Don’t Fear the Devil
The theme for this year at Cross Creek Church has been “GO”. As the year starts to wind down, the writers at More Than Sundays would like to give you some encouragement and wisdom so that you can finish the year strong and keep GOing in your walk with Christ for many years to come. Please enjoy!
Imagine the scene: The low hum of anticipation permeates the streets of ancient Rome. Thousands throng to experience with their own eyes the whispers of legend; a general has returned home from war. The buzz of fervor washes through the crowd like a gentle wave, building softly as raucous celebration rises in the distance. As the pinions of banners and the plumes of headdresses suddenly poke out above the crowd, a gust of celebration flattens the softness of the midday air. In short order, soldiers in glistening armor part the assembly as towering horses and magnificent chariots follow closely behind. The crowd does not care that they are moved to one side or the other; their eyes excitedly pick apart the colors and commotion of the proceedings before them as they search for what they really came to see. At last, he appears, shining with a gruff kind of glory, standing above all who were there that day. This is the one who etched the name of his country a little more firmly into the stone of history. This is the general who brought his people such a victory. This is the pride of Rome. Yet as the crowd clamors for a better sight of their hero and as the roar of the procession marches on, another stands beside the general to execute the most important task of all. Huddled behind the magnificence of him whom they celebrate, this servant speaks gingerly, though clearly, into the general’s ear, delivering a subtle jab to nip an ugly flower before it has a chance to bloom: “Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.” In a more modern tongue, he would instead say, “Look after yourself. Remember you’re a man. Remember you will die” (“Memento Mori”). Despite the occasion, the general has to be reminded that he is a mere mortal after all.
We are not positive about the accuracy of that account or whether it was the custom in ancient Rome for a servant to be appointed to do such a thing to generals as they returned home from war, but an interesting principle stands in the anecdote nonetheless. We humans can so easily become puffed up in our pride and think we are more than we are. We serve a mighty and gracious God who knows this about us, and He loves us through such diseases of the heart. He knows that we cannot stand for long as our own gods, and He faithfully reminds us that He is God and that we are not. Sometimes, He merely convicts us of the sin of pride. Sometimes, He lets our pride run its course so we can see the consequences of self-worship. Sometimes, though, He reminds us of our humanity – and His divinity – by letting us experience an enemy that is more than human himself.
The Paradox Of Affliction
If we look at the life of the Apostle Paul, we could find plenty of reasons to be envious of him. He witnessed Jesus in great glory (Acts 9:3-6), he had a long and fruitful ministry, he had visions of Heaven itself (2 Corinthians 12:1-4; GotQuestions.org), and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he wrote almost half of the New Testament. If you are interested at all in being an upstanding Christian, Paul seems to be the kind of person you would want to imitate. However, in the Apostle Paul’s second recorded letter to the Corinthians, he explains something that might make us think twice about our envy of him: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7, ESV).
I am not terribly interested in being harassed by the Devil, and I think that is a fairly normal desire. Given Paul’s response, that “Three times [he] pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave [him]” (2 Corinthians 12:8, ESV), we could probably say he shared that desire as well. God desires different things than we desire, at times, though. It’s been said in many venues that God is more interested in our holiness than our happiness. It would be very easy for Paul to think that, because of the wonderful blessings he experienced in his life and ministry, he was “all that and a bag of chips”. For instance, how many times have we experienced wonderful things in our lives and thought it was entirely due to our greatness or the great things we had done? How simple is the logic that says that, when we experience wonderful things, it’s because we deserve more than the average person? This can be a real concern for us; keeping us from becoming conceited is accordingly of great concern to God.
God’s appointed means for performing this sanctification in Paul might seem strange to us, though. This thorn was a “messenger of Satan”. It can be unnerving and uncomfortable to think about the idea that God is fully aware of what Satan does to humanity and still gives him permission to do it. If you read the first couple chapters of Job, you will see that this is the exact kind of exchange that happens when Satan wants to do evil in the world. It might not seem like the concept of a good and loving and powerful God and the concept of a malevolent and hateful and active enemy reconcile with one another very well. They do, though. One of the clearest ways this has been put was when Joseph had mercy on his brothers after his father Jacob had passed: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20a, ESV). It is a magnificent thing to mull over in your brain, if you really think about it: The goodness of God is so genuine and pure and potent that it can overcome any evil. In other words, there is no evil so ravaging that it can thwart the goodness of God. With this in mind, we have to come to the belief that affliction from Satan will always turn out to be a good thing because of the God who has already factored it into His good plans.
