A Fragment on Why Unbelievers Seem to Subdue Sin

And the reason why a natural man is not always perpetually in the pursuit of some one lust, night and day, is because he hath many to serve, every one crying to be satisfied; thence he is carried on with great variety, but still in general he lies towards the satisfaction of self. John Owen, Mortification of Sin in Believers, in The Works of John Owen, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 24.

Those of us who have walked long in the church are often horrified at the eruptions of sin within the church both among the laity and clergy. We look across at the orderliness and often even kindness of the world with jealousy and frustration. 

Our generation is not alone in this experience. The Apostle Paul and the church throughout history cries out, “there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans” (1 Cor. 5:1). Too often we can say the same of greed, backbiting, gossiping, and pettiness.

Our friend and brother, John Owen (1616-1683) suggests a partial explanation of this blemish upon Christ’s bride. The world, the flesh, and the devil, do not focus their efforts against the unbeliever. The battle against his soul has been won. The non-believer flies the flag of the kingdom of Babylon. What need has she to strafe her allies with concupiscence and grotesque sensuality?   

Yet for the Christian the battle continues. Thus, our enemies must focus their combined efforts on particular weaknesses within us. In the same way that armies mass themselves at a weak point for conquest, so the enemies of our soul attack the least guarded or most vulnerable citadel. Having dominated one stronghold, sin then establishes a foreign base of operation, launching each new attack from the safety of our compromised soul.

Here lies the explanation of these consuming sins that implode within the church, but seem to trickle in the world. And our Lord gives us two instructions to overcome:

Matthew 26:14—Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Watch by discovering your besetting sins and the means by which they overpower; pray against your desire for the pleasure of sin and the habits and avenues of temptation. Pray to the Spirit to strengthen your spirit for the day and hour of temptation so that you have victory in Jesus. Pray against the agreeing parties of your sin—the world, your own flesh, and the devil. 

Our time of watching is until the return of Christ or we are called home. Indwelling sin, the world, and the devil will not rest until we are present with the Lord. 

Folded into the command to pray and watch is the discipline of confession: 

1 John 1:9—If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Sin is a complexity of desires, self-deception, pleasures, and comforts. Each attribute of sin when acted on is sin, and to “confess our sins” is not merely to confess theft, but rather we must confess the emotions, the desires, the lies, the machinations, the self-pity, disbelief, and on and on that leads to grotesque sin.

We cannot confess our iniquities exhaustively. They are more than the hairs of our head (Psalm 40:12). Our plea is to the great physician of our souls who knows the movements and symptoms of our sin better than we do. Healing power is found in agreeing with the physician not in sharing his knowledge of our infection.  

The world experiences the peace of the defeated; the Christian is roiled by war and bears the scars and wounds of the skirmishes won and lost. We mortify sin not by an attack on an enemy but on the armed forces encamped against us—within and without. 

A Fragment of Sublime Simplicity from Luther

One has sinned, Another has made satisfaction. The sinner does not make satisfaction; the Satisfier does not sin. This is an astounding doctrine. 

Lectures on Isaiah Chapters 40-66 in Luther’s Works, vol. 17 (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 1972), 99.

There is much to be said both for and against Luther (1483-1546), but he speaks to us of Jesus and he treasures the only gospel. 

We have sinned against an infinite God. Infinite in power. Eternal in wisdom. A burning fire of holiness; if the universe was sacrificed to appease the wrath of God (Isa. 40:14-18), it would be as nothing. The eternal duration of hell is merely the just approximation of our infinite debt. Eternal punishment in the scales of justice is merely just. It is the least possible and the only possible punishment.

And the Son infinite in power, holiness, and love comes and satisfies God as man for sinners. He stoops down and places himself under the law, he lives as man beneath the yoke of suffering without sin; he dies upon the cross without sin. He draws into time infinite satisfaction for sinners. 

We have sinned, Another has made satisfaction. We do not make satisfaction; the Satisfier does not sin. This is the gospel. It is astounding. 

