humility & love

James 4:7 - So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee for you.

This verse hit me like a kick in the butt the other day. I discovered a couple things with this kick in the butt. First I’m actually learning something in college ...shocker, I know. Second that some of the simplest questions have the most difficult answers.

My question," what does submission really mean?"
" Well come on Shannon, that’s easy, it means to submit to someone, duh."
"But why?"
"...You ask to many questions".

So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with:

I did a word study a couple weeks ago on the word submit, and of the 41 times that a variation of that word shows up in the new testament more that 22 of these refer to being humble or obedient to your God.

Submission is an interesting idea. There’s a fine line between a lot of things in life, and humble submission and legalism is one of them. Think about it for a second. I am angry. In fact I want to swear my face off. What do I do? Option #1, I don’t swear because I know I"m not supposed to . So we’‘re in a small predicament. My mind is now saying, "if I don’t, I’m being fake, I’m not swearing because I know I shouldn’t, not because I don’t want to." Option # 2, I do swear my head off. By doing this I am sinning, and quite possibly making a total fool of myself while doing so, but I’m being "real". So where’s the middle? The happy medium? Humility is the happy medium. James 4:7 states this; " So humble yourselves before God." Humility is introduced. Submission is a form of humility. Un-forced humility is an expression of love. That is the answer to the balance. When you humble yourself before God...as in realize that you are deciding not to sin (or in this case, swear) because you love God, not because you feel you have to, it is considered submission, and it is also resistance to sin, which brings us to the end of James 4:7 "resist the devil (sin) and he will flee from you".