In the fourth chapter of James are ten verses which have to do with a part of submission we have never seen.
There is a resistance in submission, a resistance that is aggressive and very necessary. Most of us never will know the powerful position we put ourselves in when we become totally and completely submissive to the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a leverage that is almost beyond understanding.
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James 4:7.
The word flee or put to flight means-To run away, as from danger; to avoid in an alarmed or cowardly manner.
It means to run in terror, as a child would from a bully, who would beat him up. As the seven sons of Sceva ran naked and wounded when the evil spirit jumped on them-Acts 19:16
Would you like to be the kind of spiritual person who would only have to resist Satan, and he would flee—not reluctantly disappear, but run in terror? That is the promise given to us.
Has the impact of that ever hit you? He will flee from you; he can’t get away fast enough from your presence.
Do we really know the powerful place that Jesus had when He submitted to the Father so completely?
The word says Jesus emptied himself. He emptied himself and became a man. In a sense he ceased to be God and became the son of man.
When tempted by the devil in the wilderness, the devil said if you be the son of God, referring to the attributes of God.
Philippians 2: 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
What a humble place He took. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name that is above every name. Every knee will bow; every tongue will confess (Philippians 2:9–11). But it is based upon the humility and the submission that was in the Lord Jesus Christ to the Father.
Paul says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). This same thing is to be within us, and that is what James is talking about.
You submit yourself to the Lord with a deep and total submission. It is not a reluctant giving in because you are pinned down; it is not like a submission hold in a wrestling match.
It is a total submission unto the will of God, a total submission of all that you are unto Him, even as Christ submitted unto the Father and did only those things that pleased the Father, in every way humbling Himself to the death of the cross.
He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself (Philippians 2:6–7). We have to empty ourselves, too. We must have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.
And then when we do, we are put in a position where he who touches us touches the Father, and the minute we voice a resistance to Satan, that resistance is carried forth to Satan with such an impact that he flees from us.
It is difficult for the flesh to be submissive, but it is a necessity, it is a commandment.
The goal of the natural man is security and independence from all the current destructive forces that are in the world. This voice’s a great deal about human beings right there, their goal is security.
They even turn to the government and say, “Give us security; tell us that if we’re out of a job, you’ll give us the money that we need; tell us that when we get old, you’ll take care of us; that if we get sick, you’ll send us to the hospital, and pay our bill. Give us security, that none of the forces that are so destructive in the world will reach us and destroy us.”
The goal of man is that security and independence, but the goal of God for us is quite another thing. His goal is that we have submission to Him and faith in His provision, in His promise, and in His Lordship over us. We want that goal!
We want to be submissive to Him and have faith in Him: faith in His provision, faith in His promises, and faith in His Lordship over us. We want to abandon the human drive for security and independence from all the forces that could destroy us. We want to be sheltered in Him.
We ought to read again and again the Ninety-first Psalm because it show us a place of such security. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at the right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Psalm 91:1–8.
And the Lord gives His promise in return: Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him… Psalm 91:14.
There is a place of submission where you decide with all of your heart, “I’m going to walk with the Lord.”
James 4:1What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motive (or amiss), so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
You adulteress, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Do you think this passage means nothing? It says, “The Spirit that lives in us wants us to be his own.”6 But God shows us even more kindness (grace). Scripture says,
“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
The Lord is talking about spiritual adultery. The friendship and the love of the world are enmity against God. The Spirit that He has put within us jealously seeks us for God. Paul repeats this when he says, “I have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ. I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, that you be found loving Him and only Him” (II Corinthians 11:2).
James says, Submit therefore to God. That submission involves rejecting spiritual adultery, rejecting wrong motivations.
He deals first with the thing that has to be out of the way: the source of quarrels and conflicts. The source is the contrary desires of the flesh which are allowed to be the motivation, rather than wholly belonging to the Lord.
Submission has to mean unification, coming into oneness. You cannot want in many directions; you cannot drink from many fountains; you cannot receive or give love in many conflicting directions to contrary people.
First of all, submission means unification of the individual. You love Him only, and Him only shall you serve (Matthew 4:10). You do not bow down to anything else or let anything else be the driving motivation of your life.
James says, “Don’t you know what the Spirit is doing within you? The Spirit desires over you jealously, to present you to the Lord.” There can be only one love, only one deep compassion. You have to say to the Lord, “Lord, I’ve said good-bye to the world. I’ll not love the world; I’ll not find within me the ambitious drive that has to find satisfaction in many things in the earth, but I’ll find within me a heart that loves the Lord alone.”
When a woman comes to be married to a man, and a man comes to take a woman for his wife, we say those same things.
“Will you forsake all others?”
“Well, I’ve something going for me here that I’m kind of reluctant to give up.”
It’s too late, “It’s too late for that. You shouldn’t be coming to this altar to be married to someone unless you’re willing to forsake all others.” That’s the way it is with the Lord.
The Lord is saying, “Do you love Me only?” He works in us to bring every thought and imagination of our heart into captivity and make it subject to Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 10:5), until we love Him only. This is what submission really means.
