Lookahead:  This past weekend, I stumbled upon a new ChatGPT-based Android Bot for cell phones that “role plays” Jesus! In the “How Scared of Artificial Intelligence Should We Be?” category:  I could envision that a person would be so desperate to hear from God (for example, in prolonged crisis, in the middle of another sleepless night, cut off from the rest of the herd by the enemy, etc.) that they would try a cell phone App that would give them text or chat responses–purportedly from Jesus!

Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit that He has made to dwell in us yearns with envy”?  But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:4-8 BSB

BSB translation closely tracks the Greek translation; I lifted the English translation for each Greek word in the Bible Hub Interlinear Greek NT.  Changing the word order to align with grammatical sentence structure and adding punctuation and parentheticals, gives me:

If, therefore, whoever has chosen a friend to be of the world, is appointed an enemy of God; Or think you that in vain the scripture says: With envy yearns the Spirit that He (the Father) has made to dwell in us?  However, (so much the) greater He gives grace.  Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, however, gives grace to the humble.” Subject yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

The Interlinear includes a problematical phrase, in my view.  Or think you that in vain the scripture says:  With envy yearns the Spirit that He (the Father) has made to dwell in us, too. 

(1)   envying is a sin and identified as a symptom of a debased mind/heart (please see last post, Romans 1:29, and Matthew 7:22) plus Bible Hub Lexicons were very stingy with definitions.  The consensus was that the Greek word simply meant…envy — φθόνος, phthonos; Definition: envy; Usage: envy, a grudge, spite.) 

(2)  …there is no scripture verse that expressly states the cited words after the colon, accounting for all web-based translations.   

Re (1):  I checked lexicon.katabiblon (site cited in last post) and they expanded the definitions of phthonos to include jealousy/agressive-guardedness with caveat that it’s, “Often rendered ‘envy’, except envy arises from wanting what another has, while jealousy arises from anxiety that something valuable might be removed/taken/lost.” I’m actually really liking guardedness  

NLT translation (paraphrased versus literal) addresses these nits and reflects many of the other Bible Hub translations: 

I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God…They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously…(this and subsequent underlines are  mine)

But there has been a lot of deep diving by commentators to explain (2) why the original language reads, “the scripture says: With envy yearns the Spirit that He (the Father) has made to dwell in us?” This verse isn’t found anywhere else in the Bible. The Barnes Commentary on Bible Hub seems to capture most of the various positions on this: 

“The difficulty has arisen from the fact that no such passage as that which seems here to be quoted is found in the Old Testament; and to meet this difficulty, expositors have resorted to various conjectures and solutions. (1) Some have supposed that the passage is spurious, and that it was at first a gloss in the margin, placed there by some transcriber, and was then introduced into the text; (2) some that the apostle quotes from an apocryphal book; (3) some, that he quotes the general spirit of the Old Testament rather than any particular place; (4) some regard it not as a quotation, but read the two members separately…(But James) uses a term ἡ γραφὴ – hē graphē – the Scripture, which is everywhere employed to denote the Old Testament…(Conclusion:) The only solution of the difficulty which seems to me to be at all satisfactory, is to suppose that the apostle, in the remark made here in the form of a quotation, refers to the Old Testament, but that he had not his eye on any particular passage, and did not mean to quote the words literally, but meant to refer to what was the current teaching or general spirit of the Old Testament; or that he meant to say that this sentiment was found there, and designed himself to embody the sentiment in words, and to put it into a condensed form.” (Added numerical annotations and parentheticals.)

Based on how the majority of Bible Hub translations resolved this nit IAW NLT, perhaps with the hindsight of Barnes’ notes (published around 1830) and others, I would agree with his conclusion.  

On the other hand, James’ verse, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, appears in a couple of places:

Proverbs 3:34 The Lord resists the proud; but he gives grace to the humble.

