The First-fruits of God's Creatures.
I. "Of His own will," or because He willed it, is given as the reason why God bestowed on us a new life. We are to receive this assurance with the effort to profit by it, and to derive practical good from it, not with vain speculation as to the nature of God's decrees, still less with any profane and worldly thought that He distributes His blessings, like a self-willed human ruler, in an arbitrary and capricious spirit, but with a devout acknowledgment that our baptism, our knowledge of Christianity, our education, our opportunities, any progress or improvement which we have made in holiness, are not the results of our own merit, but of God's goodness. Our feeling should be one of humble gratitude, leading to more earnest efforts to deserve God's favour and to fulfil the responsibilities which He has put upon us.
II. "Begat He us." Here again St. James, no less clearly than St. Paul or St. John or than He who was the common Teacher of them all, speaks to us of that radical change of heart and principle, that conversion to God, that resurrection to righteousness, which may well be called a new birth. And this great change is here declared to be the gift of God.
III. We were begotten by the word of truth, that is, by the Gospel. We learn from this that it is only through Christianity that we can escape from sin. In Christ, and Christ alone, we shall find the new life after which we were striving.
IV. "That we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." Here St. James tells his readers of God's purpose in thus calling them to a new life through the Gospel of His Son, that they might be the first-born of the great Christian household, consecrated to God. They were the beginning of the great spiritual harvest soon to be gathered in from the whitening fields, the elder brethren who were to be examples and patterns to those who were still to be born into God's family.
G. E. L. Cotton, Expository Sermons on the Epistles,vol. ii., p. 15.
Reference: James 1:18. J. Keble, Sermons for Saints' Days,p. 224.