I took the subway from Manhattan and headed for Harlem. It was a cold, grey January morning. I was to give a stop-smoking presentation to a local neighborhood at one of the borough’s mobile health clinics. But when I arrived, not a soul was around. After I walked up and down for a bit to generate more heat and figure out what was going on, I glanced at the sign announcing my presentation. I had turned up an hour earlier than scheduled. Contemplating the wait in that temperature made the hour seem like three.
Across the road was a greasy spoon blaring out unappealing rock music, but it appeared an oasis of coziness in a bleak neighborhood on an even bleaker day. So there I sat, cuddling my mug of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and thanking the Lord for His presence in the midst of the cacophony. And it occurred to me right then that a few years earlier I would have treated this situation quite differently. I would have tried to tough it out in the cold for an hour, for fear that my soul would be contaminated by those pagan sounds emanating from the juke box. I remember summing up the difference like this: before, there was a “little Jesus” that I kept in my heart, whom I, somehow, had to protect from the world, or He would depart. Now, on this January day in Harlem I realized my perspective had been revolutionized: I saw the Bigness of Jesus, the Universal Christ, Who was protecting me. Before, I was keeping Him in my heart. Now, He was keeping me in His heart. Before, the world could nullify all of God’s grace. Now, God’s grace was nullifying the effect of the world.
Anders Nygren, in his Commentary on Romans, points out that when we view the Gospel through modern eyes, we treat everything it says as if it were speaking about mundane psychological issues. Paul’s crucial words, like, “faith”, “righteousness”, “life”, “peace with God”, are given meanings that were far from Paul’s intention. Faith is thought of as an innate quality in man, a subjective condition required of him for salvation. Righteousness is thought of as a state of moral well-being. Life is viewed as a new spiritual power, and Peace with God comes to mean a state of psychological tranquility. The result of all this is that the Gospel is reduced to something no bigger than ourselves. It becomes the sum total of our thoughts and feelings. If all’s well in our hearts, then God loves us and all’s well with the world. If not, there’s a demon behind every bush.
This is how I saw things in those pre-Harlem days. As a result, keeping the spiritual wolves away from the door of my heart was what the Gospel was all about. It didn’t take long to sense I had a job bigger than I could handle. The best I could muster was to dig in my heels and hold the fort, while making only paltry forward movements at best.
These are the stunningly unimaginative results of psychologizing the Gospel, results that create only soul-shrivelled Christians who do nothing to venture boldly, to grow at risk of failure, and to walk as free men through a world under the regained dominion of Christ.
For the Gospel is larger than ourselves. “When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun” (2 Cor. 5:17 NEB).
Paul reaches the pinnacle of this truth in Romans, chapter five. Adam’s act of turning away from God brought catastrophe upon mankind. Through him the chaos of Sin entered the world (Rom. 5:12) and the horrific reign of Death (vs. 12, 14, 17). Every man, woman and child bears the condemnation of Adam’s sin, for when the head of the human race goes down, the human race goes down with him (vs. 15, 16, 18, 19). Nothing can explain the disproportionate burden of guilt and shame in any single human being but that he carries the awful weight of Adam’s sin upon him, in addition to his own (v. 18). As a result, the fervid intensity of mankind’s daily rounds, whether political, cultural, or personal, is but a portrayal of its desperate attempt to flee the reign of Death.
But God sent a New Man, to be the Father of a new human race under the reign of Life (v. 17). This second Adam’s (1 Cor. 15:45–47) achievements are out of all proportion to the first Adam’s because God’s devotion to Life is never outdone by Evil (Rom. 5:20). One step over the boundary of righteousness by the first man, Adam, brought the disordering reign of Death upon all mankind. But just one life of unbounded love and godliness on the part of the second Adam, Jesus, has brought the grace of God to all (Rom. 5:15). It took only one man’s fall, in which the rest of the world had no part, to bring condemnation upon the world community. Yet it took only one Man’s perfect life, in which the rest of the world also had no part, to absolve the human race of guilt (v. 16, 18). Through the disobedience of the first head of humanity, everyone on earth was declared a sinner, but through the obedience of the second Head of humanity, everyone is declared righteous (v. 19). Our first father spread the pall of Death across the entire planet. Our second Father brings the reign of Life to all (vs. 17, 21).
