Resisting the Devil

Besides the Ephesians 6 passage that I talked about earlier, another Scripture on spiritual warfare that is frequently misunderstood (and often argued about) is this verse from James:

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

Many Christians take this as a promise they can claim in their personal struggle against temptation, accusation, and other kinds of attack they experience from the Enemy. Others, especially some Bible commentators, point out that the passage in which this verse is found has a corporate dimension:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble."

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you — who are you to judge your neighbor? (James 4:1-12)

It appears, these commentators say, that what James is actually talking about here is selfishness and how it poisons relationships among the people of God. And the antidote James appears to suggest is repentance, not "duking it out" with the Devil. 

Who is right?

Both are, actually. For although the focus here of the exhortation to "resist the Devil" is to resist Satan's attempts to create disharmony and strife among us, the statement that the Devil will flee if we resist him is a general truth — a promise from God — that James is applying here to a particular situation involving the audience he is writing to. 

Look at Jesus for example. In Luke 4:1-11 when Jesus was "led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil" he experienced a whole range of different attacks from the Evil One of which the Gospel writer keys in on three in particular. Jesus resisted each attack however, and in the end after the Devil had emptied his quiver of flaming arrows, he left — probably to try and plan some other schemes to bring down Jesus. 

So the Scripture which says that if we resist (and keep on resisting!) the Devil, he will (eventually) flee from us — or at least walk away in frustration — is indeed a trustworthy promise. And it applies both on a personal level in our struggle against the Prince of Darkness and on the wider corporate level of God's people resisting together the attempts of Satan to cause division and disunity among them. 

Context is important when interpreting Scripture, but truth is true regardless of the situation it's being applied to.

—Mitch