How to get an elbow shot on the devil

While browsing Facebook one day, I came across this gem. A man sits looking quite grumpy when the devil pops up behind him and says "Go on and sin just one more time. You're saved by grace, not by works. Remember?" And I thought to myself: That devil is in the perfect position for that guy to fire off one heck of an elbow shot.

Of course, in reality, taking Satan on in hand to hand combat isn't really feasible. He is an invisible enemy, and invisible enemies require more unorthodox methods of combat. How do we fight Satan? Jesus had a rather effective method. In Matthew 4, Jesus goes out to the desert, where Satan meets him. There, Satan tries three times to tempt Him. The carrot Satan dangles? "It is written...". Satan quotes Scripture. Jesus' response: "It is written again...". Jesus puts Scripture back into context. This is what we need to do too.

So, how would we deal with this particular attack? It's actually a very common one. It is both a non-Christian objection to the Christian concept of grace, and a genuine temptation Christians can face. What we first need to do is note that the devil missed out a rather significant element in his reasoning. He says "you're saved by grace, not by works". What did he forget? Faith. We are saved by grace, through faith, not by works. That's like saying we run by electricity through batteries. No battery = no electricity. Satan forgot the battery.

Faith is what gives us the benefits of God's grace. Unbelievers, who have no faith, are not saved by God's grace. The offer is there for them, as it was for us, but because they have yet to put their faith in God, they are not saved by grace, regardless of their works. So, we need faith.

The problem is that the Bible has quite a lot to say about what faith is. The kind of faith the devil is describing, James calls dead faith. "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?" (James 2:14). The problem we have, then, is that only a certain kind of faith, true, living faith, allows grace to cover us.

Throughout the Bible, we actually see a range of false converts. Some see the Holy Spirit as a thing to be bought or sold for profit. Some are vain and preach for their own ego. Some have intellectual faith, akin to Satan's. Some just take it as a novelty, and will eventually fall away. There are a variety of ways to have faith in God, but only one of them is real: The type that naturally produces the fruit of the Spirit.

The thing with Christianity is that, while works are not necessary for salvation, neither to gain or to keep it, they are inextricably linked. You do not have to be baptised to be saved, you should get baptised anyway. You do not have to flee sexual immorality to be saved, you should flee anyway. It is even theoretically possible to kill someone and remain saved, but there are just no feasible circumstances under which a truly saved individual would consider premeditated murder.

This is because saving faith brings with it a brand new mindset. In effect, the day a Christian gets saved, they "die with Christ" and become a new creation. We enter a war with sin. And so Paul tells us that, while it is theoretically possible to sin all the more to make grace abound (Romans 5:20-21), it is just unthinkable (Romans 6:1). For the Christian, grace is a safety net. A guardrail. It protects us from falling, but what sane person would test it out?

As the Lord said, no man can serve two masters, for you will love one and hate the other. If you love God, you hate sin. If you love sin, you hate God. Faith is basically love for God. He died to take the punishment you deserve. That cross is where your sin is. When you look at it, do you really think "you know, that's exactly what I want?" No! A sane person would think "wow, I really dodged a bullet there... Maybe I shouldn't stand in front of that gun again."

Therefore, do as John's first epistle says: Do not sin, but continue to believe. If you sin, we have advocate with the Father, but how about we make that job as easy as possible?