Faith Calls to Understanding

By Loran Biggs

     "What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war" (Verses l-2a).

     This scripture helps us to understand the cause of our conflicts. There is a law of the mind that is as dependable and exciting as any law in physics or chemistry. Simple stated it is: "Whatever you give your attention to grows." Some intensive craving, some evil passion begins to stir within me. I start to dwell upon it. I continue to give more and more attention to it and the result is that fierce fighting commences. My soul becomes a battlefield. The conflict rages. I know the evil desire is wrong. The voice of my Father speaks to my conscience saying, "No, you must not take; No, you cannot have!" But I refuse to give attention to His voice. I kill the Holy Impulse which would keep me from the unholy pleasure. Still His hand is upon me. I feel the

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restraint of His Presence within but still the passion drives and torments me. The war rages on.

     "You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passion" (Verses 2b-3).

     In these verses James helps us to understand why our prayers are not answered. If only I would come to God, lay the whole thing out before Him, confess that evil passion is consuming me, admit that the desire is evil, but that I am unable to give attention to anything else. If I would only cry to Him for help, asking Him to restore to me the joy of my salvation, to help me find delight in the things in which He delights, to cause me to listen to His voice within, to give me holy desires! If only I would cry out, "Lord, save me or I perish." But I refuse to ask for any of these. Oh, I ask, but my asking is only that I may obtain that which can be spent to satisfy my selfish passions. James wants us to understand that God will not answer that kind of prayer. God will not become a party to granting those requests which will help to destroy one of His children.

     "Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes lo be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (Verse 4).

     From this verse we understand what friendship with the world means. The world, as James uses the term here, stands for that which is contrary to God. It is the mind that came to be Adam's when he refused to live in dependence upon God and became his own god. To be worldly-minded is to have a mind to do as you please. It is to have your own way, to follow your own plan and your own will for your life. It means saying "Yes" to self and "No" to God. One cannot say "Yes" to self and God at the same time. The self-life (Paul calls it "the flesh" is contrary to God. It does not love Him or obey Him. That is why Jesus tells us we can never be his disciples until we have denied self, that is, said "No" to self and put self on the cross. These unholy desires that bring on the raging conflict are due to a worldly mind. James wants us to understand that friendship with the world means we are an enemy of God. God has said, "My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts." So when we persist in having our own way we will always find God opposing us, insisting that our way is wrong and must be forsaken, just as Little "smart-alec-self" makes himself an enemy of God.

     "Or do you suppose it is in vain that the Scripture says, 'He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us?" (Verse 5).

     Let us try to understand God's yearning jealously. Those who have come to love the world cannot believe they have come to hate God. But once you understand that world stands for "rule of self" and that God stands for "Rule of Another" you can readily understand that self would hate any Other who would dethrone him. But the human spirit God put within man (this verse does not refer to the Holy Spirit) was to be the seat of man's God-consciousness. It is in the spirit of man that God is to make his home. This is to be his holy temple. The soul of man is the seat of man's self-consciousness. In the soul are the emotions and the will of man. God rules within the spirit of man. Self rules within the soul of man. When God made man he made him a triune being--spirit, soul and body. He put the spirit over the soul in the place of headship.

     When man fell the soul usurped the spirit's place and became the head. When one is regenerated the spirit, the seat of our God-consciousness, again takes its rightful place as head, so that we become spiritual, or "spirit-ruled" instead of soulical, or "soul-ruled." The Christians to whom James wrote had placed the soul over the spirit and as a result became soul-centered instead of God-centered. Their own selfish desire was ruling them. So James says that God yearns, with the jealousy that true love always has for the

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healing of a loved one, for the spirit he put within us. For when man's spirit is filled with the life of God and is being ruled by God, and in turn, man's soul, or self, is in proper relationship with the spirit, all will be well, and our wellbeing is what God yearns for jealously.

     "But he gives more grace; therefore it says, 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble'" (Verse 6).

