LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Victory Through Defeat
All loss in the sphere of the soul brings spiritual gain.
Rodrigo Abarca
The alliance of the soul with Satan
It may surprise us to verify that, in accordance with the New Testament, Satan acts in alliance with the human soul, making use of its natural and independent activity. Because the soul, abandoned to its own resources, always sets its sights in the things of man and not in those of God. Its vision is as short and narrow as the limits of the self that constitutes it. That's why the soul is the fundamental objective in all God's dealings with man; because, in order for Satan to be completely defeated, it is indispensable for the human soul to be first saved from his domain and influence.
The human mind, separated from Christ, is prone to all kinds of deceiving influences, subtly introduced by Satan to separate Christ's saints. An example of this is all the Gnostics' speculations at the end of the first century about the nature of Christ and His incarnation, in which John discovers the operation of the spirit of the antichrist. It doesn't matter how intelligent a man is, if his soul has not been broken at the root of its natural activity, he will be defenseless against the deceit of Satan. Later history would demonstrate what John affirmed. The revelation of God and the mystery of His will disappeared from the church for almost 1700 years, and in the meantime it was replaced by numberless speculations and theological theories that were fruit of the application of Greek philosophy to the understanding of the revealed truth, and all of it by men of great intellectual stature.
But the human intellect lacks any use for God. It is here that the true root of the whole deformation, darkness and apostasy that would happen to the Christendom through the centuries is found. Christ was expelled from its centre and replaced by theologies, traditions, institutions and teachings born of the human soul and its independent activity. And this is the form in which the mystery of lawlessness operated and continues operating in order to destroy the church.
The resolved will, the illustrious and brilliant mind, the intense and deep feelings are all abilities of the soul which don't require any class of spiritual life. That is their danger, and hence they must be removed as the fundamental motor of the life of the children of God.
This is the only way Satan can be conquered by means of the church. Anything that comes from merely human activity has no power against the wicked one and his spiritual hosts. Only that which comes from Christ and His resurrection life has authority and power to conquer them. It is therefore indispensable that the church stand once again on the ground of the resurrection of the Lord to carry out its task in the present age. But, how can this be carried out?
What God looks for in the soul
God has wanted the church to remain on the earth for two intimately overlapping reasons: the first of them is the full salvation and perfection of the total number of the saints, faithful and chosen, who will conform the bride of the Lamb forever; and the second, the complete and definitive defeat of Satan by means of that very same chosen body. Now then, the knot that unites both objectives is the divine desire that the saints may fully become His sons by means of the free and progressive exercise of their wills in obedience to the revelation of Jesus Christ.
However, it is necessary to clarify any possible misunderstanding immediately on what we have just affirmed. With the before-mentioned we do not want to affirm the legalistic doctrine that man can somehow please God and complete his commandments by means of the effort of his own will. This would be no more than another form of exaggerated activity of the soul. On the contrary, what we want to affirm is that the human will needs to be conquered by means of the operation of grace and the cross upon it; because the will is man's rectoral ability.
We are not, therefore, speaking of the salvation that we have been granted on the sole rightful basis of the redemptive work of Christ and of the faith that, by operation of the grace in our hearts, has been deposited in it. This faith brings us forgiveness, reconciliation, justification and gratuitous regeneration in Christ once and for all and forever. But, this faith still involves a positive act of the will which, under the direction of grace, surrenders freely and gently to the implanted Word which is powerful to save us and to work in us the will of God.
So, the Christian life can be described as an increasingly deeper and freer capitulation of the will (and with it, the whole human soul) by the word of life which operates in the heart by means of the Holy Spirit; about which James exhorts us saying: "Accept with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." It is clear that here the salvation of the soul which is in view is a progressive event. And it is, as a consequence, a synonym of the full conquest of the soul on the behalf of the spirit. The apostle Paul explains this process as growing from faith to faith, or, from glory to glory. It is a progressive movement, experimentally, from death to life; from the soul to the spirit; from the natural life to the resurrection life. Until Christ fills all things, in all and in each one of us (that is, "until Christ is formed in you").
From children to mature sons
John shows us the same truth by means of the distinction between the "children of God" and the "Son of God" (Jesus Christ). In the Greek text of his letters, it uses two different words that are sometime translated with the same word "child". One of them is teknos which was used to refer to a small boy in a formative state and preparation for mature life and the full reception of his rights and paternal inheritance in the culture of his time. Then, the boy became a huios, that is to say, a mature son, with full rights and responsibilities in his father's house.
