Resist the Devil
“…6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.” 7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:6-10)
Good morning! I haven’t shared anything new in this corner of the website for some months, but I’ve been wrestling with something lately that felt more appropriate to share here than with the usual posts. I’ll talk about that a bit more towards the end, but first I want to talk about the text at hand. The excerpt above is, as you can see, taken from James 4:6-10, and it is a sternly, carefully worded correction issued to brothers in the faith (click here to see a previous post about James 1 for more context: https://www.learningto.live/blog-3/62426-unstained). If chapter 1 of James is an exhortation to remain faithful, then within chapter 4 is a guide to repentance so that you and I might return to faithfulness. (In this way, it is somewhat similar, thematically, to 1 John 1:5-9, which urges repentance when guilty rather than proudly asserting our innocence. James, though, is a bit more thorough about the particulars in this section.)
Today, I want to talk about applying this passage; what does it look like to resist the devil? To submit to God? James describes it as cleansing our hands and purifying our hearts, being miserable and mourning and weeping, humbling ourselves. What actions do these things entail? I, personally, think that all of these things are very clearly reflected in earnest prayer and confession. (I have also written about confession as a component of repentance elsewhere, click here to read more on that: https://www.learningto.live/blog-3/71226-confession-the-voice-of-repentance) To purify your heart is to remove the trash, the pollutants, the toxins that are eroding it; like clearing a plot of land that has been neglected and littered for years, rendering the soil useless and infertile, it must be worked and broken up again so that lifegiving nutrients may be injected into it again. What about cleansing our hands, though? I believe that that ties in well with James’ words in chapter 2, verses 21-26, where he says: “21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS,” and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” It may not be a direct definition, but I feel that it is interpretively sound to connect these passages, since James speaks at length throughout his letter on the intersection of faith and works.
To be clear, I am not referencing this as a “faith plus works” version of the Gospel, but as a “faith that produces works” passage that condenses a core component of the Gospel, being that if we love God and love Jesus we will keep His commandments.
If we attempt to divorce these two coexistent principles –the purifying of a heart through prayer and communion with God and the cleansing work of obedience to His instructions–we effectively forfeit our ability to resist the devil.
Think about it for a moment: apart from the grace of God and the blood of Christ, is there any strength in man to stand against sin, fully and completely? I don’t think so, and I think the scriptures would agree with me. But how can we seek this grace if not through prayer? And how can we walk in grace if not by obedience? The two intersect and intertwine, and cannot be separated without causing harm to each other.
Why am I talking about all of this right now? Well, I have been struggling for several weeks now with the cleansing of my own hands, and it has been affecting my heart. I wanted to share this as an encouragement and a warning of the danger of delaying this repentance.
I have talked a lot in my other posts about my struggles with lust and pornography over the years, and I am pleased to say that it has been a year since I was set free from that horrendous sin. Recently, I have nearly lapsed several times, and it is because I have failed to remain diligent in the things we have been talking about.
This isn’t the first or only time I have been tempted this year; I have been tempted many times to pick up those old shackles, tempted through the prevalence of pornography and sexually explicit material on the internet, my own memories, and the physical world around me. Sometimes it has been easier to resist, and other times it has been harder. I have fumbled many times, but God has been gracious to me each time. The times it has been the easiest have, overwhelmingly, been the times that I was the most diligent in my prayer and in my efforts to flee from the temptation and find ways to serve and bless others. The times that have been the hardest have, likewise, been those times that I was the most slack in my prayer or that I began to fixate more on my own wants, needs, and pursuits. This is not to say that my efforts warranted any grace from God, but rather that it has been the times in which my heart was the most humbled that I found I was able to approach Him for His grace. (I’m also not saying that I was ever totally without temptation towards those things, but there are definitely days when it feels almost nonexistent.)
Turns out, it is difficult to resist the devil when you are not prioritizing nearness to God.
It is also difficult to keep your hands clean if you aren’t frequently washing them.
In particular, I have fumbled by relaxing my guard on social media (mostly Instagram.) For a while, my account was pretty good about not recommending sexual content to me; I have made a real effort to keep it that way. A few weeks ago, though, it started recommending things like that to me again, aggressively, and instead of doing the smart thing and just quitting the app again immediately, I stayed. I wasn’t actively engaging with it–I made a point to block the accounts as they came up–but the more I blocked, the more appeared. After a week, they were showing up almost constantly. After a week, I noticed my eyes catch a bit longer than they had before.
Stubbornly, I tried to muscle on. I did not lean into the growing temptation, but I did not cut it off entirely. I prayed about it, but I did not change my actions so as to remove the source. By the end of week two, I had reached a conclusion: I needed to get rid of Instagram again. Not only this, but I needed to apologize to God for the pride I had shown in acting like I was impervious to temptation, and I needed to apologize to my wife for, even briefly, allowing my eyes to wander.
I needed to humble myself again, like I did when my addiction was first broken.
It was a difficult conversation, and the prayers have been particularly uncomfortable, but it was a good and necessary thing for me to do. Additionally, my wife and I have decided that it would be best for me to either get rid of that account altogether or give it to her so that she can supervise it and keep me firmly accountable–we haven’t finalized our decision there quite yet.
All of this is to say: don’t neglect prayer, because it is the greatest tool you have in conversing with God, drawing near to Him to ask for help when you are weak; and don’t neglect the actionable things in your life, the works that you can do that evidence your faith, that show your desire for cleansing. These two things are not parallel concepts; they intersect, and that intersection is where the presence of God is felt and the temptation of the devil no longer has any strength to rule us.
