Is God Resisting You?

Mike Hosey, Elder

C. S. Lewis once wrote that “A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.”

Lewis didn’t mean that listening to Bach or reading Plato was bad. He meant that listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride was bad. After all, Bach was a great musician, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying the great music he produced.  Plato was a great thinker, and mankind has benefited from his thinking. There is nothing wrong with studying his works. What Lewis meant was that placing one’s self over others out of a state of self-righteousness was bad. The poor, uneducated man who goes to sleep in a state of humility is of higher rank than the one who thinks he’s better than the poor man because he’s educated in Plato’s philosophies. Nobody has time for that kind of pride. In fact, the bible is pretty explicit about the evilness of that kind of pride. Proverbs 16:18 tells us that pride comes before destruction. It is pride that got Satan kicked out of Heaven (Isaiah 14:12-15). And it is pride that will make you an enemy of God.

James 4:6 NKJV says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. God resists the proud! That word “resists” is a military term in its original Greek. It means to move in battle against. So here it means that God will come against you with force because of your pride! Proverbs 8:12-13 clearly says that true wisdom hates pride. And Paul twice lists pride in a string of terrible sins (Romans 1:30 and 2 Timothy 3:2).

So what makes someone who is humble higher than someone who is not? Well, James 4:6 NKJV hints at it strongly.  God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The proud person is unable to see the state that he is in. He thinks he is bigger than he is, and decides in his heart that he doesn’t need God (Psalms 10:4). He continues to behave in ways that displease God and His natural order. God is going to resist that!  But a humble person, who realizes his sin and shortcomings welcomes God.  Therefore God extends to him a favor that he has not merited.  We call such unmerited favor, grace.  It is the person who has been humbled that becomes saved, and not the person who is proud.