MID-WEEK MANNA FROM PASTOR NAT’S DESK:
October 11, 2023
God’s Saving Enmity
Part 39
GOD’S SAVING GRACE IMPARTS ENMITY, NOT LOVE TOWARDS SATAN AND SIN
“Ye adulterers adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is ENMITY with God? Whosoever will be a friend of the world is the ENEMY of God. . . . But He giveth MORE GRACE. Wherefore He saith, God RESISTS the proud, but gives GRACE to the humble. SUBMIT yourselves therefore to God. RESIST the devil, and he will FLEE from you. Draw nigh [near] to God, and He will draw night to you. CLEANSE your hands, ye sinners; and PURIFY your hearts, ye DOUBLE-MINDED. Be afflicted and mourn, and weep [not celebrate!]: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. HUMBLE YOURSELVES in the sight of God [not men!], and He shall lift you up [exalt before men and angels].” James 4: 4, 6-10, KJV. The first souls who needed to be saved were the first couple, the father of mankind. It is by God’s enabling, empowering, amazing grace that all sinners—beginning with Adam and Eve to the last rational persons alive before mankind’s second and last probation closes—have and will be saved.
Saved from what? From being deceived, yielding to, and being ensnared by Satan’s consummate craftiness in any of his unnumbered schemes, fierce temptations targeting man’s sinful propensities, inordinate desires, love of self, weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the carnal mind and nature. Hence, God’s messenger emphasizes this fundamental saving truths (all emphases mine and words in brackets mine]:
The grace that Christ implants [through the Holy Spirit] in the soul [of the humble and penitent sinner who ‘hungers and thirsts for Christ’s perfect righteousness] CREATES the enmity against Satan. Without this CONVERTING GRACE AND RENEWING POWER, man would continue the CAPTIVE of Satan, a SERVANT ever ready to his bidding. But the NEW PRINCIPLE [of enmity] in the soul creates CONFLICT [as part of the great controversy of the cosmic drama of the ages] where hitherto had been PEACE.
The power which Christ imparts enables [fallen, sinful, helpless] man to RESIST the tyrant and usurper [Satan working through his evil spirits and human agencies, individuals and institutions].
Whoever is seen to ABHOR SIN [the transgression of God’s law], whoever resists and CONQUERS those passions that have held sway WITHIN [the person’s mind and heart], displays an operation of a PRINCIPLE wholly from above.” E. G. White, Great Controversy, original 1884 ed., p. 325.
To be continued next MWM, God willing. Bless all, NMF.