A Fragment on Chesterton and Synergism

Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (reprint, 2004; New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1908), 50. 

Above we have a clever quote; it sparkles with Chesterton’s wit and smashes with his blunt force; the statement is pregnant with great truth and some terrible lies. 

Oscar Wilde was an early public homosexual and defender of pedophilia on the Greek model (post-pubescent boys). He died young in part because of the punishment for his use of rent-boys, the notoriety of his crime, and in part through an artistic listlessness. He was also a brilliant writer and wit, but neither as clever nor wholesome as Chesterton. 

Rather than exposing the repugnant nature of Chesterton’s rhetoric and theology, I’d like to make the statement exhaustively true with some additions and changes:

Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; Jesus Christ paid for sunsets. We can applaud for them by admitting we are Oscar Wilde in our sin and by striving to be like Christ. 

Oscar Wilde in all of his sin was a great admirer and experiencer of beauty. He rejoiced at the pretty and the sublime. Some of his writings are the laughter of Puck and some words edge near eternity. He valued sunsets, a silken ascot, and the brush of mink. And he is right exhaustively so, we do not value sunsets as we ought, because we do not understand what we will pay for them or what Christ paid for them. We do not pay for them now and cannot. 

In as much as Wilde valued things as good and experienced and rejoiced over them in their natural innocence, he accepted and traded in the gifts of heaven. Or as James tells us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (James 1:17).

The word of God, a book respected by Chesterton in an incomplete way, tells us that the “Wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). And so the thing that Oscar Wilde and we deserve for our sin is immediate death—spiritual (Eph. 2:1), physical, and eternal (Rev. 21:8). 

What Wilde experienced in his physical life was only spiritual death. And even that spiritual death contained within it some pleasures both of the senses and the heart. God forbore full punishment of Wilde’s sin while he was alive, allowing him a rich diversity of unearned gifts including sunsets. 

This legal space between Wilde’s birth, “dead in trespasses and sin” (Eph. 2:1), and his physical death and the judgment (Heb. 9:7) was purchased by Jesus Christ on the cross (Rom. 2:4, 3:25-26, cf. Acts 17:30). Jesus died in part so that Oscar Wilde could write The Picture of Dorian Grey and  The Importance of Being Earnest and so that he could enjoy sunsets and wearing what looks to my untrained eye like a bearskin coat with almost hysteric irony. 

On Wilde’s death he began to pay for sunsets. But the payment was for enjoying them without worshiping the God who both created him and paid for the privilege. Or as Abraham told one of his wayward children in hell, “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish” (Luke 16:25). 

And now we come to the living; we cannot pay for sunsets in this life. We cannot purchase them because the price for them has been paid. The thing that we can do is recognize that we are Oscar Wilde in our sin. 

The thing that separates us from Oscar Wilde is not human nature. Paul describes both Wilde and us in identical language in Romans 3:10-12, “as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 

There is no difference then between Wilde and us in our natures. The difference is only in the grace of God. I’ve never used the services of a rent-boy or defended pedophilia in a court room because of the grace of God. And if you haven’t indulged in those sins, it’s the same for you.  

Repenting of you sins is turning to God and recognizing that apart from the grace of God there is no good within us. We are Oscar Wilde in our sin. And Jesus has promised to save the Oscar Wildes of the world. 

The second thing to note is that once the Spirit of God is within us and has changed our hearts so that we can believe (Rom 8:7-10), we still cannot pay for sunsets. Or as Paul and then Augustine thunder out with such incredulity, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7) 

The thing that we can do is applaud. We can stand before the crimson, azure, purple, fuchsia, sunset and thank God for the death, resurrection, and accession of his Son, and we wonder at the good things God has given us in Christ and in this world, and thank him. He is good. 

It is only here after we have recognized ourselves as potential Oscar Wilde’s and observed the goodness of God in Christ that we then move to the next step which (Col. 3:5) is to strive to be less like Wilde in his sin. But again not as payment rather simply as worship. 