Thorns Become Spickets Of Grace
Now, to assume that Satan is behind every bad thing that happens to us is paranoia, and to assume that Satan plays no role in our lives is naivety. The truth lies somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Additionally, we tend to think of demonic or satanic activity only as things like demonic possession or unexplained writing in the fog on the bathroom mirror – we can usually thank Hollywood for those misconceptions. It seems there is little evidence or consensus as to what this thorn in Paul’s flesh was, but he gives us clues as to the broad categories of what he might have endured and what we could expect from such opposition, too: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities” (2 Corinthians 12:10a, ESV).
With a little exploration in the Word, we can see how Satan could be behind any of these five things. It was because of Satan that Job lost everything that belonged to him on the earth (Job 1:13-19). When that didn’t work to turn Job against God, Satan then afflicted Job with “loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7, ESV). Jesus met “a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years” who was “bent over and could not fully straighten herself” (Luke 10:11, ESV). Paul tells us that Satan is responsible for “arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5, ESV) – these sorts of lies can twist the minds of men and provoke them even further into becoming harassers, persecutors, and insulters. While ultimate power and authority belong to God alone, Satan is “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4, ESV), and he and his horde have demonstrated considerable power and authority over the things of the world. It can be daunting to realize that this is our enemy and that he is actively working against us to exact his malicious schemes (1 Peter 5:8). Even if Satan is not behind our hardships, they are still called hardships for legitimate reasons.
We recall such circumstances are meant to “keep [us] from becoming conceited”. If that is the real goal, what good is supposed to come from such contriteness in heart and brokenness in spirit? Is it merely to put us down and make us feel ashamed of our weakness? Perhaps a personal anecdote will help shed light on the subject: I remember when I started college that I was warned that what I was about to do would be very challenging. One of the encouragements I was given before things got hard was that, when everyone had made it through the challenge, we would be able to look at each other and share a special bond in knowing that we had all made it through the hardship together. Working through problems has a way of growing intimacy amongst the people who work through those problems together. Enduring difficulty can bulletproof relationships; it is no different with our relationship with God, in a way. When opposition makes us feel small, weak, broken, spent, and helpless, it puts us in the position to look to God for our help. “Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (James 4:6, ESV). This relationship where we rely on God and where God sustains us in return is the exact kind of relationship we are supposed to have with God.
This is the crux of God’s message to Paul as he attempted to pray away his opposition: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV). If you look up the Greek that is translated as “is perfected” in this verse, you’ll find that it doesn’t mean that God suddenly gets more power or better power by acting in our weakness but rather that His power comes into full effect in our weakness. Because Satan’s opposition is so much more powerful than we can handle, we have to come to rely fully on a power that is greater even than Satan’s. We don’t deserve this help, but God gives it to us freely because of His love for us. That is why we call it “grace”.
It is a beautiful saying, that God’s grace is sufficient for us, but platitudes don’t ultimately have a lot of power. We need to come to realize that God’s graces meet us in multifarious ways. We sometimes think of these graces only as supernatural miracles and unexplainable phenomena – it’s true such things have happened. However, sometimes God gives us graces as time, talents, and treasures. Esther is a great example; she had been given all the graces she needed to help save the nation of Israel when she had been given an audience and favor with the king; all she had to do was use them to do the good work God prepared for her beforehand (Ephesians 2:10). Sometimes, the relationship we have with God is what sustains us through difficulty. Savoring His truth and beauty has helped saints throughout history endure unspeakable atrocities. Sometimes, God’s graces can surprise us in worldly ways, too. Penicillin, one of the most revolutionary drugs in the history of medicine, was discovered by accident, if you recall (Gaynes). If we keep our eyes open and walk by the Spirit, we’ll see God’s sufficient graces everywhere ready for us to accept them if we are merely willing to acknowledge our need of them.
Keep GOing Despite The Devil
We don’t lay down our fear of Satan because he is puny in some way. We lay down our fear because God is totally powerful in all ways. God allows Satan to do the evil things he wants to do in our lives in order that God’s ultimate goodness can be displayed in spite of them. Satan’s power does not rival God’s even though it dwarfs ours. So, like Paul, let us rejoice in this fact and “boast all the more gladly of [our] weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon [us]” (2 Corinthians 12:9b, ESV). I don’t know about you, but I can certainly use the help.
References:
“Memento Mori.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Oct. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori.
GotQuestions.org (2020) What does it mean that Paul went to the third heaven?, GotQuestions.org. Available at: https://www.gotquestions.org/Paul-third-heaven.html (Accessed: 28 November 2023).
Gaynes, Robert. “The Discovery of Penicillin—New Insights after More than 75 Years of Clinical Use.”
Emerging Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5403050/.