Thus, Eternity has broken in upon this planet. The present world order has been dramatically and forever shifted.
Christ has done more than change our hearts and save us for eternity to come. Not only do we pray, “Thy Kingdom come” (in its visible reign of glory, Matt. 6:10) but we also exult in the fact that “the time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you” (Mark 1:15 NEB), it “has already come upon you” (Matt. 12:28 NEB). (SEE NOTE 1. ) Christ has “broken in to the strong man’s house” (Satan’s kingdom), “tied the strong man up”, “ransacked the house” and “made off with his goods” (cf. Mark 3:27 NEB). “I watched how Satan fell,” said Jesus, “like lightning, out of the sky” (Luke 10:18 NEB). By means of the Cross, Christ “discarded the cosmic powers and authorities like a garment…and led them as captives in His triumphal procession” (Col. 2:15 NEB).
It’s not surprising, then, that Jesus so confidently says, “Cheer up! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). (SEE NOTE 2.)
But this glorious truth jars against the all too familiar, consuming struggle with sensuality that the addict experiences, and to him, the world seems anything but conquered.
It’s then that faith and sight struggle over who’s got the monopoly on reality, and faith, tragically, often loses out to what appears to be the overwhelming evidence of the senses. Using reason rather than God’s Word, we cannot reconcile the triumphant announcements of the Gospel of the Kingdom and the ever present reality of our sins. “If Christ is victor over the world, what am I doing in this mess?” we ask. When this conflict is not resolved by a truer understanding of Christ’s victory over the forces of evil, then it is not long before we relegate God’s Kingdom to ethereal things that happen in a heaven severely quarantined from earth, or to nice things that happen to a saintly few, while we perceive evil as having autonomous regal power in our lives, and by extension, in the world.
And for our addictions this spells disaster, for if you cannot see Christ as victor already over a world that constantly offers its instruments of addiction; if you cannot see that the forces behind those instruments, while a terrifying enticement, are, in fact, a mere bluff, then you will fight to do what God has already done, and you will spend all your energy trying to hold yourself together and living in fear.
It is not faith that needs to adjust to the senses, but the senses that must line up with faith. For, contrary to every appearance, Christ’s Kingdom of Victorious Grace reigns over good and it reigns over evil. “Every power and authority in the universe is subject to Him as Head” (Col. 2:10 NEB). “His is the primacy over all created things…All things are held together in Him…” (Col. 1:15, 17 NEB).
The secret to understanding this is that until Christ’s return in glory, the Kingdom of Grace, rather than destroy Satan’s power, makes use of it. Christ’s Kingdom has invaded the evil world, completely enveloped and overcome its forces (Mark 3:27; John 16:33; Col. 2:15), and now operates through them. The drama of Joseph’s life illuminates this.
Christ’s Victory has affected the world from its beginning to its end (Rev. 13:8). Thus, as far back as the life of Joseph we see all the forces of Evil being bent to the purposes of God’s Kingdom. Joseph was wrenched from his family by kidnapping. He was sold as a slave, twice. He was slammed in prison on a false rape charge. A servant of Pharaoh, whom Joseph had helped, could have got him out, but forgot. And then, in a dramatic reversal of fortune, Joseph, that morning, unshaven and in dungeon clothes, sleeps that night in the palace of the world’s greatest Empire, now Prime Minister of Egypt, second only to the Emperor himself (Gen. 41:14, 40).
Joseph’s explanation of his life is the first Biblical witness to how God’s invasive Kingdom operates through the evil events of the world. He says to his brothers, You sold me to Egypt, but “it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant…so then, it was not you who sent me here, but God…You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Gen. 45:4, 5, 7, 8; 50:20 NIV). Even though the story explicitly shows that Joseph’s brothers sold him off, Joseph says, It was God who did it.
Clearly, then, two wills were at work in the same event: Satan’s, to harm and destroy; God’s, to bless and redeem. These two wills are not equal forces, each attempting to gain the upper hand. God’s invasive Kingdom is so Victorious that instead of stopping Satan in his tracks, it actually incites him through the virtue of Joseph’s life, then pierces through Satan’s actions, limiting their boundaries and redirecting their consequences “so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men.” (Dan. 4:17 NIV) (SEE NOTE 3.)
