James 4:4-7 – “Help Us! 2”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁴Adulteresses! Do you not know the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world has become an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose that the Scripture says emptily the spirit dwelling in us lusts toward envy? ⁶But He gives more grace, therefore it says, “God opposes proud ones but gives grace to humble ones.” ⁷Therefore, submit yourselves to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

I think before I move on, I want to record some more thoughts regarding the sin of pride.

I seriously do believe the church today has totally lost all sense of this sin. I don’t believe it is even on the radar screen, pretty much anywhere that I’ve ever had any association or knowledge.

From church history, one thing has always puzzled me – how the old writers seemed to be so godly, how they seemed to have such a depth in their relationships with God, with their knowledge of Him. And somewhere around 1800, it’s like it just fizzled away. There is almost a watershed where, after that, even the most eminent of theologians still have a shallowness that is routinely disappointing. Then I see amazing men like Charles Spurgeon and J.C. Ryle who even into those 1800’s still seemed to possess that very deep sense of God’s greatness and yet who marveled in His love and grace. And yet, even while those two men preached to them – and Spurgeon’s sermons were transcribed and published in the London times every Monday – spiritually speaking the nation of England “went to hell in a hand basket.” Read anything either of those men wrote and ask yourself, “How could a nation go to hell with men like this preaching to them?”

I suspect the answer is in the very passage before us. Pride. The devil’s sin. The sin born in a cloaking device … and yet the particular sin against which we are warned God marshals His armies to fight against. Those old writers come to a passage like James 4 and they can write for pages exposing and thrashing the sin of pride. Since 1800, writers give it passing notice and very often leave whatever it says condemning all those “sinners” out there – never even considering that James is writing to us!

I recall one rare sermon against the sin of pride after which a woman retorted, “But shouldn’t we be proud of our children, of our schools …?” Here was a woman who had claimed to be a believer for probably 60 years and she still doesn’t even know the difference between the sin of pride and the pleasure we rightly get from things accomplished. This is my case-in-point. Really? Sixty years of church-going and pride isn’t even on the radar? Sixty years of supposedly knowing God and still not knowing His enemy?

It explains a lot. It certainly explains my own life, how I could have tried so much and accomplished so little, how I could have made such bad decisions even while I thought I was sincerely trying to “do things God’s way.”

Unless pride is exposed and deliberately crushed, it utterly, insidiously destroys even the best of our intentions. But, once again, it is a self-concealing sin. Like the devil himself, it only works in the darkness. Manton said of Satan, “His policy is to blind the mind, and carry on his kingdom covertly in the darkness …” II Cor 4:4 tells us, “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,” and in 11:14,15, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness.”

As Yoda said, “Hard to see the dark side is.” And may I add, “and even harder when we aren’t even looking for it.” And I guess that is the point I’m trying to make.

Basically, I fear we live in a generation where the church itself barely even recognizes the sin of pride and certainly makes no effort to expose or renounce it. If that is the case, then we shouldn’t be surprised that we labor much and accomplish precious little. We shouldn’t be surprised that our “great” leaders go down in adultery and financial improprieties. We shouldn’t be surprised that churches all over America are so busy and yet have very little effect on the country. We aren’t even looking for the very devil’s sin that lurks within us.

God resists the proud.

So what should we do about it? What if it’s true that for some reason, ever since about 1800, the church has allowed the devil and his sin to masquerade within us with little or no effort to even acknowledge it? What if that explains why we have so little impact in this world?

I don’t know. Pray. Pray that the Lord would help me to see it in my own heart. Pray He’d help me to take my enemy very seriously and pray He’d help me be genuinely humble before Him. Pray that somehow His church would wake up and see what James is saying – that we all need to take a hard (and honest) look at the evidence of our lives and see what the fruit really tells us.

Maybe we need to submit to God and resist the devil, to draw near to God so He will draw near to us, to see ourselves as sinners and cleanse our hands, to see ourselves as double-minded and purify our hearts, to be afflicted and mourn and weep and let our laughter be turned to mourning and our joy to heaviness, to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, so He can lift us up.

Maybe we need to take James 4 seriously.

God help me. God help us.