8093	Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must	on: December 10, 2006, 01:00:49 PM
The passage in James 1 is not directed to make the will supreme in the struggle with sin. The will is not the ruling factor in temptation. The will is just one of the faculties of the soul. The will does not rule the soul as if the will determines on its own to either give into temptation or to avoid temptation but divine knowledge comes into the  mind first and then understanding and the cause of the will desiring one thing over another is the condition of the soul and the Holy Spirits work on the mind. The struggle with temptation is much more than just looking it as if the will was the chief reason for falling into sin. The will does not choose on its own. THe will does not act on its own. The will is not a determiner in the sense of it being in between giving into temptation or avoiding temptation. Or giving into sin or obeying. To will is not to be indifferent or be without an inclination one way or the other. To will is to be inclined to desire one thing over another. What James is saying is that the mind is the faculty gate in which the temptation enters. The mind is not just a place that accumulates facts. As if believing the word of God in just a purely rational sense, and acknowledging the facts of the gospel is salvation. In other words you just take the word by faith in a blind sense and a purely intellectual sense without any show of emotion and then you are saved. No these areas of the mind and understanding the will and emotion work by a per-caused condition that precludes choice. So that the mind can be made alive, because the mind is not just receiving facts but it has a pleasure in divine things. So the mind is dead to spiritual things in its post fall condition. Which means that a person has no pleasure in divine things. There is no divine light to shine the glory of God into the understanding so that the mind is in a darkened state. The mind must have a new principle to enliven it. Unless the mind is made alive then the persons desires or pleasures will only revolve around the physical realm and the self. Although people choose what they desire most for themselves and this is not necessarily an evil paradigm in understanding choice, yet to choose desires that are from a sinful dead soul spiritually are  choices that are not spiritually good and so they are not good because they are void of desires that please God. James is really pointing in the struggle with temptation to the condition of the soul and not the supremacy of the will. Just as the physical creation has a cause outside of the finite , so the choices we make have a cause that is much greater than just our view of what is good and bad. The cause of choice goes to our most deepest recesses of our souls as the center of the problem with temptation. We are born in sin and so our desires are only evil continually. Even tho we are free to choose one thing over another for ourselves we are void on spiritual desires. The reason we do not have these desires is because our minds are not please with spiritual knowledge and light and so we being dead only choose what is best for ourselves , which means that we are living in a dream world  because cause and effect realities are only found in knowing God by a new principle that is given to our souls so that we begin to understand that the was an eternal existence that causes all things to live and move and have their being. In the sinful state we are blind to this principle so that we glory only in ourselves. Which is to worship the creature rather than the creator. So that we are being darkened more and more under the chains of being under the domination of a sinful mind. Once we are regenerated we are given a divine light into the mind and we are awakened to the truth of all things and we are awakened to our sinful state and the reasons why we struggle so much with sorrow and pain.  We are given new desires and our minds are now given a spiritual taste , sight and touch. We are given new desires and our understanding becomes enlightened so that we are pleased with divine things. James is not saying that the word is the vehicle to change the will and behavior in a moral sense. But he is saying that the condition of the soul will determine how the soul responds to the word. It will effectually work by the Holy SPirit in the regenerated soul so that the person will not forget what he looks like after receiving the word. The word actually is the seed implanted into the soul and springs to new life. The new life from that implantation is the response to divine things , a response that rejoices in these truths. The word and propositions of free grace will be a seed that is implanted into the deepest recesses of the soul so that the Holy SPirit who is like the wind will do a secret work even beyond a persons understanding in its initial light that a person does not even know when the Holy SPirit began that work. But yet the person has a definite change in the entire soul so that all of his faculties are made alive. He then understands not only the gospel but the power of God in the gospel.