A Fragment on Scholasticism or a Plea of a Scholastic Believer

The active immutability of God, the ever-living and eternally unchanging interpenetration of the divine persons, translates into the divine willingness, without a shadow of turning, to make us partakers of that gloriously inalterable and living incorruptibility. We are most fortunate that in the incarnation God is not engaged in a work of self-realization but in the redemptive working-out of his eternal glory: incarnation is, in its immutable purpose, God with us and for us. Such doctrine, I would hope, will never be viewed as “subevangelical.” Our piety must not falter before the first paradox, the involvement of immutable God, because on the first rest the second, the transformation of death into life, of corruptibility into incorruptibility. 

Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism, Westminster Theological Journal, 45 (1983), 40.

Richard Muller is here responding to an essay by Clark Pinnock, “The Need for a Scriptural, and therefore Neo-Classical Theism.” Pinnock’s argument is that the traditional conception of God as immutability, atemporal, and so forth are pagan philosophical imports.

For many Bible-believing Christians there is a ring of truth to Pinnock’s statements. The God of systematic theology can appear a cold and distance deity. He may, especially when the vocabulary is unfamiliar, poorly defined, and not applied to worship seem dead. 

Further, the proponents of the mutability of God almost always rely on first-sight readings and common sense arguments. 1 Samuel 15:35, “And the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.” The Son of God was not Jesus of Nazareth in 5 BC and he became the Jesus in 3AD, therefore the Son of God changes. It certainly sounds like God changes. 

But the issue as Muller and to a lesser degree Pinnock points out is:

The issue concerns the logical and theological priority of one set of statements over another. Do we read statements concerning divine repentance as dependent for their meaning upon logically prior statements concerning the absence of change in God, or ought we to read statements concerning the absence of change in God, or ought we to read statements concerning the divine constancy as meaningful only when qualified by a doctrine of actual divine repentance? (31) 

To put it into terms of our life experience: the husband who says he loves his faithful wife as he is divorcing her to marry a younger woman is lying. And we know this because behind the statement “I love you,” are prior actions that define and explain the meaning and purpose of the words. 

In terms of theology, Christians must draw “ontological and essential conclusions from texts which speak of the ethical, moral, intentional, and volitional constancy of God.”  These “ontological and essential conclusions” require a vocabulary that relies on Scripture but is not found in Scripture. And they must be tested by their reasonableness within a scriptural framework. Theological construction and canonical interpretation (the word “became” in John 1:14 is defined by canon’s conception of God and not the immediate context alone) are necessary.

We must do this because for God to be the person he describes himself to be he must be immutable. Or as Muller summarizes, “A God who repents as human beings repent not only falls short of immutability, he also falls short of omniscience” (33). 

The entire point of the Muller’s closing paragraph, which begins this essay, is that the only God that can save us is an immutable, Trinitarian, incarnate Son, indwelling Spirit, and instigating Father. If God is not those things, then there is no salvation, and “our faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (1Co 15:17-18).

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “But in fact,” the God of the Bible is unchangeable, eternal, omnipresence, one, spiritual, self-existent, all knowing, invisible, wise, truthful, good, loving, timeless, beautiful, and blessed. And so we are saved. 

A Fragment on Two Types

Allegory, largely typological, pervades both the Old and the New Testaments. The events in the Old Testament are ‘types’ or ‘figures’ of events in the New Testament. In The Song of Solomon, for instance, Solomon is a ‘type’ of Christ and the Queen of Sheba represents the Church: later explained by Matthew (12:42). The Paschal Lamb was a ‘type’ of Christ.

Scriptural allegory was mostly based on a vision of the universe. There were two worlds: the spiritual and the physical. These corresponded because they had been made by God. The visible world was a revelation of the invisible, but the revelation could only be brought about by divine action. Thus, interpretation of this kind of allegory was theological. 

