After Dr Kleinig finished discussing the hymn with us, he talked about the foundation of basic spiritual warfare.
God's law accuses. That is true. And it is good.
Satan is the Accuser. That's what his name means. It's what he does.
How do we make sense of God's good law accusing AND the devil wrongly accusing? Well, Satan accuses even beyond the law. He accuses us of things which the law does not condemn.
The other thing Satan does is remind us of the condemnation due us. He accuses, and his accusations are true. We know we are guilty. We know we have transgressed. We know that Satan is telling the truth [gasp!] when he accuses us of sin. The devil's accusations are not untrue, but his demand for our condemnation IS UNTRUE.
Jesus said, "I will convict the world of ... righteousness, because I go to My Father." The condemnation has been meted out upon Jesus, so the fact that we are guilty in the face of his accusations has absolutely no bearing on whether we stand condemned.
Jesus said, "I will convict the world of ... judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged." Who has been judged? Us? No. The Accuser.
The way to combat the devil is to agree with his accusations, but to stop him when he claims you must be condemned for your transgressions. For example, Luther said that we can tell the devil, "Thank you for pointing out that sin. I'd forgotten that one. Now I can thank Jesus for forgiving that one too."
While websurfing for the title of Kleinig's new book, I happened to run across an online transcript of John Kleinig's lectures at the Gerhardt symposium last month. It figures that I find it NOW, after having already summarized the two lectures. LOL.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment