Satan - An Active Agent
In my last few posts, I explored Adam’s calamity in the Garden. Adam’s sin not only constituted a transgression against God, but it brought about a changed spiritual nature. A corrupted nature that is actually synergized with Satan’s own nature. In Ephesians 2:2,3 we see the following:
Wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit tht now worketh in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh, and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest.
In these verses, Paul recounts the condition of the unregenerate man. He shows us that Satan, rather than being some comical character with a pitch fork drawing laughs everywhere he goes, is an active agent energizing men to fulfill the destructive lusts of their flesh. By nature, the unregenerate man is a child of wrath and Satan is forever poised to cajole him into acting out that nature. Paul’s statement is consistent with what we see Jesus saying in John 8:44:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
One should note that Jesus’s statement was not to some demoniacs living with the madman of Gadera, but to ordinary Jews. Scripture is clear in stating that Jesus’s mission was to destroy the works of the devil which manifestly include Ephesians 2:2,3.
In today’s modern ministry, many prominent teachers and preachers and, yes, even Christian talk show hosts, refuse to speak about the truth of Satan’s dominance over mankind. Some even have said that they do not want to speak of the devil because it might drive people away or because such talk “negative.” That kind of thinking begs the question, “What, then, is the gospel all about?”