Is a Born Again Christian Still Evil
This article is also available and sold equally a booklet.
This sermon series includes the following messages:
By John MacArthur
We must remember, showtime of all, that God's Word is our only reliable source of truth about Satan and demons.
Princeton theologian and scholar Dr. Charles Hodge rightly warned:
No amount of learning, no superiority of talent, nor even the pretension to inspiration, can justify a difference from the . . . truths taught by men to whose inspiration God has borne witness. All teachers must be brought to this standard; and even if an angel from heaven should teach anything opposite to the Scriptures, he should be regarded as anathema, Gal. one:8. It is a thing of constant gratitude that we have such a standard whereby to endeavor the spirits whether they exist of God (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972], p. 395).
What does God's Word, the touchstone of truth, say? Tin demons inhabit or spatially indwell a true laic? Can they walk through an open door and become a squatter? Proponents of today'south spiritual warfare motion say aye, just they base their answer on subjective experience, not on God'due south Word. The Bible makes information technology clear that such a merits has no justifiable basis.
There is no clear instance in the Bible where a demon always inhabited or invaded a true believer. Never in the New Attestation epistles are believers warned about the possibility of being inhabited by demons. Neither do we see anyone rebuking, binding, or casting demons out of a true believer. The epistles never instruct believers to cast out demons, whether from a laic or unbeliever. Christ and the apostles were the but ones who bandage out demons, and in every case the demon-possessed people were unbelievers.
The collective instruction of Scripture is that demons can never spatially indwell a truthful believer. A clear implication of 2 Corinthians 6, for example, is that the indwelling Holy Spirit could never conjugate with demons:
What harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I will dwell in them and walk amid them; and I will be their God, and they shall exist My people" (vv. 15–16).
In Colossians 1:thirteen, Paul says God "delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His dear Son." Conservancy brings true deliverance and protection from Satan. In Romans 8:37, Paul says we overwhelmingly conquer through Christ. In 1 Corinthians xv:57, he says God gives us the victory. In 2 Corinthians 2:14, he says God e'er leads the states in triumph. In 1 John two:xiii, John says we have overcome the evil one. And, in 4:4, he says the indwelling Holy Spirit is greater than Satan. How could anyone affirm those glorious truths, even so believe demons can indwell genuine believers?
DEMON POSSESSION AND True CONVERSION
Many of the leading voices in today's spiritual warfare movement are too quick to hail every profession of faith in Christ as proof of conservancy. That reflects the like shooting fish in a barrel-believism that has swept this generation.
A thorough biblical agreement of the doctrine of conversion makes information technology articulate that demons could never indwell or possess a believer. Jonathan Edwards wrote about true conversion:
Scripture describes conversion in terms which imply or signify a change of nature: beingness born again, becoming new creatures, rising from the expressionless, being renewed in the spirit of the listen, dying to sin and living to righteousness, putting off the quondam man and putting on the new, condign partakers of the divine nature, and so on.
It follows that if in that location is no real and lasting change in people who think they are converted, their religion is worthless, any their experiences may be. Conversion is the turning of the whole homo from sin to God. God tin can restrain unconverted people from sin, of course, but in conversion he turns the very heart and nature from sin to holiness. The converted person becomes the enemy of sin.
What, so, shall we brand of a person who says he has experienced conversion, but whose religious emotions shortly die away, leaving him much the same person as he was earlier? He seems as selfish, worldly, foolish, perverse and un-Christian every bit ever. This speaks confronting him louder than any religious experiences tin can speak for him.
In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither a dramatic experience nor a quiet one, neither a wonderful testimony nor a dull i, counts for anything. The but thing that counts is a new creation (The Experience That Counts! p. 99).
In Matthew 12, Christ rebuked those who were following Him just for the sake of witnessing bang-up signs and wonders:
When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, information technology passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find information technology. Then it says, "I volition return to my firm from which I came" ; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in society. And so it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and alive there; and the concluding state of that man becomes worse than the commencement. That is the way it volition besides be with this evil generation (vv. 43–45).
Instead of responding with spectacular signs and wonders, Christ addressed their demand for salvation. Many people appear to have their lives in social club. But in reality, they have not trusted Christ as Savior and Lord. Their souls are "unoccupied" — that is, the Holy Spirit does not indwell them. Thus they are open up to demonic invasion. That cannot be true of those whose bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. ii Cor. half dozen:16).
According to 1 Peter 1:5, when Christ reigns in a person'due south life, that person is kept by God's power. Equally a result, "the evil 1 does non touch on him" (one John v:18). When the Holy Spirit inhabits a person, no demon can set business firm every bit a squatter. Indwelling by demons is but evidence of a lack of genuine salvation.
This article originally appeared in Pulpit Magazine , an online mag of the Shepherds' Fellowship , Grace Community Church .
Source: https://www.gty.org/library/questions/QA191/can-christians-be-demonpossessed
Post a Comment for "Is a Born Again Christian Still Evil"