“Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” II Corinthians 2:10-11
“Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the Devil’s schemes.” Ephesians 6:11
For thousands of years, nations and armies have worked hard at trying to discover their enemies’ battle plans. Spies, moles, binoculars, telescopes, seductresses, cameras, satellites, balloons, planes and drones have all been employed to get an advantage over the “other guys.”
Christians and churches have a formidable enemy. He’s stronger, smarter, older and more experienced than we are. He’s a defeated foe: doomed to destruction and destined to fail. But he fights on desperately, he’s gunning for us, and we allow him to defeat us far too often.
We have thousands of years of experience at seeing his plans in action. I’ve seen so much carnage myself, and I’m not even one century old.
These posts will not go into great detail on any of these schemes, but they will give you an outline and some great Scripture references for further study.
(1) Division – The age-old divide and conquer strategy
This scheme works so well for the Devil that he scarcely needs to employ any other method of attack. If the football team can run the ball up the middle and gain five yards every time, why would they do anything else?
Here’s a classic warning from the Apostle Paul to a beloved team of church elders:
“Keep watch over yourselves and all flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.” Acts 20:28-30
If I understand Paul correctly, doctrinal deviation, heresy, is not the heart of the problem here. As usual, “the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.” The individuals Paul warns about are motivated primarily by selfish ambition: the desire to get their own disciples (Titus 3:10, III John 9) not by doctrinal deviation (which I will write about later).
There is so much that can be said about this subject of course, and so many New Testament passages that deal with this concern. Don’t miss Ephesians 4:3 and Philippians 1:27-2:4.
But the climactic passage on the subject is John 17:20-23 (see also John 13:34,35, spoken earlier on the same evening) where Jesus explains that united churches send the watching world a powerful message about the heavenly origin of Christ Himself and the heavenly origin of the love seen among God’s people.
This is so wonderful, but the “flip side” of this profound truth is that our disunity amounts to heresy, it tells the world outside the church that Christ and Christians are bogus religionists. What a bizarre teaching for a church to be proclaiming! Chalk up one for the Devil.
Will we ever stop letting our enemy employ this tactic? Will we ever learn?
(2) Debauchery – “Excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures”
This is another strategy that our enemy has used effectively for literally thousands of years. Its effectiveness is due to the fact that every merely human follower of the true and living God, ever, has been infected with the hideous power of sin. The Devil has a “foothold” in every one of us. Corresponding to the sin within us is the equally insidious world system around us which – in any century in any nation – makes it exceedingly easy for us to slide into a life of debauchery (I Peter 4:4).
Moses is on the top of the mountain receiving the law of God while the people at the bottom of the mountain are indulging in a wild, sensual party (Exodus 32).
The prophet Balaam can’t curse the people of God, but he figures out how to corrupt them, nullifying their effectiveness for God with debauchery (Numbers 22, 31:16, Revelation 2:14).
Fast-forwarding, the Apostle Paul must write to the Romans and warn them about antinomianism, the lawlessness that results from completely misinterpreting the ramifications of the grace of God (Romans 6).
The same broken-hearted missionary has to warn the Corinthians that persons practicing debauchery have no place in their church because they have no membership in the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 5:9-13, 6:9-11).
(3) Deformity – Older Christians who fail to grow up
Little children are so cute that they can get away with just about anything: breaking things, spilling things, taking their clothes off, saying outrageous and insulting things. At least if they’re your grandchildren, it’s all good.
But if they never grow up, it’s not cute anymore.
When the Apostle Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthian church, probably with tears in his eyes, the first thing on his mind was their disunity (1:10-17) but the root cause of the problem was their immaturity (3:1-4:7). I remember how surprised I was when I first studied this passage and discovered that the Corinthian believers – whom Paul scolds severely for their “baby ways” – had only been believers for about five years. Paul expected significant progress toward maturity in five years of discipleship (see also Hebrews 5:11-6:3).
My next eye-popping realization was that in those five years, they had been blessed with, possibly, the two most effective preachers – Paul and Apollos – on the planet. Clearly, the secret to Christian growth has little to do with having great pastor-teachers!
The result of their scandalous immaturity was the scandalous disunity described and denounced from I Corinthians 1:10 through 4:7.
While we can’t directly attribute the “failure to thrive” on the part of countless numbers of Christians on our enemy, this is no doubt something he encourages by way of false teachers and teachings (I Timothy 4:1, Galatians 3:1-5, 4:8-20), pride (Revelation 3:124-22, I Corinthians 5, Philippians 3:1-3) and complacency (Philippians 1:9-11, 3:1-21 and Hebrew 5:11-6:3).
The Evil One knows that anything that keeps us immature in Christ keeps us deformed, disabled, distracted and divided. Chalk up another one for the Devil.
Next Week: I’ll share three more of the Devil’s plans – and you are welcome to contact me about the ones that I miss. This is important stuff.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
- Does our church function like a “squadron” of soldiers of Christ, aware that they are under surveillance and under attack by a powerful enemy?
- What are we doing now, or could be doing, as church leaders, to promote the kind of church unity that the New Testament calls us to?
- Do we take threats to our unity seriously? What do we do when we are made aware of disunity issues in our flock?
- Are all of our members aware of the church’s stand on moral issues?
- How do we encourage and enable growth in Christlikeness?
- How do we communicate that we expect growth toward Christlikeness?