J. A. Cuddon, s.v. allegory, in Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Group, 1998), 22.

The above quote has some flaws, but the source is not a biased ‘Christian’ but a rather an important writer and scholar. Considering the worldview of the writers of both the Old and New Testament, he concludes that typology is a necessary hermeneutical device for understanding the authors. 

Let’s see if we can prove portions of his definition from Scripture. 

Romans 5:14, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”

Adam was a type of Jesus Christ. The Greek word is tupos and from it we gain our English word type. All English translations that I have available to me as well as lexicons agree that it should be translated using topological language: type (ESV, NASB, NET, RSV), pattern (NIV), figure (KJV, NKJ), prefigured (NJB). 

Thus to understand Paul we must to move into literary vocabulary to talk about typology: if Adam was the type and then the Son of God was the antitype. The antitype, archetype, or prototype is the figure from which the type is drawn.

The clearest illustration of New Testament typology is found in Hebrews 8:5, speaking of the earthly tabernacle and Mosaic worship: “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’” 

The idea is simply that earthly types are “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” In the same way we find the source of a shadow by starting at the edge and traveling towards the thing casting the shadow, so Christians are supposed to start at the edges of good things and trace them to their source in heaven. The shadow, the type, is always sustained by a thing casting the shadow or the archetype. 

In the Bible the antitype, the archetype, or the prototype of godly things reside in heaven. The ideal or archetype of marriage is found in Christ’s relationship to the Church: thus Paul writes, quoting from Genesis 2: “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church,’” in Ephesians 5:31-32. God the Father is the model of godly Fathers. The example of godly sons responding to godly fathers is found in the Son of God Jesus Christ our Lord, and so forth.

Yet the Bible presents a second type from a source outside heaven: We read about them in 2 Peter 2:4, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. . .” 

Jesus Christ established their leader as the model or type for unbelievers in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Two ultimate destines cast their shadow upon this world. Two eternal dwelling places glow with fire and the occupants, architecture, and ways of life cast their shadow into the temporary world of appearances. And both provide spiritual sustenance to their devotees:

The prophet Isaiah speaks this way, reading from the King James Version, at Isaiah 28:15, “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. . .” 

And we find the same in Moses’ writing in Deuteronomy 32:31-22, “For their rock is not as our Rock; our enemies are by themselves. For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison; their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps.”

Perhaps, it would be helpful to remember at this point that Sodom and Gomorrah has been destroyed more 400 years before Moses wrote these words. Sodom and Gomorrah function as patterns of life that draw their inspiration from hell. Sodom and Gomorrah’s pattern provides comfort to those who will dwell there. 

We can then safely conclude that typology is not merely a hermeneutical strategy like literalism or the four-fold allegorical method of the medieval period, but is imbedded in the text and the worldview of the authors. Typology is the way writers and historical characters in the Bible think. 

A Fragment by Thomas of Aquinas (c. 1224-1274) - Four Kinds of Fear

Definition of Fear: “fear bears on two things, namely, the evil from which someone flees through fear, and whatever seems to be the source of that evil” (215).

Worldly fear: “sometimes it happens that the evil from which someone recoils is contrary to a bodily or temporal good which a person sometimes loves inordinately and recoils from having it injured or destroyed by a mere man. This is human or worldly fear and is not from the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Lord forbids such fear: do not fear those who kill the body (Matt 10:28).”

Fear of punishment: “There is a second type of fear which recoils from an evil contrary to created nature, namely, the evil of being punished, and shrinks from having this evil inflicted by a spiritual cause, namely, by God. Such fear is praiseworthy in at least one respect, namely, that it fears God. . . But insofar as such fear does not recoil from an evil opposed to one’s spiritual good, namely, sin, but only punishment, it is not praiseworthy. It has this short coming not from the Holy Spirit, but from man’s guilt.” (215-17).

