Matthew Poole and continuators on James 1:17

17 Every good gift, and every perfect gift , is from above , and cometh down from the Father of lights , with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning .

Gr. giving, and so it may be distinct from Gift in the next clause; to shew, that whereas Men sometimes give good Gifts in an evil way, and with an evil Mind, God's giving, as well as Gift, is always good; and therefore when we receive any thing of him, we should look not only to the thing it self, but to his Bounty and Goodness in giving it: Or, it may be rendred as our Translators do, Gift, and so the word is sometimes used by profane Writers themselves; and then tho it may be implied, that all good Gifts, and of all kinds, of Nature, and of Grace, are from God, yet the Apostle's Design in this place being to prove, that God is not the Author of Sin; Good Gifts may most fairly be understood the best Gifts, those of Grace (spiritual Blessings, Ephes. 1.3.) such being contrary to Sin, and destructive of it, in one of which he instanceth, viz. Regeneration, v. 18.

The highest degree of good Gifts, those that perfect us most, to intimate, that all the Parts and Steps of spiritual Life, from the first beginning of Grace in Regeneration, to the Consummation of it in Glory, are of God.

i. e. From Heaven, Iohn 3.27, 31. and Heaven is put for God that dwells there, Luke 15.21.

The Creator, Author, or first Cause, as Heb. 12.9. It is spoken after the manner of the Hebrews; See Gen. 4.20, 21.

God is the Author of all Perfection, and so of corporeal Light; but here we are to understand spiritual Light, the Light of Knowledge, Faith, Holiness, as opposed to the Darkness of Ignorance, Unbelief, Sin, of which he cannot be the Author.

He here sets forth God as essentially and immutably Good, and the Father of Lights, by allusion to the Sun the Fountain of corporeal light, and makes use of terms borrowed from Astronomy. The Sun though it scattereth its Beams every where, yet is not without its Changes, Parallaxes, and diversities of Aspects, not onely sometimes clear, and sometimes eclipsed, but one while in the East, another in the South, then in the West; nor without its turnings in its annual course from Tropick to Tropick (to which the Greek word here used seems to allude) its various accesses and recesses, by reason of which it casts different shadows; but God is always the same, like himself constant in the emanations of his goodness, without casting any dark shadow of evil which might infer a change in him.

Marginal references: 1 Cor. 4.7.; Mal. 3.6.