Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

to see how God as the owner of man’s spirit, can insist that the friendship of
the world is not merely an anomaly, but extremely serious business. After all,
he created the spirit. But what is this spirit doing? In its subservience to indwelling
sin it hankers after the world! So the proposed translation would
make James 4:5 a fitting capstone of James 4:1-5. It would summarize James
4:1-4 and once more drive home the pervasive presence and power of indwelling
sin. At the same time it would function as the backdrop for James
4:6, “But (in contrast) ... God gives more grace.” That is, indwelling sin is not
so strong that its influence cannot be overcome by the awesome overtures of
divine grace. God’s abundant supply, already introduced in James 1:5 and
1:17, appears more than able to hold its own in countering the prevailing evil.
This is, as we saw, also Paul’s conclusion when he pits the in-indwelling
Spirit against indwelling sin (Rom. 8:9). When the Christian faces indwelling
sin, it is no contest (Rom. 7:18). But when indwelling sin faces the Christian
plus the Spirit, it is once again “no contest” (Rom. 8:2). No wonder that Paul
concludes that no one without the Spirit could possibly be a Christian. He
would perennially be chained by the enemy within, succumb to its poison,
and drown in its sewage.
At any rate, so much for the view that the translation favored in this
Commentary does not fit into the “trajectory of James’ argument” (Nystrom,
227-228). It could not be a more perfect fit! But what about the author’s reference
to Scripture in James 4:5a and the form of the translation of James
4:5b? It seems best to take the reference to Scripture as a rhetorical question
at first, to be specified later in James 4:6b, after James 4:5b-6a lays the foundation
for it. The translation, then, goes as follows. “Or do you suppose that
Scripture speaks in vain? The spirit that he made to dwell in us, lusts to envy
(or: craves enviously)! But He gives more grace (or: But even greater is the
grace he gives)! Therefore it says: ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to
the humble.’” This allows for a pointed paraphrase of James’ words. “Does
the Scripture mean nothing? For one thing, the human spirit that God created
in us craves enviously. For another, he gives more than enough grace to offset
this. Therefore Scripture says: God opposes the arrogant, and gives grace to
the humble” (See also Brosend, 111). Arrogance, as I explain further below,
is the last thing the Christian needs with indwelling sin lurking to strike. It is
the sure fire recipe for spiritual “suicide.” By the same token, humility, as the
prescribed avenue to the destination of divine grace, is the only way to escape
its sinister onslaught (Jam. 4:7-10, esp. 10).
Incidentally, if James 4:5b-6a are also part of the rhetorical question, it
would require this paraphrase, “Does Scripture mean nothing in the light of
the two facts that the human spirit that God created is racked with envy, and
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