God's Convenient Agent

Do you remember the comedian, Flip Wilson, popular years back, who had a favorite expression, “The devil made me do it!” What I am going to talk about here is not easy. Scholars have debated the function of Satan since Bible times. We each have our concepts of Satan and how he works. But in this article I may change your perception of Satan, the devil.

   If we believe the Word of God and the words of Jesus Christ, we must know that there is a literal person in the spirit realm called "Satan" who is at work on human beings in a "cover-up job" – he wants to cover-up our relationship to God. Satan works on people by deception. The Bible calls him the "father of lies".

 

Let’s first get a little background on this person, Satan. Most theologians agree that Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 give background information on Satan. Here are excerpts from Ezekiel chapter 28:

“You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.” (v.12)

“You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, until wickedness was found in you.” (v.15)

Here was a great spiritual being who had all the credentials to please God, and yet he rebelled against God. Quoting more: “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness.”

The root cause of Satan’s sin was his own vanity! Very pleased with all the gifts God created in him, he began to trust in his own abilities to decide what was right and wrong.

Going on in Isaiah 14: “You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, I will raise my throne  above the stars of God…I will make myself like the most High.” (v.13)

Satan’s vanity led him to believe he was good or better than God Himself. And it brought on  consequences that he never expected.

Then comes God’s judgment in Ezekiel 28: “I will cast you to the ground. I will lay you before nations that they may see you. You have defiled my sanctuaries by your many sins…and I will bring you upon the earth in the sight of all men.”

Satan, a spiritual being who could not be destroyed was exiled to planet Earth.

  You may wonder why God placed Satan here on earth in the first place where He intended to create sons out of human beings. Why not sentence him to a prison where he would be out of contact with God’s potential children? Why allow him to try to influence humans?

OK. Let’s move on to how Satan operates now that he is on planet Earth.   

The book of Job in the Bible has been a controversial book. The first two chapters of Job are probably the weirdest and most misunderstood passages in the Bible. But since the Bible is the inspired Word of God, we are to learn from every part of it. But what is Job to teach us? You have probably heard the expression, “the patience of Job”. People think that Job had to have extreme patience to endure all that he did. And this is true. But is this the real message? Others say that the book is a lesson in self-centeredness. It may seem that Job served God in every area through Job’s pride and self-interest. And God had to take him down a peg and show him who was the real boss.

In the first two chapters of Job,  we find God dealing with Satan. And in the rest of the book we find Satan dealing with Job and Job dealing with those around him and dealing with himself. But I believe that the real purpose that God had in mind through the book of Job was to show us how God allows Satan to deal with converted believers who have Christ living in them and have the righteousness of Christ.

In chapter 1:1 we see that Job was a righteousness man. But we know that a man can only BE righteous when he contains the righteousness of God in Christ. Under the New Covenant, this happens when we repent and accept Christ as Lord and Savior. Righteousness is a quality only of God. We do not know how Job came to contain God’s righteousness, but it seems to be by faith as did Abraham, Moses, David and others.

The most controversial part of the book is when God and Satan communicate in the first two chapters. I’m going to use the Message Bible for a colorful accent.

One day when the angels came to report to God, Satan also showed up. God singled out Satan saying, “And what have you been up to?” Satan answered God, “Oh, going here and there checking things out on earth.” Then God said to Satan, “Have you noticed my friend Job? There’s no one quite like him is there – honest and true to his word; totally devoted to God and hating evil? Satan retorted, “So do you think Job does all that out of the sheer goodness of his heart? Why no one ever had it so good! You pamper him like a pet, make sure nothing bad ever happens to him or his family or his possessions, you bless everything he does – he can’t lose! But what do you think would happen if you reached down and took away everything that is his? He’d curse you right to your face, that’s what.” God replied, “We’ll see. Go ahead – do what you want with all that is his. Just don’t hurt him.” (Job 1:6-12)

What a weird conversation! Aren’t God and Satan total enemies?

Satan then does take away Job’s family and possessions.

The same scene between God and Satan is repeated in chapter 2 only it has to do with Job’s health. And God allows Satan to [quote] “Go ahead – you can do what you like with him, but mind you, don’t kill him.”

And Satan gave Job a horrible and painful skin desease.

What’s going on here?  

I believe the book of Job shows us some of the thinking of God about how He would bring about GROWTH in His converted children.

Instead of banishing Satan away, God uses Satan as His “Convenient Agent” on the earth to bring His children into GRADUAL understanding within their soul of their total dependence on Christ to live their life. Even with the righteousness of God within us by our spirit union with Christ, we must grow on a day to day basis within our soul (minds, emotions and will) to always accept and acknowledge the fact of our union with Christ even when our physical senses seem to contradict it.

   Satan has been called the "Evil One" or "Mr. Sin". Sin and Satan have been intertwined into a tight association – and so they should be. But we have to consider what sin really is. There are definitions such as: sin is the transgression of the law; and sin is unrighteousness. But on a more practical and less transcendent level, it is well to consider sin as ANY THOUGHT, WORD, OR DEED CARRIED OUT WHILE UNDER THE ILLUSION OF YOUR OWN INDEPENDENT STRENGTH.

   Sin IS the transgression of the law – when the law is seen to be the way things have been created to work correctly, that is by a dependence and trust in God.

   Sin IS unrighteousness – when righteousness is seen to come from Christ within and not from anything we can achieve on our own.

 

There is one facet of mature experience which is often missed, yet it lies at the root of capability on any level, and no one can be sure of himself without it. Everything in existence is a system of opposites. Darkness is the absence of light. We have positive and negative poles. A thing is only a thing because it has its opposite. It has a right and a wrong and the one has overcome the other. You cannot say a certain “yes” in a decision until you have first canvassed the alternatives and said an equally certain “no” to each of them. The strength of the “yes” is in swallowing up the “no”. And here we have God’s perfect wisdom in the birth and growth of His children, and in having a convenient opposite, the wrong one, the evil one, through whom God would bring His vast family of sons to maturity. To have true sons, they must find themselves in their freedom. They must discover that to be a person there are alternatives and they must make their free choice – and ultimately their right choice – through having first made the wrong one and tasted the consequences.

God is always in ultimate control of Satan. Satan can only do what God allows him to do since all the power in the universe is ultimately in the hands of God. There is no battle going on between God and Satan just as there can be no battle between the convicted criminal and the judge. The judge has the power over the criminal and the criminal must do the will of the judge.

And carrying our justice system analogy even further, on occasion a judge might temporarily “use” a convicted criminal by releasing him from his confinement away from society and allow him to use his criminal expertise to help the court catch another person of more importance. And I believe that this is why there is an active Satan.

In Job chapters one and two, we see Satan, as it were, reporting back to the judge about the status of someone of more importance. Satan’s “mission impossible” is to remove the righteousness of God from Job. And this is an example of how God deals with all converted believers. Every Christian, because of Jesus living in them, is considered righteous by the Father because of Christ’s righteousness, not their human good works.

But every Christian is at a different stage of maturity in their soul, in their understanding of their total right standing with God. So God allows His agent, Satan, to externally influence us negatively in order to drive us to the positive point of total reliance on the life of God through Christ living in us.

1 Corinthians 10:13 says that “God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to withstand, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, so that you may be able to bear it.” God knows exactly where we are in this maturity of soul. And He will not allow Satan to influence you in any way beyond what your level of maturity can handle.

So we, as converted believers, have nothing at all to fear from Satan. God will only allow him to drive us closer in our soul to our best relationship with Christ.

When we slip up and sin, it hurts us! We see the negative effects of it in our lives and it hurts! No one likes to hurt. We see that the cause of our hurting is that we tried to exert independent control with our own human power and we failed. Every sin that hurts brings us closer to total maturity of mind and understanding that life is meant to be lived by a total union of our spirit (Christ’s direction) and our soul (our mind’s acceptance of Christ’s direction), and our body following with it.