Initial fear: “There is a third type of fear which recoils from evil opposed to a spiritual good, namely, from sin or separation from God, which a person fears to incur from the just vengeance of God. Thus it bears on spiritual goods, but with an eye on punishment. This is called initial fear because it is usually found in men at the beginning of the their conversion. . . . This is the fear mentioned in the Psalm: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10).

Chaste Fear: “The fourth type of fear has its eye entirely on spiritual things, because it fears nothing except separation from God. This is holy fear: the fear of the Lord is holy, enduring forever and ever (Ps 19:10). But just as initial fear is caused by imperfect love, so this fear is caused by perfect love: perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

Romans 8:14-17, Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans (Lander: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012).

A Fragment on Skepticism: Uniformity as a Linchpin

Luke 20:27-33—There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

In the Jewish world of Jesus’ day, the Sadducees were the most skeptical. Their understanding of the Old Testament focused on the “literal” or normal meaning of the words (cf. The Problem of Literalism: Spinoza) and prioritized the first five books as more authoritative then the rest of the Old Testament.

Their method of interpreting the Bible lead them to “deny that there is a resurrection” (Luke 20:27) and reject angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). We are informed by the Pharisee and Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37- c. 100) that they rejected the “belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades,” and the sovereignty of God (The Wars of the Jews, 2.8.14).

In our day, we would identify Christians holding these views as liberal. The Sadducees were obviously skeptical of the more fantastic claims of the Bible, and they leaned heavily towards the materialism of Epicureanism (Acts 17:18). And in this tendency, they are similar to moderate evangelicals and liberal Christians.

The Sadducees’ basic argument in their question of Jesus is something like this: it is absurd to believe in the resurrection because of the potentially silly and horrifying possibility of seven husbands squabbling over one wife. Yet the linchpin of their argument is the assumption that in the resurrection human relationships will be defined as they have been since the fall. The scenario they create is only laughable if current experience remains identical in the future.

Note how Jesus responds: “And Jesus said to them, ‘The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:34-36).

Jesus attacks their skepticism by pointing out that in the age to come there will be a decisive break in human relationships. He finds no absolute uniformity and therefore no preposterous conflict at the resurrection. Jesus goes on in the text and corrects their wooden literalism by arguing that “the dead are raised even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush.”

Like modern skeptics the Sadducees laugh at what is taught in the Bible as absurd; yet their argument extrapolates from current circumstances to the future, and then they “prove” the Bible leads to preposterous or immoral conclusions. The Lord overcomes this by arguing from revelation against future uniformity.

Yet there are wider connotations of assuming future uniformity within Scripture: the strategy of pressing current experience into the future is linked by the Apostle Peter to assuming past uniformity in 2 Peter 3:4-6:

They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

It is here that we come to an important modern application. In our day the reigning philosophical system is Epicureanism as popularized by Charles Darwin and maintained and modified by the public consensus of scientists, academics, and the media. For modern Epicureanism or scientific materialism to have any explanatory power, it must assume the uniformity of nature.

And so they do. Absolute uniformity. An unbroken chain of physical causes started by a quantum event leads from the Big Bang to the end of the universe. A universal history is then taught in which everything is explained by physical causes alone. Anyone who believes anything else is a simpleton, fundamentalist, knuckle dragger, because it’s ridiculous to believe anything but what popular scientific consensus currently teaches.

There are two issues that need to be observed: the first is that it’s never absurd to believe God. If God is who he claims to be in the Bible, there is nothing sentimental or unreasonable in believing his testimony about the lack of uniformity in the future and in the past.

Second, natural uniformity cannot be proven by the scientific method. Or as the philosopher Anthony Flew wrote in his second edition of A Dictionary of Philosophy under the term “uniformity of nature”: “A principle used in attempts to justify induction in particular and science in general. It is usually expressed as ‘the future will resemble the past’. . .However, to be a principle on which induction can be rested, the uniformity of nature must not itself rely on inductive justification.” He then goes on to argue that for the statement the “future will resemble the past” to be true induction is necessary and that at best the uniformity of nature is a claim.