Now John tells us that to all those who believe in Jesus Christ's name, the Son of God, were given the right of being made "children" (teknos) of God, which are truly engendered of God, because they carry inside them the Son of God's very life. However, the goal of God the Father is that His children grow up to become mature children (huios) into the likeness of His first-born Son. And this won't be achieved by means of an external imitation, but by the Son of God's inward growth in them. Firstly the Son's life which lives in our spirit, transforms us into "children" of God. Then, the growth and the expansion of the Son's life from our spirit toward our being's entirety (the soul and the body) will transform us into "sons" of God. That is to say, into sons who participate in all the privileges and responsibilities of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In this same sense, Jesus Christ is not only by nature the Son of the Father, but also because he voluntarily assumed his condition as Son in response to the Father's love. That is to say, he is the Son of the Father in truth and in love. Since, in an act of love he has made all the desires and purposes of the Father his as His legitimate and true heir. The Son loves the Father and shares the totality of each one of his designs.
The goal of God, therefore, is to bring us to voluntarily participate in all the privileges and duties of the Son of His love. And this participation means to complete, like His Son, the desire of His heart for the present age in its totality. It is in this point that we are divinely introduced into a fuller and deeper understanding of the eternal purpose of God and the means established for its fulfilment. And these means have a vital relationship with what Paul calls the "participation of his sufferings."
The participation of his sufferings
In the first place, the objective of Christ's sufferings was to complete the eternal will of God Father. The Son as heir entered, by means of suffering and death, into the full possession of his inheritance. But, why were such sufferings necessary?
The answer is that only through them could man be recovered for the eternal purpose of God. And Christ, in an exact act of love, understanding and acceptance of his Father's will, carried out the perfect sacrifice that worked our redemption and the complete defeat of Satan. Because Christ's deeper reason, which led him to accept and to drink the cup of the will of God to the last drop, was his love toward the Father. He suffered voluntarily to please the Father. In this sense, an aspect of his sufferings exists which is completely beyond our reception and reach. Because, in a certain sense, the most intimate dimension in his sacrifice was guided exclusively toward God the Father, and could only be appreciated by him. That's why Paul tells us that Christ surrendered himself to God, as a sweet smelling offering and sacrifice.
However, in another sense, it is in this intimate dimension of love and voluntary participation in the execution of His purpose that God wants to introduce us into His Son: "I call you no longer bondmen, for the bondman does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things which I have heard of my Father I have made known to you." This makes our participation in and voluntary acceptance of Christ's cross unavoidable.
What is the essence of the cross? It has always been the operative principle of the divine life, there on the holy ground of the Trinity. The Lamb, it says, was slain from before the foundation of the world. The Son has lived in an eternal negation and donation to the Father's will. Also, the Father has been given to the Son eternally, making him the centre and goal of all that has been, is and will be; and the Holy Spirit has existed eternally to glorify the Father and the Son. These are the essence and the substance of love. None of the divine people of the trinity has ever existed for himself, but for the others.
Now then, if our destination is to participate in the divine life, this principle must be radically incorporated into our being. Sin is the absolute negation of this way of life. The self turns in on itself in such an imbalanced way that it becomes the centre of all activities, goals and human interests. And just as we saw at the beginning, this is the principle that has worked in the whole fallen human race, by whose intermission the devil has control over.
Secondly, Christ's sufferings had as their goal our perfect redemption, destroying sin, death and the power of Satan over the human race forever. He suffered punishment for our sins and received on himself the righteous wrath of God against them. We should emphatically point out that this dimension of his sufferings and the glory that is derived from them belongs exclusively to him. Absolutely nobody can add anything to the redemptive work of Christ. It is perfect and enough to eternally save those who draw near to God through him. He suffered death and we, in exchange for it, receive life. The righteous one suffered for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.
Finally, and in third place, Christ's sufferings were the result of the opposition and hostility of all the forces that are at the service of Satan. From the beginning of his life, the Lord had to withstand persecution of the evil one and his desire to destroy Him (remember the slaughter of the children on the part of Herod). With Him, the Kingdom of God and its will had gone down to the earth and this constituted a challenge and a definitive threat against the empire of darkness.