     Next we come to understand why God opposes the proud. The humble man will come to God and ask for deliverance from his evil longings. God, in His grace, will give the soul that has been humbled, the strength to stand against the burning desires and bring the soul back to the place of subjection, guaranteeing victory. But the man who is too proud to acknowledge his sin, or his need for God's grace to give him victory, will find God opposing him. God must set himself against the proud in order to humble him, for if God were just to leave him alone the man would perish, and God has given his life to see to it that this doesn't happen.

     "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you" (Verse 7).

     From this verse we understand how to overcome the devil. Jesus wants us to understand that it is the devil who is back of our conflicts. It was he who said to us, "Would a loving God deny you this sweet pleasure? To taste of this delicious fruit will make you wise and equip you to live in this progressive society." While our shield of faith was lowered and we began to doubt God's right to deny us the satisfaction of fulfilling our burning desires he filled our minds full of his flaming arrows. James says there is but one thing for us to do. In humble submission we must confess the whole thing to God and place ourselves under his government so he may be the potter and we the submissive clay, willing to receive whatever chastening he now deems best in order to purge us of our sinful folly. When we do this God enables us to stand against the devil. Satan has succeeded in making us doubt God's goodness. He has made us feel independent and rebellious. Now he finds us submissive to God. As long as we are proud he could have true fellowship with us. The moment we become humble and submissive to God we are so utterly unlike Satan, so contrary to all he is and stands for, that he no longer cares for our company. The way to resist the devil and cause him to flee from you is to simply submit to God.

     "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you" (Verses 8-10).

     These verses help us to understand how to draw near to God. Instead of remembering your sinful pleasures with joy and laughter, let there be genuine sorrow and grief over them. If the remembrance of them thrills you with joy, then look to your motives. Were the evil pleasures forsaken because the indulgence of them was wrecking your health? costing you your job? or causing your wife to leave you? All of this would result in King Self being disgraced and his great pride would never allow that to happen. So it is quite certain it the cleaning of your dirty hands, the turning from the sinful pleasures, is not accompanied with a feeling of wretchedness with genuine sorrow and penitent tears, you will remain a man of two minds, with one mind desiring to draw near to God and be through with indulgence of your sinful appetite, but with the other mind still longing for the leeks and garlic of Egypt. James has already warned that the man with two minds will receive nothing from the Lord. Jesus teaches us that unless the eye be single our whole being is filled with darkness. The only way to draw near to God is to draw away from sin. You cannot continue to "make provision tor the flesh" and enjoy the nearness of God.

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     "Do not speak evil against one another, brethren. He that speaks evil 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. There is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that judge your neighbor?" (Verses 11, 12).

     In these verses James helps us to understand why judging others is so sinful. There is one law that regulates our relationship with our fellowman. From it all others are suspended. It is "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." We would never want another person to speak words of harsh condemnation, of evil judgment, against us. If we wilfully and deliberately break this law we set ourselves above the law. We are saying that our own wilful act of judging our brother is more valid than the "royal law' that forbids us to judge him. Thus we become a judge of that law. But James would have us to understand that it is our duty to obey the law, not to judge it. To be able to pass judgment on another we would have to have all of the facts of that man's life. We would have to know his motives and we would have to know why he came to have the motives that he does.

     We would have to know what there is in his mental and emotional makeup that makes him respond or fail to respond to every stimulus. We would have to know all that has gone into making him who he is. Clearly, the one who could possess such knowledge of another would have to be God. We parents do not even know this about our own children. We will understand why judging others is so sinful when we realize that what we are really doing is saying to God, "God, move off your throne. Let me sit upon it and be the judge. I want to be God. I want to decide whether this person will be saved or whether he will be destroyed." When seen in this light, judging another really means that I am saying, "I am his God!"

     Editor's Note: The above is a speech delivered at the Midwinter Preaching Rally at San Jose, California. Loran Biggs labors with Normandie Avenue Christian Church, 14521 South Normandie Avenue, Gardena, California 90247, and can be addressed at that place.