James 4:7

"Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you"."Submit therefore" -In view of the grace available to the humble child of God, submission to God makes all the sense in the world. "Submit"-another military term which means to rank oneself under, to obey, to subject oneself. The aorist tense denotes. sense of urgency and. call to do it and do it now. This submission involves our whole being including our minds and thoughts (Romans 8:7). "Submit…involves more than 'obey', although it obviously includes obedience. It indicates the surrender of the will to the leadership of another' (Kent p. 149). In the context, submission to God involves the acknowledgment that the world doesn't have the answers, the world can't provide for our true needs and the world is wrong."Resist the devil" -"Resist"-"to set oneself against, to withstand, oppose" (Thayer p. 45) (1 Peter 5:9; Ephesians 6:13). Note that the devil is. real being who can be resisted. But we can't resist the devil on our own (Romans 3:23). The verse suggests the devil can be resisted only when we completely place ourselves under God's authority.. half-hearted devotion to God won't stand up under the devil's attacks. " Most of us flirt with temptation and court evil, then wonder why we have problems" (Draper p. 125). This demands. decision,. willingness to commit ourselves completely to God,. willingness to put all our eggs in one basket, to depend entirely upon God for our well-being. Resisting the devil and submitting to God demands that we get off the fence (1 Kings 2:21).

Points To Note:

1. "The Christian is not here instructed to go out and attack the devil by looking for new ways to lure him into combat. It is assumed, rather, that the devil will do the attacking" (Kent p. 149) (1 Peter 5:8 "prowls about like. roaring lion, seeking someone to devour"). 2. The reason that we yield to temptation is not the devil, but rather our own failure to trust God. The devil doesn't put the desire to do evil in our hearts (James 1:13), rather he only throws out the lure, and when we allow ourselves to become selfish, when we allow ourselves to mistrust and question God, then such lures start to look appealing. "and he will flee from you" -The devil isn't all-powerful and neither can he simply overwhelm us. We cannot say, "The devil made me do it". "Man must resist (stand against) Satan, or be taken captive by him. There can be no armistice, no terms of amnesty offered…..It is important to observe that we resist Satan only by. total rejection of his efforts. One who yields, even in the slightest degree, takes. step that may eventually lead to complete surrender" (Woods pp. 224-225). While the devil "flees" he also comes back from time to time (Luke 4:13). The word "flee" also suggests that the devil simply doesn't have the stomach for the Christian who is completely depending upon God.