James 4:5

5. This second question suggests that (in accordance with all Scripture) the proud human spirit burns with envy, while God in his grace is on the side of the humble.

Saith Quotation of no particular passage, but a sentiment everywhere assumed or expressed by Scripture.

The spirit that dwelleth in us The unholy temper. But a reading preferred by good scholars is, The spirit that he (God) hath caused to dwell in us. Alford adopts this reading, and by it makes the spirit to be the divine spirit bestowed upon the Church. But from that he gets what we think a very perplexed meaning of the verse: “The spirit that he (God) has placed within us jealously desireth us (for its own.”) But he fails to find any Scripture which uses the Greek word for envy to designate the divine jealousy of God for his Church. And the supplying as object for the word lusteth (or, more properly, desireth) “us for his own” is arbitrary. By this new, and doubtless correct, reading, we understand our own spirit, not as a temper, but as the highest part of our nature, as body, soul, and spirit. Note, James 3:15. It is the high human spirit which lusteth, intensely desires, to (in the direction towards) envy; an envy of which pride is the element, desirous of attaining a superiority over all envied rivalry. It is an aggravation that this envy is the sin of the spirit which God has made to dwell within us, in order that we might be truly angel like.