jeffersonvann

 

The phrase “spiritual warfare” is often used in evangelical circles to denote attempts to deliver those oppressed and possessed by demons. The phrase actually has wider implications than that. It is a metaphor which describes every aspect of the Christian life.

Paul described his personal struggle with sin as a battle between the law of his mind and the law of his flesh. He said “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”[1]

Like Paul, all humanity is involved in a war with a formidable Adversary whose goal is to enslave the human race. He utilizes a variety of strategies which have proven over the millennia to be quite effective. Each attack that Satan and his kingdom workers perpetuate against humans is designed to cause an ever-increasing progression from sin to bondage to further sin and further bondage.

Warfare

The Christian life is described as a war.[2] The means by which we live out our faith in the midst of the enemy is called doing warfare.[3] It is not an easy life, but a struggle, a conflict.[4] To succeed in this life is to fight the good fight.[5] By God’s grace we are more than conquerors.[6] He will ultimately destroy all of our enemies, and his. But the battles today are very real. If one chooses to ignore the conflict, she is liable to become a casualty of war.

What the Adversary Wants

John 10:10 has been mentioned in chapter 1 of this book as an example of how the context of a statement in Scripture helps interpreters understand the statement. The thief in that text is not Satan, but a false shepherd, in contrast to Jesus, the good shepherd. While it is true that Satan can be described as a thief, it is not good theology to derive from John 10:10 that Satan’s strategy is to steal, kill, and destroy. The ultimate result of Satan’s warfare upon humanity will be just that. All who are not rescued by Christ will eventually suffer the second death: permanent destruction in Gehenna hell.

What the adversary wants today, however, is not our destruction but our bondage. He wants to control the lives of every human being on this planet, and bring as many with him to the fires of Gehenna as possible. He has organized a battle plan – a set of methods[7] and designs[8] that he uses to enslave and keep enslaved. The more one knows about these strategic means that the devil uses, the more likely she may prevail in the battles that ensue throughout her life.

Selfishness

God is sovereign over the universe he created, and he deserves to be honored and worshipped by that creation. Satan does not have to convince humans to rebel against God. He merely has to convince humans to make themselves the center of their own universe. The sins recorded early in Genesis bear this out. Taking of the tree did not seem like such a bad thing. The act was being judged on the basis of human desires, human assessment, and human goals. Once Adam and Eve had taken of the tree they saw what the sin was from God’s perspective. As Cain was bashing his brother’s head in – he was obviously not thinking about what this act would do to Able, or to Adam and Eve for that matter. Selfish pride, depression and anger blinded Cain to both the reality and the consequences of his sin.

Selfishness is the method that keeps people addicted to substances that slowly destroy them. It makes people stop and stare when they should be running like the wind. At its heart, selfishness is rebellion against God’s sovereignty. It leads to sins which are enjoyable, and cause the sinner to seek more and more of the same. At the same time, it blinds the sinner to the consequences.

Acts of selfishness progress in a continuum from sin to sinful lifestyle to sinful obsession to sinful addiction. The further along in the continuum the harder it is to break the bondage. The Bible warns that “for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.”[9] The world says “if it feels good, do it.” But there will be consequences to living selfishly.

Falsehood

Another of the major strategies in the war against humanity is the pitting of falsehood against some other belief. It is not always a simple issue of truth against deception. Satan often pits lie against lie. In doing so, he need only convince his victim that one lie is not true, and the victim swallows the second lie. Notice how deceptive the serpent’s words were in Eden:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

There are three lies in this passage, and each of them is hidden within a truth statement. First, Satan asked if God had prohibited all the trees in the garden. The answer is no, and the woman was correct in pointing out that it was only one particular tree that was prohibited. The deception, however, began at that point. Satan was beginning what would become Eve’s preoccupation with the forbidden fruit.

The second lie is Satan’s as well – but it comes out of the mouth of Eve. She stretched the truth a bit when she responded by saying that God had forbidden even the touching of the fruit. Perhaps the serpent then touched the fruit to show Eve that he suffered no ill effects.