Philosophical jargon aside, the uniformity of nature is a claim and not a fact or philosophical principle. The supposed absurdity of disbelieving in the uniformity of nature is not caused by reason or facts, but by the faith of those who believe in uniformity. When skeptics, ancient Sadducees or modern neo-Darwinists, mock believers for trusting the Bible’s account of creation, the introduction of death, the destruction of the pre-diluvian world, souls that will never die, the intermediate state after death, the approaching “new heavens and new earth,” they do so because of their faith and not the facts.

The way Jesus, Paul (Acts 17) and Peter argue against skepticism is by proclaiming and believing the claims of Scripture against the scoffers’ claims of uniformity. If we are followers of Jesus and imitators of Paul and Peter as they follow Christ (1 Cor. 11:1), we must to do the same.

A Fragment on the Spiritual Disciplines: Satan’s Armor

Christians speak much of the armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:13-15). The armor of  God prepares us “to withstand in the evil day” (v. 13) and  “extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (v. 16).

Yet Christians forget that the Bible teaches that Satan has “armor in which he trusted” (Luke 11:22). Satan has a faith or a system of beliefs which protects from God. And he shares these beliefs with his spiritual children. Satan’s defense mechanisms range from bold proclamation of atheism (Psalm 10:4), to magical spells (Isa. 47:9), to misinterpreting the Bible for a sinful earthly advantage (Mark 10:7-13) and self-righteousness (Luke 18:10-13) before God. For his followers, for instance the Pharisees, it includes spiritual disciplines like prayer (Matt. 6:5) and fasting (v. 16), and reading and applying the Bible (Mark 12:24; Matt. 9:13).

The belt of lies, the breastplate of wickedness, shield of disbelief, and a heart of stone all defend Satan and his followers from comprehending their doom and repenting. Satan’s armor functions as an explanation of spiritual and earthly events that defends against the witness of nature, the conscience, the Spirit, and God’s Word.

Because the purpose of the armor is not truth but comfort through self-deception, there’s no need or possibility of a coherent or single system of spiritual disciplines, philosophy or theology as a whole because sin is irrational (Eccl. 9:3). The sound of one hand clapping or something coming from nothing comforts only those who reject God.

We are born wearing Satan’s armor (Gen. 8:21). We remove it by repenting of our sins and trusting in Jesus Christ as the ultimate means of safety in this life and in the life to come.  We “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14). Thus we exchange the habitual defenses of Satan for “the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11).

Yet once saved, we can still “present our members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness” (Rom. 6:13). The Greek word translated here as “instruments” can also be translated as weapons. Thus we can pick up the weapons and armor of the flesh (2 Cor. 10:4). We can use the good things of God to destroy rather than to build up and defend (2 Cor. 10:8). And thus Satan taught his disciples to pray (Matt. 6:5), fast (6:16), and to misuse the Bible

To overcome this fleshy tendency to take off the armor of God and to pick up the armor of Satan, we must approach the spiritual discipline with a posture of dependence on God (Rom. 6:13) and mercy towards our fellow man (Matt. 9:13). Our safety is never found in having done devotions, but because God sustained us in devotions. We pray not for earthly power, but for the strength to honor God. We love our fellow man in mercy not because he is loveable, but because we have been forgiven much (Luke 7:47).

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, teach us to put on the armor of God and to not put on the armor of evil one. Teach us to come to you alone for safety and keep us from being deceived. Forgive us for those times that we have defended our hearts from your Spirit and your Word with Satan’s armor. Help us to have mercy on our neighbor as you have had mercy on us. Amen.

A Fragment on the Problem of Evil with Augustine

"But neither to the good angels do these things, except as far as God commands, nor do the evil ones do them wrongfully, except as far as He righteously permits. For the malignity of the wicked one makes his own will wrongful; but the power to do so, he receives rightfully, whether for his own punishment, or, in the case of others, for the punishment of the wicked, or for the praise of the good." Augustine, On the Trinity, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), pg 61, 3.8.13.

