What Does Resist the Devil Mean Practically?

Question 08088

When James tells us to resist the devil, he is not handing us a slogan to shout at the ceiling. He is describing a settled posture that has a great deal more to do with what we submit to than with what we say out loud. Yet in a good many churches the instruction has been turned into a technique, and technique is exactly what it is not.

So what does it actually look like on a wet Tuesday when the temptation is familiar, the mood is low and nothing feels particularly spiritual? That is the question worth answering, because that is where most of us live.

The Command in Its Setting

The famous line comes in James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Two commands, in that order, and the order is not decoration. Submission comes first. You cannot resist the devil from a position of rebellion against God, because in that state you are already standing where the enemy wants you.

Look at the surrounding verses and the picture sharpens further. James has been writing about quarrels, cravings, worldliness and pride. Then comes the promise that God gives grace to the humble, followed immediately by the double command. Then he says draw near to God, cleanse your hands, purify your hearts. Resisting sits inside a paragraph about humility and repentance, not inside a paragraph about spiritual combat techniques.

The Greek verb is anthistemi, to set yourself against, to take a stand opposite something. It is a word of position rather than aggression. You plant your feet. You do not advance and you do not retreat.

Peter Says the Same Thing Differently

Peter gives us the parallel: “Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.”

Three things are attached to the command there. Be sober minded, which means clear headed rather than sombre. Be watchful, which means awake to what is happening. And be firm in the faith, which is where the strength comes from. Peter’s way to resist the devil is alertness plus doctrine, and then he adds the unexpected comfort that other Christians all over the world are going through the same thing.

Notice again what is absent. No formula. No commanding. No repeated phrase to be spoken with rising volume. Peter’s readers were suffering under real pressure, and what he gave them was a clear head, a firm grip on the truth, and the knowledge that they were not alone.

Paul Tells Us to Stand

Ephesians 6 rounds out the picture, and the repeated verb there is stand. Take up the whole armour of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Truth, righteousness, readiness, faith, salvation, the word of God and prayer. It is a defensive kit with one offensive item in it, and that item is Scripture.

I would point out something that often gets missed. The prayer in Ephesians 6:18 is directed to God, not at the powers. Paul asks for prayer that he might open his mouth boldly to preach. Even in the great warfare passage, the traffic goes upward. Nobody in the New Testament is instructed to address demonic beings directly as a method of resistance.

That matters because a great deal of contemporary practice does exactly that. I have written more about the boundaries in my answer on whether we can rebuke Satan or demons.

How to Resist the Devil in Practice

Start with submission, because James did. Most of the ground the enemy holds in a believer’s life was handed over voluntarily, one small compromise at a time. To resist the devil begins with the unglamorous work of naming what you have surrendered and taking it back through confession and obedience.

Then answer lies with truth. Jesus in the wilderness did not debate, did not negotiate, and did not perform. He quoted Deuteronomy three times and that was the end of it. If your knowledge of Scripture is thin, your resistance will be thin, because you will have nothing to say when the lie arrives dressed as common sense. This is one of the plainest arguments for daily reading that I know.

Then attend to the practical doors. Fatigue, isolation, secrecy and self pity are the four conditions under which almost every fall I have ever counselled took place. To resist the devil sometimes looks remarkably like going to bed at a sensible hour, telling a trusted friend the truth, and getting yourself into company on the evening you most want to be alone. Grace runs through ordinary means far more often than through dramatic ones.

What the Promise Does and Does Not Guarantee

“He will flee from you” is a real promise, and I have seen it honoured many times. But notice it does not say he will never come back. Luke records that after the wilderness temptation the devil departed from Jesus until an opportune time. Fleeing is a retreat, not a surrender. He withdrew from Jesus and he came back, and if that was true of the Lord it will be true of us. The believer who assumes that one good act of resistance settles the matter for life is setting himself up for a nasty surprise somewhere around the next quiet season.

So the Christian life is not a single decisive engagement after which the enemy gives up. It is a long habit of standing. That is why Paul keeps repeating the word. Some seasons are quiet and some are not, and the sober minded believer expects both.

Nor does the promise mean that every difficulty is demonic. Most of what we struggle with is the flesh, plain and ordinary, and treating a bad habit as a spiritual assault can be a way of avoiding responsibility. If you want the distinction drawn out, see the difference between temptation from Satan and from the flesh.

Two Errors to Avoid

The first error treats resistance as pure willpower. On this view the Christian life is gritted teeth and a strong jaw, and failure is simply a lack of effort. I have watched sincere believers wear themselves out on this road, and it usually ends in either despair or self righteousness, depending on temperament. Paul’s armour is something we put on, which means it comes from outside us.

The second error treats resistance as pure ritual. Say the right words, claim the right verse, name the right spirit, and the problem lifts. This is more common than it used to be, and it has the appearance of spiritual seriousness while quietly relocating our confidence from God to a procedure. If a formula worked, the New Testament would have given us one. It never does.

Between those two ditches runs the road James describes. Humble yourself. Draw near to God. Then plant your feet and stay there. To resist the devil in the biblical sense is neither straining nor chanting; it is standing in a place that has already been secured for you and refusing to move off it.

Where the Confidence Comes From

Everything I have said would be exhausting if it rested on your strength. It does not. The reason a believer can resist the devil at all is that he stands on ground already won. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. The rulers and authorities were disarmed at the cross and put to open shame.

You are not fighting for victory. You are standing in it. The difference between those two sentences is the difference between a soldier defending a position he has been given and a soldier trying to capture one he does not yet hold. That single shift changes the emotional temperature of the whole business, and it is why the New Testament can speak of the enemy with such calm.

So, now what?

Pick the one door you know is open. You almost certainly thought of it while reading. Shut it this week, tell someone, and ask God for grace to keep it shut. That is what it means to resist the devil, and it will do you more good than any amount of shouting at the darkness.

And do not be discouraged if the same battle comes round again. Standing is not glamorous and it rarely feels heroic. But the promise attached to it is God’s own, and the enemy has to go when a submitted believer plants their feet on the truth.

What is the first thing you would have to submit to God before resistance would even be possible? Whatever came to mind just then is probably the real battle, and it is very likely not the one you have been praying about.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7 (ESV)