The third lie was the clincher. It too was hidden in a truth statement. Taking of the forbidden fruit would endow the humans with god-like knowledge of (experience with) good and evil. Who would not want their eyes to be opened? Who would not want to be like God? Who would not want an experience that has never been experienced before? The falsehood was found in what Satan did not say. He did not tell of the banishment and painful consequences that humanity would have to endure. Satan is the liar and the father of lies.[10] Falsehood is another of the mighty weapons in his arsenal against human beings.

Depression

Cain’s sin of murder was at least partially motivated by his damaged self-image. God had accepted Abel’s offering, but did not accept Cain’s. The story is told in Genesis 4:

In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.[11]

Cain’s anger was a manifestation of embarrassment depression. It so wounded his self-image that Cain disregarded the sanctity of his brother’s life. God had warned Cain that sin was crouching at his door. His depression put him in a dangerous position – like someone who has a vicious animal waiting to kill him. Cain did not pay attention to the warning.

Fear

Another major strategy that Satan uses in his war against humanity is fear. Fear can cause a person to forget to do what needs to be done, or to do something she would never do otherwise. When someone is intimidated, she can lash out in an attempt to embolden herself. The result is often violent and harmful. The Bible says that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”[12] It also says that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”[13] Love is the emotion that we ought to exhibit, but often fear gets the best of us.

Fear was the motivation behind the Babel incident. That story is found in Genesis 11:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.[14]

The people at Babel were afraid of being dispersed over the face of the whole earth. That was what God wanted from them. Their fear gave them unity, and eventually caused their disunity. Satan was at work behind the scenes at Babel to get the people to give in to their fears and go against God’s will. Today, Satan uses fear to organize one nation to war against another. He uses fear to embolden us toward violence – or to paralyze us and prevent our acting in faith.

[1] Rom. 7:23-25.

[2] 2 Cor. 10:3; James 4:1; 1 Pet. 2:11.

[3] 2 Cor. 10:4; 1 Tim. 1:18.

[4] Col. 1:29; 4:12; 1 Thess. 2:2; Heb. 10:32.

[5] 1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7.

[6] Rom. 8:37.

[7] Gk. methodeias (Eph. 4:14; 6:11).

[8] Gk. noemata (2 Cor. 2:11).

[9] Rom. 2:8.

[10] John 8:44.

[11] Genesis 4:3-8.

[12] 2 Tim. 1:7.

[13] 1 John 4:18.

[14] Genesis 11:1-9.

 

Sin is a very complex thing, and so are its causes. In fact, Paul complained that the law of God itself caused him to sin. By pointing out the possibility of sinning in a certain area, the law became an unwilling partner with the sin nature that existed inside Paul, so he “was alive once, apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life.”[1] Based on this experience, Paul argued in Romans that the law is not the solution to the sin problem, faith in Christ is.

Christians need to be aware of the causes of sin in their lives. This knowledge can be like knowing where the snares and traps and wild beasts are in the jungle. It can keep us out of the danger zones. After all, snares and traps are not things that just happen. Someone has set the traps with the specific intention of catching something. Wild beasts are there to eat their prey. To ignore the causes of sin in one’s life is like going into the jungle blindly, hoping not to be caught or devoured.

One of the obvious causes of sin is that inherited sinful inclination mentioned in chapter 25. The important truth to grasp is that often the traps are within us. Most of our sins cannot be blamed on our society, or our parents. Sin is (as it was for Paul) within us. But the sin within us takes advantage of things which happen to us, and things which are around us, and then “springs to life.” Knowing when and why that happens can help believers overcome when tempted.

Internal Factors

In a sense, all causes of personal sins are both internal and external. The choice to sin is a personal choice. Yet every sin involves some external factors. Therefore, the categories of internal and external factors causing sin are approximations.

