Satan

Satan: Infiltrator of Human Wisdom

Satan is our foe in way we likely never contemplated: he is the infiltrator of human wisdom. 

James, the half brother of Jesus is very concerned about wisdom, telling us to ask for wisdom if we lack it. 

But he says that we must ask in faith—that is, with a belief in the Word of God (see James 1:5–6). 

We must believe in the truthfulness of the Word and in the experienced application of it. We must ask in faith, without doubting, “for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (v. 6). 

We must be not only hearers of the Word, who forget what manner of men we are after we leave the mirror, but also doers of the Word (see vv. 22–24). 

We must be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger (see v. 19). We must realize that God gave us birth through his Word—through the Word of truth.

“When James speaks of wisdom, he says that human words that are untaught by the Word of God (i.e., the tongue) are set on fire by hell (see James 3:5–6). The tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison (see v. 8) in that it so often mimics the premise that Satan first used: “We shall not surely die. Salvation is not that big a deal. God’s wrath is not that big a deal. Sin is not that big a deal. Sin is something God can easily forgive.”

This is the kind of wisdom that is from below: the tongue that is uninformed by the Word of God; human wisdom and human words that are untaught by the Spirit. James says that this kind of wisdom is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.