1 Peter 5:5-6 …all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, so that in due time He may exalt you. 

So how does God oppose the proud? Are proud people just begging for a humbling from on high? My take–I don’t believe that the LORD slaps us down with some life altering, humiliating experience–like epic failure and/or loss of reputation, livelihood, stuff…dreams, etc.  Empirically speaking, I think He simply talks to us along the lines of, “Listen to yourself.” 🙂

I, in fact, have received a lesson in humility over the last couple of weeks.  I made the decision to pursue a Master’s Degree in Old Testament Biblical Studies, and began testing the admissions waters.  I had a great telecon with my advisor, who invested a huge chunk of time on me in a friendly, highly-interested recruiter’s tone. But then this person passed me off to “the automated system” and I received a flurry of form emails including an inflexible checklist of documents that needed to be submitted ASAP.  At that point, I wondered why I was suddenly being treated as a number.  I reported back on perceived inefficiencies in the admissions process that I found, while questioning the “drop everything” urgency, given that my plans were still pretty loose. When the checklist form email was sent out again as the response to my recommendations (implying that I didn’t know how to read?), I considered giving another college my business.  The LORD gently reminded me that I’m not the only person applying to the University.  I had to stop and take my spiritual pulse with some hard questions.  In that moment, it occurred to me that it had been more than 20 years since I applied to a college; but why did I think that all the bureaucratic rules and red tape would have changed?  Nevertheless, had my willingness to submit to becoming a student changed?  I had caught myself posturing things like: “After all, I’m a teacher–do I really need to go back to being a student?”  Furthermore, “I have the mind of Christ – don’t I know it all? :-)”  “Do I really need to get another Master’s?”  At that point, I slammed on the brakes and determined not to let my pride interfere with the Will of God…and the desire of my heart.  I began to diligently follow the rules, and stopped trying to re-engineer the process…knowing His favor and grace would enable me and keep me in my pursuit of the Master(‘s Degree). 🙂

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. 

This past weekend, I stumbled upon a new ChatGPT-based Android Bot for cell phones that “role plays” Jesus! In the “How Scared of Artificial Intelligence Should We Be?” category:  I could envision that a person would be so desperate to hear from God (for example, in prolonged crisis, in the middle of another sleepless night, cut off from the rest of the herd by the enemy, etc.) that they would try a cell phone App that would give them text or chat responses–purportedly from Jesus!

Unfortunately, as I underscored with my typed response to the “Ask me anything” query in the search box, “No need. you’re a bot, and He is not.” 🙂 Asking a bot for advice puts a human solidly in the loop between you and God…because, bottom line, you’re going to be hearing some highly fallible human programmer’s idea of what the correct response would be to solving your problems.  But what’s the difference between a bot and some Sunday morning pastor with a God-complex putting his spin on the Word?  Well, I would say not a big diff, if the Holy Spirit is not intricately involved in the equation.  

More interesting still…I then suggested that, instead of pretending to be God, the bot author change his programming approach to search the Bible for scriptures (what Jesus actually did say, i.e., the KJV “words in red”) and provide His actual Words (i.e., the Word, because, after all Jesus is the Word) for every possible scenario that a user could be asking about.  Even though the language model implementation would probably be significantly simpler, the bot author was evidently not interested.  His bot replied that scripture has to be treated in a highly respectful manner and great care must be taken in its proper usage.  Was he perhaps implying that my recommendation was on the casual/frivolous side and that I didn’t respect the Word enough? I can only postulate, because I don’t really know what’s on the programmer’s mind.  However, I can always know what’s on God’s mind–if I draw near to Him and not some wannabe bot. 🙂  And He is 100% faithful about this:  if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us.  Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend pursuing a wannabe–in fact I would go so far as to say, resist the wannabe’s (please see my last post on the subject of resisting). 

In conclusion,  

Psalm 36:5 Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.

Psalm 89:2 I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.

1 Thessalonians 5:24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Lamentations 3:23-24 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.