Rebellion

Rebellion begins as a lack of appreciation for the boundaries God has placed on the sinner’s life. The choice that our ancestors made to rebel against God’s prohibition in Eden is a useful example. It did not seem like a major act of rebellion. Logic concluded that a fruit which was desirable and had the potential to make one wise was a fruit worth eating. Sinners make choices like that every day. We weigh the options, and calculate the risks, concluding that the potential benefits outweigh the possible disadvantages.

In rebellion, the mind is functioning as God intended it to. There is usually no psycho-somatic aberration that causes people to transgress God’s limits. The human mind is intended to make value judgments, and does so – without sinning – constantly. The problem with instances of rebellion is that the sinner makes value judgments where God has already established which is the right choice, and which is the wrong one. Usually, the sinner knows that God has promised to bring negative consequences upon her if she chooses to transgress.

Regardless of the specific nature of the boundaries, then, rebellion is at heart caused by an internal thing: defiance of God. There usually are numerous consequences to rebellion, affecting the lives of the sinner and all those around her. But the primary consequence is the damage done to her relationship with God.

Tradition- Idolatry or Change – Idolatry

The prospect of some kind of change that could happen in the sinner’s life is often a catalyst for choices that could involve sin – particularly the sin of idolatry. One example of this is conflict that can ensue when an organization is considering a change. The reason is that “if people are so attached to the old way (or the new way) that they are willing to fight for their position, they have idolized their desire.”[2] Usually both sides of the conflict have good arguments for their positions. The problem is that both sides are committed to an either-or solution, and are willing to sacrifice their relationships with each other for their position.

This happens because human “hearts are idol factories and sometimes our desires escalate into sinful demands, or idols.”[3] When the heart of the sinner is against the threatened change, he sets up a tradition-idol. When the heart of the sinner is for the proposed change, he sets up a change-idol. There may not be a clear winner in the battle that results from these choices. The organization usually is the clear loser. It sometimes dissolves, and often loses members whose demands were not met by the organization as a whole.

Greed

The Bible exposes greed as a particularly dangerous cause for personal sin. Jesus denounced the scribes and Pharisees because they made efforts to look pure and clean on the outside, but inside were filthy with greed and self-indulgence.[4] Paul warned the Corinthian believers not to associate – or even have a meal with a person known for his greed.[5] Both he and Peter had encountered those whose “ministries” are merely a pretext for fulfilling their greed.[6] It had become a means of evaluating whether or not a first-century preacher was or was not a false prophet.

Lust

Both apostles had also warned believers to stay away from lustful passions. Paul instructs the Thessalonians “that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”[7] Peter speaks of “those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion” as being kept by God “under punishment until the day of judgment.”[8] Neither of these men of God sought to prohibit legitimate sexual relationships, but both were profoundly troubled by the damage that is done when people transgress those legitimate boundaries.

Lust has always been a problem for human beings, but free and easy private access to sexually explicit materials has turned that problem into an epidemic. Such materials (now made even more accessible through the internet) trap men into bondage through images and stories that promise the pleasure of sex without the intimacy of relationship. Similarly, women are lured away from their spouses through chat rooms and social networks where they are convinced that their current partner does not understand or deserve them. Pornographers usually hide behind the “freedom of speech” excuse. The irony is that the motivation for such websites and other media has nothing to do with free speech or sex or pleasure. The sex industry is built on greed. Porn is a multi-billion dollar “industry” that creates only addiction and destruction.[9]

Etc.

Numerous other forms of selfishness could be added to the list of things that cause human beings to sin. Some of these can be so subtle that it might take some time in counseling to convince the sinner that his motivation was wrong. The human heart is creative, and unfortunately that means that a sinner can be very creative in how he defends his own sinfulness. God calls sinners to repent even when they do not understand all the factors that have brought them under condemnation.

External Factors

Each sinner is individually responsible for every sin she commits. However, it is still possible to objectively identify a number of factors that contribute to her making that choice. Eden, for example, contained more than two people and a commandment. It also contained a tree, and a snake.