Submission has that quality in it which is able to resist. The Scripture says, “Submit to God”—in other words, completely and in everything: you are not to be a spiritual adulteress, friendly with the world that is hostile to God, wanting and desiring after things that are opposed to and against the things of God.
Then it says, “Resist the devil.” On a basis of the passions that war in you, we could use the word “reject” as well as “resist,” because that is what you are doing.
When you say, “I’m not going to love the world or the things in the world; I’m not going to be torn by conflicting emotions, desires, or motivations,” then it is more than a resistance; it is a complete rejection.
Let’s say you have been gaining weight for some time, until finally the doctor tells you, “You have to do something about this. From now on, you can’t eat dessert.”
Now we don’t want to go overboard, but it is a good thing to reject dessert. You may remember what is called a devil’s food cake. Our favorite, it was just right, not too moist, and not too dry. You could eat that cake all day long. But you will notice the negative effects; you will then begin to watch your weight. (And it was easy to watch because it was right out there in plain sight!) So then came the time to resist. “No, thank you,” we would say, as we watched it go by. But you have not won your battle until you enter into the strength of the word “reject,” until in the depth of your subconscious you say, “I hate that devil’s food!”
There is a resistance of Satan that still may harbor a trace of sympathy within the heart for the things you are resisting. “You have resisted lust; but you still take a look. Something in you is still responding, still sympathetic. You shake yourself and say, “No, I mustn’t think along that line. I resist that.”
But there come a time when you have rejected it so totally that you hate the inordinate lust of the flesh as much as God hates it. You enter into more than a resistance of evil; you enter into a total rejection of evil. You reject it with all that is within you being.
You come to hate the iniquity, to abhor it so completely that you lay hold of the Lord. You submit yourself unto the Lord, you resist the devil, and he flees from you, because you are so yielded to the Lord that you are thinking God’s thoughts concerning iniquity; you are judging God’s judgment upon that very thing.
What you voice is exactly what God feels and what He thinks. You are not doing a hopeless little thing, as if you were isolated from God, but you have submitted with a submission that is so total and powerful that it reaches out in absolute rejection of everything that stands against the will of the Lord. And that is why the Scripture says, “Submit therefore to God; resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify you hearts, you double-minded (two souled in the Greek). James 4:8.
The double-minded-many of us have had to fight that. Remember the earlier statement that submission is related to the unification of the individual.
Unification means that we are not double-minded; we are not looking in two different directions; we are not adulteresses and yet at the same time the Bride of Christ; we reject the thing in our heart which competes in any way with our total love for the Lord.
We cannot be double-minded, but our focus must be wholly set upon the Lord. There must be the unification of our spirit, our mind and soul.
Psalm 18:33 says, “Lord, thou hast made my feet as hinds’ feet, and I have possessed the high places.”
The hind is an animal of the deer family whose back feet land in the tracks of its front feet as it runs. This is what makes it so sure-footed; it does not have to watch different areas because its front feet and its back feet track in the same place. Lord, make our feet like hinds’ feet. Let us not be double-minded, leaving two paths in our wake, but let our conscious and our subconscious, our spirit and our soul track together. This is the submission that the Lord is calling for.
We talk about the Lordship of Jesus Christ over us, but it is not the kind of Lordship where He is the parole officer and you check in with Him every time you come to church.
The Lord is not your parole officer. He is your deliverer, and you are going to come into total submission to Him—not just as much as is required to get by, but with a total rejection of everything else.
In our submission to the Lord we are unified in our desire to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, with all of our strength (Matthew 22:37). We lay the conflicting things at His feet. We seek first the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).
… Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable (some of you wouldn’t have much trouble doing that) and mourn and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. James 4:8–10. This is one of the greatest passages on submission in the New Testament, because it deals with many aspects of submission, especially the aspect of humbling ourselves.
What does humility have to do with submitting to the Lord?
Pride establishes goals that God does not have for you. Pride gives a motivation for the accomplishment of things that may be good, but God is against that motivation.
Pride and selfishness are Siamese twins that have never been separated. Wherever pride rules, self rules; wherever self rules, pride rules in some form or other.
The Scripture says “humble yourselves” because until we get rid of the old pride, we are going to have an arrogance that usurps God’s place and stands as a rival of it.
In order for us to unify ourselves, there can only be one God driving us and only one motivation motivating us.
We cannot be driven by pride, greed, or selfishness on the one hand and by a true love of God and a desire to do His will on the other.
If the conflicting emotions are there, then you lust and you do not have; you pray and you do not receive; you ask and you do not obtain, because you are asking amiss. You have dual motivations, so faith never really takes hold.
Submitting yourself to the Lord means the unification of your being until there is only one motivation: your love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Anything that we do, we do out of our love for the Lord (I Corinthians 16:14).
This message gives us a lot to think about. You have seen several reasons why some of your prayers have failed, but in this word you have a good key on how prayer can succeed. This is a revelation of true submission. When we walk in it, this kind of teaching will bring the Kingdom.