I see Job as any converted believer who contains the righteousness of Christ. God deals with Job through Satan on the level of Job’s maturity. And at the end of the book in chapter 42:1-6, Job shows that Satan’s influence has actually helped him toward greater maturity. Because he says, “I see that no thought or purpose of God can be hindered…my eye [my soul] really sees God as He is [that a human being is really meant to live in a union with God receiving God’s total control over his life]…I hate myself and repent.” Job came to the understanding that there was no independent power in Job to run his life. And he hated that false understanding. He repented into a recognition and acceptance of total union.

Since John 8:44 says that unconverted persons are “of their father, Satan”, their spirits are in a union with and directed by Satan’s nature within. This is different from the way that Satan dealt with Job. Here Satan was externally influencing a child of God such as we are.

The secret is to see prosperity in poverty, light in darkness, good in evil. It is to see God in both sides of any pair of opposites. Psalm 139:12 says, “Darkness and light are alike to you.” If you see either side of opposites as outside of God, you are still taking of the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil.”

The secret of contentment is to see that all things are as God means them to be as they cause effects in people.

Romans 8:28 says, “We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Do you believe that ALL things work for good or only those things that have the appearance of good? At some point we must see that all circumstances are God in perfect love action for the redemptive good of all concerned.       

Because of our union with Christ, nothing evil can separate us from the love of God, and nothing good can bring us any closer to God in spirit reality.

Both good and evil appearances have a redemptive purpose in our lives. Joseph saw this, so he told his brothers in Genesis 50:20, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

We must face the fact also that positive circumstances of life can tempt us into the illusion of separation from God as readily as negative circumstances. Feelings of independence and separation from God seem to be quite natural during periods of success, health and apparent “good”. So you see that good, and health, and victory can be imposters as much as evil, sickness and defeat.

A quotation from Rudyard Kipling from his poem “If” hits this point: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat these two imposters the same…the earth is yours and everything in it.”

The key is simply acknowledgment of His presence in all things. It begins as we learn to praise Him in all situations, even those we cannot understand or rationally justify it. Somehow most of us cannot initially handle the truth that God actually uses negative evil as well as positive good. We find it necessary to attribute the power of evil to an “evil power”. We tend to equate evil to our personal concept of what “hurts” us or what is “comfortable” for us.

What is the catalyst that finally brings us to that greater awareness and that fixes our understanding as to His presence in ALL things? ADVERSITY! Man’s adversity has always been God’s opportunity. The evil which Satan influences in a converted believer is allowed of God – and God is eternally involved in the “correction” of His sons.

A Christian (one who is “in Christ”) will never face punishment for his sins. Notice that I said “punishment” and not “correction”.

Punishment is a penalty imposed on an offender for a crime or wrongdoing. It has retribution in view (paying someone back for what he deserves). Punishment is looking back to the offense, is impersonal and automatic, and its goal is the administration of justice.

Correction or discipline, on the other hand, is totally different. Correction is training that develops self-control, character and ability. It is looking forward to a beneficial result, is very personal, and individually applied. Punishment and correction sometime “feel” the same to the one on the receiving end! But the sharp difference can be seen in both the attitude and the goal of the one applying it.

Under the New Covenant, God never deals with His children on the basis of punishment. All of the punishment of God for our sins was fully received by our Savior, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Now that we are children in the family of God, He deals with us only on the basis of correction.

OK – now that we understand that Satan is only God’s agent, let’s look a little at Satan’s game plan. Let’s compare truth and deception.

First, God’s truth for unbelievers is that they are sinners – they have no ability to live a “good” life by their own independent power.

Satan’s deception for unbelievers is that they are NOT sinners – they can live a reasonably “good” life by trusting themselves.

Another truth for unbelievers is that they are guilty – they have need for a Savior not only to avoid the punishment for their sin, but to keep them away from future sin.

Satan’s deception for unbelievers is that they are NOT guilty – therefore they have no need for a Savior. The “bad” things that they do are just “human nature” and are to be expected.

A third truth for unbelievers is that their Savior is Jesus Christ.

Satan’s deception for unbelievers is that Jesus Christ was a better than average man but had no power as a savior.

A fourth truth for unbelievers is that God is a caring, loving forgiving Father.

Satan’s deception for unbelievers is that, if there is a God, he is very harsh and judgmental.

