Last 5 Days
Overcoming Pride by Humility
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
James asked about the causes of quarrels and fights and gave three reasons for them in verses 1 to 3. 1) Our selfish desires. “Desire” is having a strong passion for something because of selfish reasons. 2) Our lack of prayer. He said, “You do not have because you do not ask.” It is not wrong to save or work hard for something we desire, but how you get them is important. That is, “Is it pleasing to God?” 3) Our wrong motives in asking. James said, “You ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
He then gave three reasons for God’s hatred of quarrels and fights in verses 5 to 6. 1) It is a worldly behavior. So, by default, we are in enmity with God as it reflects our love for the world instead of God. The Bible uses the “world” to represent an evil system in contrast with the godly system of our God. 2) God is a jealous God. This implies our relationship with God is exclusive just like the marriage relationship. Thus, if someone flirts with your wife, you will be upset and even angry. If you don’t, then something is wrong with you or your marriage. 3) Pride is a sin. Behind quarrels and fights is the sin of pride. Pride arises from the desires of our hearts. We always want to be better than others.
Thus, when we quarrel or fight with others, we need to ask ourselves whether it is because we think we are better than the person. If it is, we need to repent from the sin of pride which James tells us to do so in verses 9 and 10. As “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” James gave at least four practical things for overcoming pride. 1) Submit and draw near to God. 2) Resist the devil so he will flee from us. 3) Repent from it as in “mourn and weep.” 4) Don’t speak evil against each other. As God promised to exalt the humble.
James warned us against speaking evil and judging others because it is speaking and judging against the law. We are not “doers of the law” when we judge the law. In fact, we have taken over the place of the lawgiver, God Himself who is the judge. He is the only one who can save or destroy man but as a mere man, we cannot even save himself. Thus, we need to humble ourselves and let God sits in His rightful place.
Prayer: Father, I pray that I will not behave like the world but instead behave like the Lord Jesus Christ. I will humble myself like Him instead of prideful and discontented like Lucifer who fell because of his pride. Paul also instructed us that contentment is a form of godliness thus I will learn to be contented in my lacking or abundance that I may please the God who hates pride.