Even the demons know that there is one God
Duet 6:4-5 "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
, but they do not love Him. Their kind of belief does not lead to love, submission, and obedience; instead it leads to hatred, rebellion, and disobedience.
Here is some commentary on this verse by John MacArthur
Every true Christian has times of unfaithfulness, sin, and barrenness. It is during those times that he is in danger of losing assurance of salvation, for the blessing of peace and confidence from the Spirit is forfeited. Security of salvation is eternal and permanent, being based on the Lord’s sovereign power to keep those who belong to Him. But assurance of salvation is temporal and can fluctuate, for it is a blessing granted to those who are obedient to the Lord.
You believe that God is one, James goes on to say. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. You do well carries a touch of sarcasm, cast against an imaginary, but universally common, orthodoxy that is devoid of saving faith. Orthodox doctrine is no guarantee of salvation, James insists. Even the demons are orthodox in the sense of knowing and acknowledging truth about God.
Jewish orthodoxy was always centered in belief in the one true God, stated succinctly in the Shema: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!†(Deut. 6:4). Where most Jews fell short was in not obeying the following verse, which commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might†(v. 5).
James’s point, as it were, is that belief in the truth of Deuteronomy 6:4 without obedience to 6:5 is a worthless kind of belief like that possessed by demons. As far as factual doctrine is concerned, demons are monotheists, all of whom know and believe there is one true God. They also are very much aware that Scripture is God’s Word, that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, that salvation is by grace through faith, that Jesus died, was buried, and raised to atone for the sins of the world, and that He ascended to heaven and is now seated at His Father’s right hand. They know quite well that there is a literal heaven and a literal hell. They doubtless have a clearer knowledge of the millennium and its related truths than does even the most devoted Bible scholar. But all of that orthodox knowledge, divinely and eternally significant as it is, cannot save them. They know the truth about God, Christ, and the Spirit, but hate it and them.
Orthodox doctrine is immeasurably better than heresy, of course, for it is true and points toward God and the way of salvation. But mere assent to it as true cannot bring a person to God and to salvation.
Phrissō (shudder) means to bristle and tremble and was commonly used of the trembling associated with great fear. Demons at least have the sense to shudder at God’s truth in a state of fear, for they know that eternal torment awaits them in hell (Matt. 8:29–31; Mark 5:7; Luke 4:41; Acts 19:15). In that regard, they are much more realistic and sensible than those with false faith who think they will escape God’s judgment by their shallow and superficial faith.
The Puritan theologian Thomas Manton described non-saving faith in forceful terms:
[It is] a simple and naked assent to such things as are propounded in the Word of God, and maketh men more knowing but not better, not more holy or heavenly. They that have it may believe the promises, the doctrines, the precepts as well as the histories. … but yet, lively saving faith it is not, for he who hath that findeth his heart engaged to Christ and doth so believe the promises of the gospel concerning pardon of sin and life eternal that he seeth after them as his happiness. And doth so believe the mysteries of our redemption by Christ as that all his hope and peace and confidence is drawn from thence and doth so believe the threatenings, whether of temporal plagues or eternal damnation as that in comparison of them all the frightful things of the world are as nothing. (The Complete Works of Thomas Manton [London: James Nisbet, 1874], 17:113–14)
He goes on to speak of a somewhat deeper kind of faith, which, because it is nearer to genuine, complete faith, is all the more deceptive and dangerous.
[This sort of faith] is distinguished from temporary faith, which is an assent to scriptural or gospel truth, accompanied with a slight and insufficient touch upon the heart, called “a taste of the heavenly gift, and of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,†Heb. vi.4–6. By this kind of faith, the mind is not only enlightened, but the heart affected with some joy, and the life in some measure reformed, at least, from grosser sins, called, “[escaping] the pollutions of the world,†2 Peter ii.20; but the impression is not deep enough, nor is the joy and delight rooted enough to encounter all temptations to the contrary. Therefore this sense of religion may be choked, or worn off, either by the cares of this world, or by voluptuous living, or by great and bitter persecutions and troubles for righteousness’ sake. It is a common deceit: many are persuaded that Jesus is the Christ, the only Son of God, and so are moved to embrace his person, and in some measure to obey his precepts, and to depend upon his promises, and fear his threatenings, and so by consequence to have their hearts loosened from the world in part, and seem to prefer Christ and their duty to him above worldly things, as long as no temptations do assault their resolutions, or sensual objects stand not up in any considerable strength to entice them; but at length, when they find his laws so strict and spiritual, and contrary either to the bent of their affections or worldly interests, they fall off, and lose all their taste and relish of the hopes of the gospel, and so declare plainly that they were not rooted and grounded in the faith and hope thereof. (Ibid., 114)
MacArthur, J.