In the first two chapters of the book of Job, the curtain lifts on this mysterious interaction between God’s sovereign Kingdom of Grace and the Power of Evil:
God to Satan: “Have you considered my servant Job?” (God incites Satan)
Satan to God: “Stretch out your hand” (Satan urges God to harm Job)
God to Satan: “So be it. He is in your hands. Do not touch his flesh” (God confers power to Satan with limits)
Satan smites Job.
Job: “If we accept good from the Lord, shall we not accept evil?”
The Lord blessed the end of Job’s life more than the beginning (Job 42:12).
From the account in Job, we discover important principles of God’s Kingdom that build faith:
1. In a world of evil, God does not prevent Satan’s actions but employs them.
2. Though the world is evil, Satan can do nothing without God’s permission.
3. When evil strikes, the man of faith sees God as the Primary Mover, not Satan.
4. In the hands of God, the effects of evil turn to blessing.
But it is the Event that defines all other events that stands without precedent in Scripture and the religious literature of all ages, which is the quintessence of God’s Victorious reign over the forces of evil: The murder of the Son of God.
Here stands Satan’s monumental diabolism, stark in heartlessness, as he moves upon men to destroy the One Hope of the world, the One Light to all who sit in darkness (Isa. 9:2; 60:1–3; 42:6, 7; cf. Isa. 61:1 NIV). Yet this crime against heaven was also the offering of God’s Son for the sins of the world (John 3:16). In a verse that recognizes the Two Wills acting in the same event, Peter says, “When He had been given up to you, by the deliberate will and plan of God, you used heathen men to crucify and kill him” (Acts 2:23 NEB).
It is utterly stunning to contemplate this. Christ’s presence in the world provokes Satan to set out to destroy Him (Rev. 12:1–5). Christ does not respond with equal or superior resistance, but actually draws Satan in by submitting to Satan’s agents of destruction: (Matt. 20:17–19; John 10:17, 18; John 13:27). Satan’s act of destruction becomes, in the hand of God, the instrument for the redemption of the world.
In this Dance of Death and Life between Christ and Satan, we see every principle played out that was enunciated in the account of Job: God employs Satan’s actions; Satan can do nothing without God’s permission; when Satan strikes Christ, God is the Prime Mover; in the hands of God, the effects of evil become a blessing.
Thus the greatest evil in history was also God’s consummate bounty to all mankind, for the Kingdom of Grace penetrates Darkness and redirects its consequences.
So a mysterious and awesome vision rests upon the mind: Satan, the Architect of Evil, unwittingly, unwillingly and irresistibly becomes an instrument in God’s hands to unveil His mercy. Whenever Satan moves against God’s children, it leads only to their advancement. The deepest exasperation must suffocate his soul: That the Master Opponent of God’s Grace is being used by the Lord to vindicate it; that he who sets out on his long march of rebellion against Christ’s Kingdom becomes the Chief Agent of its endorsement.
And so, as it was in that greasy spoon in Harlem, so it is with the world of your sexual struggle. Do not approach it with fear. The blessing of God is in it. Jesus has already mastered your struggle and through it He will bring forth your new Self in Him. The Kingdom is upon you in which Life reigns, not Death. Meet each longing, each temptation, even each defeat, with praise, learning from it as you go. It will not kill you. It will bring you Life. In this, Christ’s Kingdom of His Victory, your tribulation does not “prevent” growth; it “produces” (Rom. 5:3), because He has conquered Evil and it can do now only what He says. For the man whose faith sees the Kingdom of God, everything that he previously thought was against him is actually in his favor.
“O depth of wealth, wisdom, and knowledge in God! How unsearchable His judgments, how untraceable His ways! Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been His counsellor? Who has ever made a gift to Him, to receive a gift in return? Source, Guide, and Goal of all that is—to Him be glory for ever! Amen.” (Rom. 11:33–36 NEB).
NOTE 1: The phrase, is at hand, in Jesus’ statement about the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15) has reference to space, meaning that the kingdom has moved into our space and is here; it has arrived; it is among us.
NOTE 2: See Rev. Alfred Marshall’s Interlinear Greek-English New Testament translation (Zondervan Publishing) and The Living Bible.
NOTE 3: See also Judg. 14:4; Job 1:11–16, 20–22; 2:5–10; 1 Kings 19:15, 16; 2 Kings 8:7–15; Rom. 9:17; John 19:10, 11; The book of Esther.