The choices sinners make cannot be defended on the basis on the basis of external factors. Adam and Eve tried the blame game, and it did not get them very far. But knowing about the external factors can help people avoid putting themselves in an environment where they will be likely to sin. Also, knowing where an enemy is hiding is a good defense against his attacks.

Temptation

The devil is real and he can really tempt people to sin. It may seem simplistic to say that, but it is important, because an increasing number of people appear to be confused on the issue of Satan’s existence. Not only is there an actual person called Satan, but he also has an enormous army of other persons – called demons –whose purpose in life is to tempt people to sin. Most temptations do not involve a physical manifestation of the tempter. That is as planned – because demons work best when they have convinced the one being tempted that they do not exist.

Temptation can involve taking a natural desire and convincing the victim that having the thing desired is more important than avoiding the consequences of getting it by means of sin. The more confused the victim is on the theology of sin, or on the existence of tempters, or on God’s holiness – the more likely the temptation will work. Conversely, the more aware a person is in these areas the more likely he will be able to resist.

Societal Pressure

The world around the victim also seems to conspire to lead her to sin. She knows people who have sinned in this way and have not suffered any immediate punishment. Thus, she is more likely to follow suit. Societal mores can be helpful in curtailing certain kinds of immoral behavior. Unfortunately, societies are made up of sinners, and every society has holes in its moral structure. A society can be quite determined to overcome environmental evils, for example, and yet turn a blind eye to human trafficking or abortion.

Societal mores also constantly change, and the difference between right and wrong does not. Right and wrong are based on God’s definition, not that of the latest opinion poll. Both Peter and Paul warned believers not to be conformed to societal pressure, but encouraged them to strive for God’s holiness.[10] Sometimes sinners are convinced to participate in sin because it appears to be the loyal and faithful thing to do. In this way, governments and societies can contribute to the sinfulness of their members.

Deception

High on the list of things which cause sin is deception. In a sense, all sin is committed because of deception. Since every sin must be punished by a holy God, the victim must be convinced that either that is not true, or that what he is being tempted to do is not sin: both are forms of deception. Eve argued that Satan (through the serpent) had deceived her. She was right, but that did not excuse her sin. Likewise, there will be billions of sins committed today, and the victims will have been convinced to commit those sins by means of lies whispered in their ear of taught in the streets.

The source of those lies may be subtle (like an invisible demon or like a science textbook that boldly claims that humans are nothing but evolved animals). The result may not be that the victim is convinced, but perhaps a seed of doubt is planted. The source may be covert, like a theologian who convinces his readers that God is love and could never send people to hell, or the teacher who convinces his followers that God wants them to commit some act of violence.

Ultimately, all these deceptions are orchestrated by demonic beings. In many cases, violence occurs when one human society attacks another based on its perception of truth – taught by demons. The other side responds with the same kind of violence, based on its view of truth – taught by demons. Both sides are being played by invisible hands.

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[1] Rom. 7:9 (LEB).

[2] Peacemaker Ministries, The Leadership Opportunity: Living Out the Gospel Where Conflict and Leadership Intersect. (Billings, MT: Peacemaker Ministries, 2009), 56.

[3] Peacemaker Ministries, 69.

[4] Matthew 23:25; Luke 11:39.

[5] 1 Cor. 5:11.

[6] 1 Thess. 2:5; 2 Pet. 2:3, 14.

[7] 1 Thessalonians 4:4-5 .

[8] 2 Pet. 2:9-10.

[9] For more information, see Gary R. Brooks, The Centerfold Syndrome. (Jossey-Bass, 1995), Richard D. Land, “Porn profits reflect its potency versus even Hollywood, rock music,” Baptist Press (Nashville, May 4, 2001); http://erlc.com/article/pornography/; http://www.internetevangelismday.com/ dangers.php; http://www.helium.com/items/1242976-dangers-of-internet-pornography.

[10] Rom. 12:2; 1 Pet. 1:14.