17 No evil, but every good gift - Whatever tends to holiness.
And every perfect gift - Whatever tends to glory. Descendeth from the Father
of lights - The appellation of Father is here used with peculiar propriety.
It follows, "he begat us." He is the Father of all light, material or spiritual,
in the kingdom of grace and of glory. With whom is no variableness - No
change in his understanding. Or shadow of turning - in his will. He infallibly
discerns all good and evil; and invariably loves one, and hates the other.
There is, in both the Greek words, a metaphor taken from the stars, particularly
proper where the Father of lights is mentioned. Both are applicable to
any celestial body, which has a daily vicissitude of day and night, and
sometimes longer days, sometimes longer nights. In God is nothing of this
kind. He is mere light. If there Is any such vicissitude, it is in ourselves,
not in him.
18 Of his own will - Most loving, most free, most pure, just opposite
to our evil desire, Jas 1:15. Begat he us - Who believe. By the word of
truth - The true word, emphatically so termed; the gospel. That we might
be a kind of first - fruits of his creatures - Christians are the chief
and most excellent of his visible creatures; and sanctify the rest. Yet
he says, A kind of - For Christ alone is absolutely the first - fruits.
19 Let every man be swift to hear - This is treated of from Jas 1:21
to the end of the next chapter. Slow to speak - Which is treated of in
he third chapter. Slow to wrath - Neither murmuring at God, nor angry at
his neighbour. This is treated of in the third, and throughout the fourth
and fifth chapters.
20 The righteousness of God here includes all duties prescribed by him,
and pleasing to him.
21 Therefore laying aside - As a dirty garment. All the filthiness and
superfluity of wickedness - For however specious or necessary it may appear
to worldly wisdom, all wickedness is both vile, hateful, contemptible,
and really superfluous. Every reasonable end may be effectually answered
without any kind or degree of it. Lay this, every known sin, aside, or
all your hearing is vain. With meekness - Constant evenness and serenity
of mind. Receive - Into your ears, your heart, your life. The word - Of
the gospel. Ingrafted - In believers, by regeneration, Jas 1:18 and by
habit, Heb 5:14. Which is able to save your souls - The hope of salvation
nourishes meekness.
