picture of God as a deception rather than an inaccuracy.
Verse 17 answers it by reversing the direction of traffic. Nothing bad comes down from God; every good giving and every perfect gift does. The two words are not identical — one leans toward the act of giving, the other toward the thing given — and between them they leave nothing out.
The title is unusual: Father of lights, which in this context means the maker of the heavenly bodies. And it is chosen for the sake of the clause that follows, because the argument depends on it. Those lights are the most reliable things a person can observe, and they still vary: they rise and set, wax and wane, and cast shadows that move all day. God, says the verse, has no variation, nor shadow cast by turning. He is compared to the steadiest things in creation in order to be distinguished from them.
Verse 18 then gives the supreme instance of the giving. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth — a birth, willed by him, and the letter has just described a very different conception three verses earlier, where desire bore sin and sin bore death James 1:15. Two births are set against each other, and only one was chosen deliberately.
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