So often God does the unexpected and creates the difficulty to help us become what He made us be: trusting and dependent worshipers. His ways of grace are beyond human capacity to fathom, yet the patient and obedient child of God is eventually able to look in the rearview mirror and see divine orchestration of his or her life.
“Sola fide” is therefore the best news man could ever hear. JESUS DID THE WORK FOR US! His righteousness is permanently imputed to us the moment we receive Him as Lord and Savior (see II Corinthians 5:21)! When God the Father looks at a believer, that’s what He sees: CHRIST’S righteousness, not our wretched sinfulness! No wonder Satan has opposed and perverted this fantastic truth so vigorously all these millennia!
Even though Satan’s carte blanche rule over man was broken at Calvary (Colossians 2:15), it’s obvious from what Paul has written that God nevertheless grants Satan and his subordinates a measure of freedom to tempt, stress, press, even afflict believers at times. God’s intention of course is that we learn to depend on Jesus, donning the full armor of God so we can recognize and resist every scheme, every attack, every temptation of the evil one, coming to maturity in Christ.
Concerning the mind and God’s Word, we’re told that Satan can effectively attack and seize the minds of non-believers (II Corinthians 4:3-4) as well as believers (II Corinthians 11:3-4)! It’s clear then that Satan’s modus operandi is mind control! Think about this: If the devil can chart the entire course of human history through mind control, he can certainly manipulate an individual like a feather in the wind!
Our focus, our preoccupation, must be the greatness of Christ and the joy of serving Him. Before James ever says “Resist the devil” he says “Submit to God!” (James 4:7) When we are challenged or opposed by the evil one, we need to respond and not retreat. We’re learning how to do this from Paul’s instructions in Ephesians 6.
If there’s one thing virtually every human being is good at, it’s worry! Do you think the devil is aware of this? Worry is one of his most clever temptations! Being anxious is just what he wants us to do because worry is a form of idolatry! In the final analysis, worry is nothing more than taking an object, person, circumstance, etc. and making it bigger than God! Folks, that’s idolatry!
Spiritually, Satan attacks the heart (and the mind). The heart is the core of our being; the seat of our affections. Satan attacks here in an attempt to distort our view of God. For Christians in particular he attempts to obscure and rob us of the knowledge of who we are in Jesus Christ.
The apostle James says, “…Resist [stand firm against; withstand] the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) You see, we’re not to fear the devil nor are we to go looking for him (he knows where we live!). James simply says we’re to “resist” him; we’re to stand firm when he comes around. He is a creation of God, subject to us through Jesus Christ. The question is “How do we take a stand against this formidable foe?” In Ephesians 6:10-18, the Apostle Paul tells us how! Paul says we are strong in Jesus as we don the full spiritual armor of God. Paul then presents this armor, piece by piece, in verses 14-18.
Sometimes we suffer and fail needlessly as believers in Jesus Christ. It’s stunning to me how often we go down in defeat — only to see, after the fact, our defeat could have been avoided! True, we often fail because we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. But a major caution in Scripture, an avoidable pitfall, is spiritual deception; believers being duped by the devil.