It comes to this, that a man must decide whether or not God is to rule
his life. It is self or God, and that is the same thing as the devil or
God, for a self without God is ruled by the devil. “Be subject therefore
unto God,” since, as James has shown in verse 6, God gives grace to the
humble and withstands the proud. “The proud spirit has to be curbed”
(Oesterley). Peter has expanded this idea in a great passage (1 Peter
5:6-9). Our only hope is under the leadership of God. The devil is the
“prince of the world” (John 14:30), and he has plenty of help in the
world rulers of darkness (Eph. 6:11 f.). The proud and self-willed are
sure to fall into his condemnation (1 Tim. 3:6).
“But resist the devil.” Take your stand (note the aorist tense) in the
face of the devil, the great hinderer and slanderer. The fight is on
between the forces of God and Satan, and one must take sides. A man once
said that he wished to be impartial in the struggle between God and the
devil. That species of liberality is out of the question. He that is not
with Christ is against him. There is no middle ground.
James does not stop to parley over the existence of the devil. He
assumes the reality of the dread agent of evil, who is bent on the
destruction of all that is good in man. The point to see clearly is that
there is but one thing to do, and that is to fight the devil, not with
fire but with the word of God, with the help of the Spirit of God. “Get
thee hence, Satan,” Jesus had to say (Matt. 4:10). “And he will flee
from you.” The devil will run if we fight him with the might of God. One
way to submit to God is to fight off the devil.
But it is not all negative. The converse is true also. “Draw nigh to
God, and he will draw nigh to you.” The Hebrew had a technical term for
drawing nigh to God for the purpose of worship (Ex. 19:22; Jer. 30:21).
It is not true that the devil is irresistible and it is useless to
oppose him (Plummer). This is one of the pleas of the devil himself to
break down the resisting power of the human will and so to take all
fight out of us. The principle that James here announces is true to
Scripture, to psychology, and to human experience. If we draw nigh to
the devil, he will draw nigh to us. If we resist him, he will flee from
us. If we resist God, even God will finally depart from us and leave us
to our sins. If we approach God in worship, he opens his heart to us.
“Return unto me, and I will return unto you” (Zech. 1:3). “To this end
was the Son of man manifested, that he might destroy the works of the
devil” (1 John 3:8). “The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him”
(Psalm 145:18, AV). God first draws nigh unto us (John 16:16), and when
we respond, lo, he is there before us. The place of safety and of power
for the Christian is the throne of grace. There he has a mighty Friend
and Helper (Heb. 4:16). We can draw close to God, as a child to his
father in the dark, and feel his presence.