If God punishes willing sin with sin and purifies the saved through suffering, God is then just in empowering and maintaining the conditions whereby sin can exist so that willing sin can be punished and the saved purified. In both the case of the sinner and the righteous something good is happening, because the wicked are being punished by sinning and the righteous are purified by being sinned against.

God’s justice requires that he only empower or maintain that which is good and empowering sinners to sin is their punishment and is therefore just. By empowering we (Augustine and I) don’t mean direct action but energizing or maintaining the conditions whereby Satan or a wicked person can act. God establishes the good by grace (unmerited Divine intervention for good) and allows evil by withdrawing grace. God softens the heart with grace and justly hardens the heart by withdrawing grace.

Textual Defense:

Sinning is a punishment for willing sin:

Psalm 81:11-12—But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.

All things work for the good of the righteous:

Romans 8:28—And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

God sovereignly controls wicked actions for the good:

Genesis 50:20—As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Strength/Weakness:

The depths of the “mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:7) are greater than this. The statement explains God’s justice after the Fall, but not before. Yet as a rational defense for God’s justice in current conditions, it should comfort the saints and befuddle the enemies of God.

A Fragment on Lust

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

CXXXIX

The expense of the spirit in a waste of shame

                       Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

                       Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight;

                       Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the maker mad;

                       Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof,--and proved, a very woe;

                       Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream:

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

                       To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.  

Comment:

I doubt that Shakespeare was born again, though I would be delighted if he knew and walked with Christ. Even so, there are two great benefits to this poem:

The first is a biblically informed, beautiful, and accurate meditation on the destructive nature of the passions and the conscience’s knowledge of lust. Each of us is aware that we want things that we ought not to want. 

These desires are liars from the moment we contemplate them; they are the foundation of all lies, murder, and cause wholesome shame. Civilization and all of its benefits are undermined by the pursuit of them, and they endanger all human relationships. 

The moment we consume the delicacy (Ps. 141:4), we recognize that we have acted unreasonably and we are enmeshed in cascade of tensions, stupidity, and purposeful manipulation to extract ourselves from the consequences. We hate ourselves for the consuming, but we know that will want the thing again and more. Further, the “passing pleasure of sin” (Heb. 11:23) will only increase our desire for more until we and all that we love are destroyed. 

Second, this poem illustrates beautifully the common grace element of the Western tradition’s meditation on coveting or lust. Both of Shakespeare’s traditions, the Christian and the pagan philosophers—as meditated through Plato and Aristotle and even the more careful Epicureans—, understood that human appetites were potentially destructive to the individual and the wider society.

Because the West has denied the truth of both Scripture and the pagan philosophers, two things await us—social chaos and tyranny. If we will not allow God to rule we must deny reason, and if we deny reason and God, nothing awaits us but a hellish earth and in eternity the Lake of Fire. 

Application: 

Press this sonnet against your heart. Allow it to inform and strengthen your conscience, sensibilities, and life. Our intellects have the power to observe and restrain the appetites by redirecting, reformulating, and replacing them. 

If you are a Christian the Spirit of God is within to help you, but he requires that you both cooperate with him (Gal. 5:25) and call upon him for assistance (Ps. 101:2). The Spirit of God works both subconsciously and through the formation of the intellect in conformity to the Scriptures. And so while he waits ready to help you overcome; the means that he offers are faith and conscience conformity to his word. 

My non-Christian friends, you know this sonnet is true. History and current observation prove the human appetite unlimited. An infinite hunger within a finite being is only extinguished on two conditions: death or by being satisfied with God. This is the spiritual seed of death is within the human heart or mind which combines with the biological. We destroy ourselves because of what we want. I ask you to reconsider the claims of Christianity.

If you will not be satisfied with God, please consider channeling your passions through the ethical systems and teaching of the more sober-minded philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant. They can teach you to suppress your hunger and offer some pale imitation of the Divine.