James follows his usual procedure of spelling out the problem and then supplying the prescription for spiritual victory. Sheer human effort will not achieve the conquest. You can "grit your teeth" and "grin and bear it," but this will not produce satisfactory results in the long run.
A spiritual encounter requires a spiritual enablement. That enablement relates to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in believers. The question in James 4:5 implies believers have neglected a basic truth. We have forgotten the Holy Spirit indwells in us and jealously yearns for a progressive supervision in the life.
The Spirit is never content to occupy the remote recesses of the believer's heart; He wants unhindered and welcome access to every room in the house. He is working to control the believer's thoughts, feelings, and decisions. His ultimate design is to bring every thought into Christ's captivity and to regulate all the activities of the Christian's life.
The Spirit's indwelling presence and omnipotent operations in the Christian are not the only means of spiritual conquest. Added to them are God's abundant grace (vs. 6). His grace is greater than the inclination of the old nature to sin and greater than the appeals which the world and the devil make to the old nature. But increased grace is contingent upon humility.
The humble man is the one who recognizes his total inability to stand in his own powers. He knows full well the depravity of the flesh, his personal worthlessness apart from the grace of God at work in him, and his dire need of super-natural assistance.
He has no sufficiency of himself to please the Lord, and so he leans harder than ever upon the gracious work of the Spirit to accomplish in him what he has no capacity for achieving by himself. To this kind of man God gives grace upon grace. He grows in grace, is strengthened by grace, glories in grace, and rests in grace.
The grace of God operating in him enables him to carry out the conditions for gaining the victory. By grace he submits to God, and by grace he resists the devil (vs. 7). To submit to God means to yield to His sovereign rule, to comply with His lordship, to surrender one's will to His will.
The self-willed, self-directed, self-governed, and self-dependent Christian will find it impossible to resist Satan. Satan appeals to the believer's natural instinct for self-preservation, self-esteem, self-control, and self-determination.
The self-sufficient person will scarcely draw near to God (vs. 8) because he foolishly imagines he has some power in himself to resist the devil or submit to God or make himself humble. People who are not really convinced of their helplessness have little cause to throw themselves upon the help of anyone else--even God.
Notwithstanding all this emphasis upon the grace of God, we Christians should realize we are fully responsible to meet the conditions which James lays down for spiritual triumph. Any failure to submit to God, to resist the devil, to draw nigh to God, to cleanse the hands, to purify the heart, and to be afflicted is our own fault.
We cannot excuse ourselves on the grounds that God did not give us the grace to obey these commands. God will not be blamed for human failures. Believers are fully responsible for their own sinful failures, but we are duty-bound to give God all the credit and glory for all of our spiritual successes.
James is not reluctant to call Christians "sinners" (vs. 8). Some Christians today cannot think of themselves as sinners because, after all, they have been acquitted and pronounced "blameless". On the other hand, the Apostle John declares: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8).
In the state of justification, we as Christians are still sinners because the old nature clings to us and because we still sin daily in thought, word and deed. Therefore, we need a daily cleansing by the washing of water through prayer and study of the Word.
James calls for his readers and us to be sensitive toward sin. (James 4:9). He doesn't advocate a long-face Christianity, morbid preoccupation with sorrow, or continual self-accusation and retrospection with respect to our transgressions. There is joy in serving Jesus! Christ has promised to share His joy with us. But some of James' acquaintances had evidently become calloused to sin by fraternizing with the world.
The knowledge we have grieved the Holy Spirit ought to cause us to mourn. Knowing we have not pleased the Lord in all things should evoke a spirit of lamentation in us. Realizing we all offend our Holy God in many ways ought to bring us to tears that we should so despise the riches of His grace and goodness.
The reason Christians don't grieve more over their sins is they have lost sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sins and of the infinite holiness of God who recoils at any and all sin--including the sins in the lives of the saints.
In verse 10 James concludes his admonitions with a last emphasis upon the crux of the problem--pride. Self-centeredness is the plague of the Christian life. All other sins flow out from the hidden springs of pride. The problem of cantankerous Christians will be resolved only to the extent that believers cast themselves up on the Lord and pour contempt on all their pride.
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