World at War

At some point in time, God entrusted Satan and other powerful angels with the stewardship of all creation.  They betrayed God’s trust and began to turn what God created as good into an inherently violent and terrifying system dominated by decay, destruction, disease, suffering and death.  Although God could have simply repaired, reconstructed, restored and repossessed His corrupted creation, His purity of wisdom, holiness, justice and truth demanded a punishment for every crime, every evil and every sin.  Only one punishment, the substitutionary atonement, was great enough to redeem all creation from the bondage of evil and redeem all mankind from the bondage of sin.  But Satan will never acknowledge the efficacy of that punishment.  He is battling God to retain possession of that which was given to him (Luke 4:5-7).

The world, at every level, is at war.  We are on the front lines of this Great War whether we like it or not.  The substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ began a new phase of warfare.  God the Son began the process of taking back his creation.  The outcome of the great-war between good and evil was decided by the substitutionary atonement; yet few would claim Jesus has already restored and repossessed his corrupted creation.  For a time and within limits, God continues to permit certain consequences of rampant rebellion and the brutal corruption of all life.  But He expects His people to engage the enemy and be soldiers in His army.

God, by His omnipotence, will one day end this war.  He will repair, reconstruct, restore and repossess His entire creation (Isa 11:6-9, 65:17-25; Rom 8:20-22; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1-4).  Until that time, however, prudence would suggest that we keep an eye on Satan who, contrary to popular opinion, never expected to overpower God by force and establish a separate but equal kingdom of evil.  Satan merely seeks to discredit God and God’s relationship with man in full view of all the angels in Heaven!  He argues that God is no longer perfect.  Satan laments that God’s character has been altered as an unfortunate consequence of His love for man.  God’s wisdom and truth have become illogical, His holiness has been compromised and His once absolute justice is now relative and situational.  Satan offers to help God purge Himself of this affliction by driving an irremovable wedge between God and man and facilitating an alienation that cannot be reconciled.  Satan attempts with one crafty thrust to both assail God’s beloved humans and show up God as an altruistic fool.  Satan claims that any man who seeks the great gift of reconciliation with God does so only because it pays (Job 1:9-11; 2:4-5).  Satan says anytime God will let him break the link between seeking righteousness and receiving blessing, the so-called “born again” man will be exposed as the same old filthy sinner he was before receiving the great gift of salvation.  In other words, the overall concept of salvation by faith, the grace of God and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ is a sham.  God cannot give it, Jesus cannot pay for it and you cannot receive it.  According to Satan, it’s all smoke and mirrors so that God can save his wretched humans without appearing to compromise His character.

Satan claims that: (1) so-called redemption from the bondage of sin does not really set you free, (2) God has no real basis for offering forgiveness of your sin, (3) for God to justify you as sinless is a perversion of justice, (4) you are not deserving of adoption into God’s family, (5) you can never be truly regenerated from the death of sin to a life of pursuing righteousness, (6) your walk along the path of sanctification is an exercise in self-delusion, (7) you will never be reconciled with so-called fellow believers, (8) a unified church of Jesus Christ is a myth and (9) you have no hope of glorification in heaven.  This is the adversary’s clever attempt to permanently subvert the relationship between God and man and show all the angels in Heaven that God’s plan for reconciliation is fraudulent.  If the salvation offered to every man and woman can be exposed as a perversion of wisdom, holiness, justice and truth, then a chasm of alienation stands between God and man that cannot be bridged.  Reconciliation would be unthinkable.  God’s whole enterprise in creation would be radically and irrevocably flawed; He could only sweep it away in awful judgment as He nearly did once before (Gen 6:5-7).

As tempter, Satan seeks to alienate man from God; as accuser he seeks to alienate God from man.  Satan’s accusations, once raised, cannot be erased even if God destroyed the accuser.  The great adversary is attempting to thwart the purposes of God by condemning as lies the beliefs of every man and woman who have accepted the great gift of salvation.  At stake in this challenge is the outcome of the struggle in heaven with the all-encompassing divine purpose in the balance.  Thus, contrary to the teachings of the Prosperity Gospel (health, wealth and prosperity for all), the suffering of the Christian soldier has a meaning and value commensurate with the titanic spiritual struggle of the ages.