4:6 God has set a high standard of wholehearted love and devotion for His people, but He gives grace that is greater than His rigorous demand. Proverbs 3:34, quoted here, reminds us that God opposes the proud, those who pursue their own pleasures. However, He gives grace to the humble, those who put God's desires first in their lives. He gives grace to withstand the onslaughts of the flesh within and the world without.
4:7 In view of God's certain supply of this grace we need to adopt a definite stance toward the people involved in this conflict. Ten aorist imperatives in verses 7-10 demand decisive action. They sound like military commands and reflect how seriously James viewed double-mindedness.167
Toward God we must submit in humility. This means making what is of importance to Him important to us, ordering our priorities in harmony with God's priorities. It means not living to fulfill our personal ambitions but using our lives to fulfill His desires. Submission is not identical to obedience. Submission involves the surrender of the will that results in obedience.
We must resist Satan strongly. When we do, he will flee from us. What is Satan trying to get us to do? The record of his temptations, including those of Eve and Jesus Christ, indicates that he wants to make us doubt, deny, and disobey God's Word (cf. Gen. 3; Matt. 4). We resist him by refusing to do these things.
4:8 While resisting Satan on the one hand we must also draw near to God on the other. When we do, He will draw near to us. To draw near to God we must go through a purification process reminiscent of what the priests in Israel underwent. We must wash our hands, symbolic of our outward actions, as well as our divided hearts, symbolic of our inner attitudes and motives. We clean them by confession and repentance. We must remove sin from our hands and duplicity from our hearts. Single-mindedness involves singleness of purpose, namely, living for the glory of God rather than for both God's glory and our own selfish desires (cf. 1:8).
4:9 James was calling readers who had compromised with the world by following hedonism to get right with God. There is laughter and joy in the pursuit of personal desires, but we must abandon these in the process of repenting. James was not saying Christians must be constantly miserable, mourning, weeping, and gloomy. These are only the evidences of repentance from a formerly sinful attitude and lifestyle (cf. Matt. 5:3-4).
4:10 In concluding this section of direct advice (vv. 7-10), James sounded the same note with which he began: submission to God in humility, putting Him before self. This always results in God lifting one up both immediately and eventually. Since this is the condition in which God can use us, He will proceed to do so for His glory (cf. Matt. 23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14; 1 Pet. 5:6).
"Ralph Bell, an associate evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is a godly man who tells of learning grace-reliance in a deeply personal way. Bell is a Canadian-born black man who lives and ministers in the United States. As a young man, he struggled with experiences of racial insults and discrimination. Being so treated by fellow Christians, who were disobeying James's instructions about impartiality, was especially hurtful. Bell shared his struggles with his mother, who counseled him to keep his eyes on Jesus, because Jesus would never disappoint him. As he sought to apply that advice, he began to find the grace to see others' racism as their problem. He further sought grace from God to purify his own life of hatred toward those who mistreated him. In James's terms, Ralph Bell humbled himself before the Lord, and he found himself being lifted up by the grace of God to be able to love his enemies. How does one love hostile and hurtful people? The answer is supernaturally, by relying on the grace that God gives to the humble."168