 It must be understood that Satan, by using or not using religion, will do everything he can to get men to a place of satisfied human living without being born again and changed from a child of Satan to a child of God. The thing that Satan doesn't want above all is conversion and new birth. This is why there are multitudes who don't understand what it means to be "born again", even though many of them ARE genuinely born again into God's Family.

     For a Christian, Satan's nature has now been put out and he can now only exert an external influence in the Christian life.

Satan can only attempt to distract the child of God away from the awareness of who he is in Christ. This is done by the only way that Satan knows, the illusion of independence. Just as with an unbeliever, Satan uses feelings of independence.

   HE WILL TRY TO COUNTERACT THE TRUST AND DEPENDENCE A CHRISTIAN HAS IN GOD THROUGH CHRIST. Now, how does Satan work on converted believers?

First, God’s truth for believers is that they are forever “saints”, children in His family, children needing correction, but children never to be forsaken or disowned.

Satan’s deception for believers is that they are NOT saints but still sinners unable to get their act together even when they call out for help from God.

Another truth for believers is that they are not to let guilt overwhelm them in their sin because correction, not punishment, will come from a loving Father.

Satan’s deception for believers is that they are guilty of sin. Satan reverses his technique of no-guilt in unbelievers and tries to establish as much guilt as possible in the Christian mind. He says, "Look at what you did there with that sin! After all God has done for you, you go and do a thing like that! You're never going to please God. God is hard to satisfy. What makes you think you could ever act like Christ? No matter what God says, you have no salvation and will probably die in your sin.”

A third truth for believers is that Jesus Christ has come to dwell in and lead a Christian in a relationship to be established on a daily basis.

Satan’s deception for believers is to bring the whole spirit realm into question by subtle influences. He tries to make the visible world seem to be more real and attractive than the spiritual.

A fourth truth for believers is that as God’s child, the Father is now my Dad, my protector, my provider, the source of unlimited unconditional love.

Satan’s deception for believers is that you are just another human being fighting the ways of the world and can never live up to the love of God.

   And how is this going to work out in day to day living by a Christian? There will be sin (a slip into independent wrong) externally influenced by Satan. And when this occurs, Satan will say, "There! See! You're not so good after all! Look at the bad things you do. Why even a lot of unconverted people are better than you are! A saint? Hah! This union and trust in this God of yours is foolishness!" Satan will try to tear down our Family security, our secure salvation.

   There are several tricks that Satan plays on Christians to keep them from the understanding of their rebirth in Christ. One of these is that Satan, by religion, will offer to the Christian a plan for "reformation". In fact, different religious groups offer innumerable ways by which man can live a better life, be happier, and prosper without giving up self-management. But reformation is not even in the picture when it comes to the description of union with Christ. While children in God's Family will, in time, show great change, this is the outworking of the Spirit and not the bringing of some great change in the self.

   Another trick Satan plays on Christians by religion is encouraging them to become "religious". Now that God has been so good to them, it is only right, he says, that they try to please Him by working hard in their own strength to do good works. This can lead to Christian "burn-out" – a spiritual fatigue caused by neglecting quiet time relationship with the indwelling Christ.

   After all this has been said concerning the probable thoughts of Satan, it would seem as if there is a continual battle between God and Satan. But the truth is that God is ever in control of Satan. God could at any time wipe out Satan's existence.

In conclusion, we as Christians cannot in truth say that “Satan made me do it!” Satan is only allowed to exist by God as a convenient agent of God. Satan is allowed to present the dark side of life in order that we may see the contrast with the brilliant light of God. And every “no” that we choose to say to the dark side drives us closer to saying “yes” to the lifestyle of the Father. “Yes” Father, I understand your ways. “Yes” Father, I am happy to live as your child.

 

My prayer:

Father, we come to You as your children, some as babies spiritually, some as young adolescents, and some more mature fathers and mothers. But wherever we are in our growth of understanding, we have this in common: We LOVE you for all you have done on our behalf. We THANK you for being the awesome God of the universe as a whole and also of our personal lives in particular. We have a bigger picture now of the working of Satan and his darkness, and long to see more of the brightness of your glory. And we ask this in the name of our indwelling Lord and Savior, Jesus.    Amen.