Resist the Devil, He Will Flee

“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

This verse contains both a command and a promise.

The command is to resist the devil. We are God’s children, and he doesn’t want Satan sitting in our lives causing unnecessary trouble. Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Satan wants to steal our spiritual treasure of peace, love, joy, and power; kill our relationships with the children of God; and ultimately destroy God’s work in our lives. 

God commands us to kick the devil out. We should not sit back and let the devil ravage our lives. Rise up and resist.

Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). Lions eat people gradually, limb by limb. So the devil attacks our lives, piece by piece. He attacks our desire to read the Bible and pray. He gets us to skip church, avoid fellowship, and hide from servants of God. He gets us mired in sin. All of these are symptoms of Satan attacking us as he nips good things out of our lives with his sharp teeth.

God doesn’t want us to be devoured by Satan. He wants us to trample on Satan’s head through his Son Jesus Christ.

God commands us to resist the devil “steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8).

We resist the devil through faith in God’s word. God’s word is steadfast. God’s word is eternal and will outlast heaven and earth. God is undaunted by problems or difficulties, and he never changes. He is eternally strong. If we want to be strong and steadfast, we need to be connected to God through faith in his word.

Satan attacks our faith by telling us a bunch of lies that directly contradict the Bible. If he can get us to doubt God’s word, he can throw us onto the waves of doubt and potentially sink us (James 1:6-8). 

Satan lies to us about ourselves. He tells us we are idiots who can do nothing right and deserve nothing good. But the Bible says we are the children of God and are valuable because Jesus died for us.

Satan is full of tricks. He’ll tell us we’re amazing and can do everything by ourselves, puffing us up with pride. Then when we fall down in failure, he mocks us and tells us how stupid we are.

Satan tells us lies about God. He says God has left us, forsaken us, doesn’t love us, doesn’t care about us, and won’t help us. But the Bible smashes these lies. God will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:6). Nothing can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:38). God is an ever-present help in time of trouble (Psalm 46:1). 

God’s word tells us about reality. Satan’s lies are all an illusion. We need to get out from illusory thinking and see things as they really are. We need to renew our minds with God’s word.

The devil attacks through self pity. “I don’t deserve these problems. Why do things always go wrong for me? I deserve better than this.” We don’t need to pity ourselves. We need to trust in God and praise him for how awesome he is.

We are not victims. A victim according to the dictionary is “a living creature killed and offered as a sacrifice to a deity or supernatural power, or in performance of a religious rite.”

We are not victims of Satan and fallen angels. We are kings and priests of the Most High God (Rev. 1:6).

A victim-mindset is based on three main lies:

1. I’m just a product of circumstances. Therefore everything in my life is out of my control.
2. Blame: My problems are the fault of other people.
3. Avoid responsibility: There’s no point in trying to do anything because I can do nothing and nothing will work.

The Israelites had a victim-mindset when they left Egypt. “We are just slaves. We cannot defeat those strong giants. God hates us. He wants to kill us. We’re all going to die. WAAAAAH! We miss Egypt and Pharaoh!”

They could not enter into the Promised Land because of their unbelief. 

Joshua and Caleb were different. They said that the giants were “bread for us” (Numbers 14:9). Joshua and Caleb wanted to eat giants for breakfast. This means they wanted to slay these giants through the indomitable power of God. 

God wants us to have the same conquering spirit that was in Joshua and Caleb. He doesn’t want us to be afraid. We have “not received a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Resist the devil. Take the iron bar of God’s word and smash the devil between the eyes.

If a lion is attacking us, we need to resist. We will do so through the power of Jesus Christ. The mighty Son of God has already crushed the head of Satan. He stripped the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them (Colossians 2:15).

All power in heaven and earth has been given to Jesus. He has risen up to heaven and poured out his Holy Spirit upon us. The same power that raised up Christ from the dead is inside us. Jesus has given us power to trample on serpents and scorpions (Luke 10:19). We have power through his name to expel demons. 

We wrestle against fallen angels. We are not wrestling to lose, but to win. We are not called to sit back and be their prey, but they are our prey!

The promise is that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. Satan is going to run away when God’s people stand against him. When there is a fight and someone runs away, it’s because they’ve picked a fight with someone stronger than them, and they know they’re defeated. The devil is no match for the eternal Son of God. He is inside of us, and through him we can win.

Jesus stands up and fights for his people. He already conquered the devil, and through him we are more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). We can overcome the devil through the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). 

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. This is the promise of God.