The apostle John verifies in his gospel the growing opposition and hostility of darkness that was concerting and mobilizing all its forces in a circle of evil which was drawn back like a steel trap, until snapping and killing the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Because behind the opposition of the Pharisees, scribes and main priests and their homicidal intentions, John notes the operation of darkness to destroy Jesus. All the visible powers that acted under the control of the invisible empires met to put an end to Him (the Faithful and True Witness) and His testimony: "For in truth against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thoust had anointed (as King), Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the nations and the peoples of Israel."
But in addition to all that external suffering, the persistent and oppressive temptation of Satan to separate Christ from his path was combined, which brought the most intense sufferings on his human soul: the temptation in the desert; the rejection and incomprehension of the people that he most loved; the betrayal of some of his disciples; the agony of the garden, etc.
And the battle field was his human soul. Because the way in which Jesus Christ conquered Satan was surrendering his soul completely to the Father's will and giving it over to death. "I lay down my life (literally, "my soul"), only to take it up again." This is what Jesus called losing the soul.
In Jesus two classes of life simultaneously operated: the human life or the soul (in Greek, psique), and the divine life (in Greek, zoe). Both are translated as life in English, but in the original Greek text they are clearly differentiated.
The soul of the Lord could be given to death together with his body, but the divine life (zoe) that lived in his spirit could not die. And in it was his victory and his definitive triumph over Satan. Nevertheless, what did the Lord mean by losing the soul? Certainly, he didn't refer to a destruction or annihilation of the soul, in the style of certain oriental religions that consider the personality or the self as something essentially bad and which must be abolished. Rather, he was referring to the necessity for the soul to surrender completely to the divine life and its superior interests. That is to say, the necessity of refusing to live by means of our souls and for our souls, so that it becomes a channel for the full manifestation of the divine life.
To live for the soul is equal to living governed by feelings, the interests and desires of the soul. These feelings, desires and interests can be legitimate, noble and good: the love of parents for their children; the love of a husband for his wife; the desire to serve and do things for God; the desire for affection and mutual understanding; the fear of death, suffering and pain; the necessity to satisfy the biological necessities of our body, that is, to eat, to be dressed, to rest, etc.; in sum, the desire to be happy and fulfilled people. All are things that are part of the soul and are not, in themselves, something bad. What's more, they were originally in the soul to guide it toward the divine life. But we have fallen. And what was good in the beginning, has become a disordered desire to possess, to protect and to defend what we consider legitimate and our own. And through this desire the will of Satan thrives in the world.
Therefore, the soul should be given over to death. That is to say to the negation of all that it loves and wants for itself, which is disorderly, by means of the operation of the cross. "He who loves his life (soul), will lose it; and he who hates his life in this world, will keep it to eternal life (zoe)." "This world" has been built to satisfy the desires of the human soul far from the will of God for it. But, as soon as a man puts a foot outside of it, all the hosts of wickedness will rise up to impede it.
The dark night
However, we were created for divine life, where Christ has the absolute centrality and pre-eminence. Christ faced Satan and suffered, denying himself until the end; refusing to live by means of his soul or for his soul. The agony that, for this cause, he had to withstand is beyond our understanding: "My soul is sorrowful"; "and taking with him Peter, James and John, he began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed"; "My soul is very sorrowful even unto death"; "And his sweat became as great drops of blood, falling down upon the earth"; "and being in anguish, he cried out in great voice..."; "Father, why hast thou forsaken me"?
It was the dark night of the soul for the Lord. John called it a horrendous and terrible night of the cross. And we have been called to participate in it.
Night that pulls the soul toward the darkest of desolate deserts and solitude. Night in which we find God infinitely absent, while we are spinning amid a vortex of darkness and malignancy. Night in which all our scaffolds, supports and strength crumble. Night which makes us naked, and which numbs and freezes us even to the marrow of our being. In short, a night that upsets and confuses us beyond imagination. How can we survive such a night?
Only one form exists: Through Christ and His resurrection life. Because he didn't suffer that night for himself, but to complete the will of God and to suffer the punishment of our sins; and we suffer it because it is totally necessary to be delivered from ourselves and to enter into His resurrection life, in order to become useful vessels for the will and the purpose of God. And it comes as a result of our union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Here is the full salvation of the soul and the utter defeat of Satan.