The Devil In us

It Is Truly Amazing that in these days of high technology and “enlightenment” there are still many churches that adhere to the doctrine of a personal devil. They claim that this evil power, along with his angels, was cast down to hell after an aborted rebellion and attempt to take over heaven. With the nether regions of the underworld as their headquarters, the immortal archfiend and his many demons spend their time snatching men’s souls to feed their cruel fires. This whole picture is nonsense and entirely scriptural.

The Bible devil

Yet “the devil” does appear in the Bible, so it would be foolish to ignore the issue. Brother Peter Watkins in his excellent book, “The Devil the Great Deceiver,” put it so well: “We know, of course, that there is no personal, supernatural devil and it is sometimes necessary for us to join issue with those who naively contend that the scriptures teach that this monster exists. But we ourselves are being scriptural if we say that there is no devil at all. Do we seriously imagine that no positive purpose was intended by the inclusion in the New Testament of so many passages concerning the devil? Surely they are designed to teach us something; we must be missing important truths if our only interest in these passages is to explain them away.”

Identification of the devil

Christadelphians have proclaimed for well over a century that the devil is none other than human nature that inherited the propensity to sin from the fall in the garden of Eden. Let’s face it; the truth is that the devil is alive and there is a little bit of him in all of us. It’s that instinct that looks out for number one; that desires luxury and power and fame instead of contentment, fellowship and caring; that secretly smiles when the high-flyer next door finally gets what’s coming to him. It is that part of us that leads us to sin against God and each other. It is the perverse thoughts that arise from that devil within us that lead to problems.

“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (James 1:13-14). Jesus’ words are definitive in showing that it is a man’s own thoughts and not an external agent that defile him:

There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him.. .for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness All these evil things come from within, and defile the man (Mark 7:15).

Viewed from this perspective, it is understandable that the apostle Paul cried: “Oh wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from the body of this death?” For him, as well as for us, the answer could only be: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:24-25).

The writer to the Hebrews declared that the Lord “might destroy him that had the power of death that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). Herein lies our hope; Jesus faced the same foe that has defeated us so many times and defeated him soundly through death. By our baptism we figuratively put the old man (sin/devil) in our body to death and now try to serve our Master: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:6).

Worrying about the devil

Most of us do not spend a lot of time worrying about the devil or Satan. I submit that we should. Perhaps the reason this personification appears in the Bible is to make us see just how serious is the contest that we face daily. We have an enemy, an adversary who seeks a cause by which he may accuse us before God. This enemy is all the worse because we can’t run and hide; he is within us.

Paul counseled the young disciple, Timothy, how to deal with those who had fallen into the devil’s traps:

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will (II Tim. 2: 24-26).

It is worth noting that Paul described those who had succumbed to the guiles of the devil as opposing themselves. This can only mean they had capitulated in the battle against sin and had changed their allegiance to become, in effect, the slanderer (the literal meaning of the Greek diabolos)! At all cost we must avoid a similar fate. Giving up the struggle in the striving against our nature in the fight for our lives and joining the enemy is the ultimate tragedy.

The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by this persistent adversary is to recognize we cannot rely upon our own strength but must lean upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Our resolve should be to relinquish the teaching and behavior of “old man,” sin, so revered by the world, and refocus upon the truths that we learned from the scriptures:

If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:21-24).

Paul is more specific as to the readjustment needed in his letter to the Colossians:

Put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him (Col. 3:8).

The old man of flesh is the devil who rules in the world of men. The new man, created in righteousness and holiness, is Christ through whom the victory over the enemy is achieved.

The accuser banished

In the great courtroom scene in Romans 8, there are none who accuse or condemn; the power that might do so is excluded by God, who has justified us in his Son, and by Christ, who also intercedes for us. There is great comfort for us in the concluding words of Romans 8:

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us (Rom. 8: 31-37).

If we remain steadfast to our calling then the devil in us can be continually overcome through forgiveness in Christ.

Making the choice

The choice is ours as to whom we will follow: Christ or the devil. If there’s ever any indecision about which direction to take, all we have to do is come back to this memorial meal, and remember the Lord’s life, struggle and victory over sin. How he:

Made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:7­11).

At times, we all become disheartened at our failures to overcome the dictates of our nature. It is good to remember that we can partake of the emblems of the Lord’s body with joy in the knowledge that through his death and resurrection, the victory over the wiles of the devil came through the forgiveness of our sins.