Satan's Trick

OK. We have been born again by accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of our lives. Christ has come to join His Spirit with our human spirit giving us His divine nature. He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). That’s all well and good – in fact it is fantastic!

So then, what about those continual pulls that we still have to that old garbage in our soul intellect and emotions – those invasions of fear, hate, worry, lust, self-seeking and weaknesses? We are still alive to Satan’s subtlest assaults on us. The subtle trick occurs when we feel those constant pulls on us and we go back to the old habit of trying to fight them off. Bang! We have been caught back in the old habit of thinking we are independent, and thus need to respond to an “ought to” or an “ought not”. This is the subtle trick. And the moment we think that, we are caught up in false condemnation. That “ought not” only reaches us because we have slipped back into thinking we should be watching ourselves, running our own lives and combating the wrong pulls.
That is where Satan has his laugh on us. There we are struggling and condemned, or maybe following through to some actual sin.
Why? Here comes Satan’s final subtle trick. We are tricked into thinking that having those pulls is sin; whereas the real sin is the slip into thinking we are again independent selves who must control our lives in our own strength. The real sin is forgetting WHO we really are!
Paul tells us in Galatians 5, “Walk in the Spirit [in recognition of your spirit union with the indwelling Christ] and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.” We are Spirit people in union with Christ, but still flesh in our human soul and body, and thus open to all Satan’s pulls on us in our soul-body emotions and appetites. So now what happens? We are Spirit people bearing Spirit fruit and loving to be so, but we now also feel the pulls and desires of the flesh with this Satan-filled world attracting us back to his self-for-self ways.
Forgetting Christ and being in the lie of independent self temporarily puts us back under Satan’s trick. But all Satan has created is the illusion of separation from Christ.
The one and only way to handle worldly pulls is to suddenly remind ourselves of WHO we really are – Spirit of Christ bound and Spirit of Christ led, our self expressing Himself. We then say, “Wait a minute. Of course I am not an independent self feeling these pulls of Satan. That is his lie. No, I am a Christ-self.”
I do not deny or fight the reality of my flesh pulls which, by the way, Jesus continually had according to Hebrews 4:15. But I am dead to them in Christ. They can shout at me by temptation, but have no hold or right to me. I am alive to God, a Spirit person and led by the Spirit.
Through Christ in me, the Spirit has replaced that old “law of sin and death” by which I spontaneously did the things of the flesh.
So in the midst of these pulls, I go free – back to WHO I have been since my new birth. This is Paul’s definition of daily freedom under daily flesh-assaults or pressures. By admitting Satan’s right to pull at us through the flesh, we are also free to affirm our right to our divine nature in Christ. We swallow up the negative pulls, or rather use those very pulls to express His pulls: love replacing hate; faith replacing fear; rest replacing strain; strength replacing weakness; self-giving replacing self-gratifying; and so on.
We don’t deny or resist the temptation. Instead, we resist the tempter by saying. “That’s not me you are pulling. That’s only my outer soul emotions and bodily appetites, which of course are open to all that can reach me from your outer world. But I am not a bunch of outer responses – I am in union with Christ. He is the real Self expressed by my human container self.”
As I do that, I am in fact seeing myself in my true self-relationship of Christ in me. And as I do that, the consciousness of myself as a Christ-expresser swallows up the negative consciousness of Satan and his pulls on me.
Light swallows up dark. We don’t fight the dark; we recognize its right to exist, but we replace it by turning on the light.
Our danger, then, is not the fact that temptation pulls us. We shall always have plenty of that on all levels. The danger is that it tricks us back into our old ways of thinking before out new birth.
And if we are tempted to think, “But yes, we are constantly assaulted by the same things,” then we equally say, “And yes, that gives me continual practice in recognizing again and again WHO I am – Christ in me!”

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