Here James contrasts the fruits of sinful desire - death, moral corruption - and the fruits of God's free action. God is steadfast and unchanging in His perfect will; we are led astray by our vacillating will, deceived by wrong desire. God chose to make us His children through the truth that He revealed in Jesus, so that we might be the first fruits of His creation. God brings forth life by His will and His will towards us is that we should have life through Jesus.

Following the narration of the Pharisees' attempt to test Jesus, His warning concerning the "leaven" of the Pharisees and Herodians points to their spiritual blindness and hardness of heart. The disciples, too, had something of their blindness and hardness. They were unable to make the connection between the unleavened bread of the Passover and the sacrificial lamb of the new Exodus. Jesus brings their minds back to the miracles of the loaves and shows them the deeper meaning of these symbolic actions. They collected twelve baskets of scraps after the first miraculous feeding: the number twelve points to the Jewish world, while the seven baskets collected at the second miracle symbolize the universality of Christ's message and its application to the Gentile world. Jesus' Word contains eternal life.