A Question of Ownership

To whom do you belong? Who calls the shots in your life? To whom have you surrendered your will? Where are your desires and affections centered? What is the most important thing in your life?

It should be obvious to all of us that there are two forces contending for our minds, wills, and bodies. There is an unending struggle within us—the desire to do what is right and the desire to do what is wrong.

On one hand God’s Spirit strives with us, calling us to righteousness—a righteousness that is not our own but is imputed to us through faith in his Son. On the other hand, “the world, the flesh, and the devil” lay claim to our allegiance and our actions.

When our risen Lord commissioned the newly converted Paul to go and preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, the object was that they might “turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). God’s love for mankind demands a change of allegiance from Satan to God.

Jesus repeatedly spoke of Satan as “the prince of this world.” In Ephesians 2:2 Paul calls him “the prince of the power of the air,” and the Apostle John says, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

It is a solemn thought, and one we hate to admit, that we are either Satan’s slaves or Christ’s; that either our interests are confined to this world, which is perishing, or we have set our minds “on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2); that unless we have submitted to the Lordship of Christ, we are under the dominance of the devil.

I can hear the indignant rebuttal: “I alone decide what I will do. I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.”

But the Bible makes it plain that there is no third state of existence for man. In Galatians 5:19–24 the “works of the flesh” and the “fruit of the Spirit” are definitely catalogued, and there are no gray areas of life between the two. Those who claim to live a “moral” existence dominated neither by the lusts of the flesh nor by the claims of Christ are merely living in a fool’s paradise of self-deception, for our Lord says, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30).

Herein is a deep spiritual truth that the world does not recognize. The Apostle Paul affirms, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed upon us by God.… The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:12, 14). Through ignorance I may ignore the law of gravity, or through ignorance I may go against the laws of health. As a result I may fall to my death or become ill. I do not actually break these laws; they break me.

Just so, in the spiritual realm, neither ignorance nor deliberate rejection can nullify the fact revealed in God’s Word that our lives are dominated either by Satan or by Christ.

Satan’s dominance is not necessarily evidenced by those gross sins or crudities of life that even the unregenerate may recognize and denounce. His control can be seen in pride and arrogance, in sophistication and social graces that look no higher than the accomplishments of man.

On the other hand, the reality of the Lordship of Christ may still be marred by an incomplete surrender to his will.

It has been truly said that a man’s condition may be known by that to which he turns after falling into sin—whether to the Lord for forgiveness, cleansing and restoration, or back to the rule of Satan.

Being a Christian is a full-time occupation, with Christ at its center. Christ is the one who lifts our eyes beyond the horizon of self and this world. Without him, man is world-centered and self-centered—and that is all Satan needs for his purposes.

But even for the Christian, things are not all black or white. The half-surrendered Christian is a miserable person, trying to serve two masters. Only with complete surrender to and identification with Christ does there come the peace of God in one’s heart—a peace that passes all understanding, that the world can never know.

A consideration of this subject naturally brings up the question of demon possession. Our Lord’s earthly ministry frequently involved the casting out of evil spirits. Are there people today who are possessed by demons? I firmly believe that there are. Whenever a person deliberately chooses to follow the dictates of this world, he lays himself open to the danger of actually inviting demons to take over in his life—not merely a passive living in the realm of Satan and unconsciously doing his bidding, but a known and deliberate surrender to a course that in his heart he knows to be evil.

There are psychological and psychiatric conditions that are caused by purely physical and mental irregularities and that need medical treatment just as do other ailments of the body. But it is my belief that there are also conditions where the basic problem is demonic, and nothing less than the presence and power of the living Christ can give relief.

Furthermore, cases like these may be found where education, culture, art, affluence, and sophistication are in their fullest flower. None of these is sufficient to insulate one from the grossest surrender to the “world, the flesh, and the devil.”

Remember, man is a responsible creature. God has given him the right of choice, and knowingly or otherwise he makes the choices that determine his present and his future. Either he puts his hand “in the hand of the man from Galilee” or he walks with the one whose way leads to destruction.

The primary concern of the world is self-preservation. But Jesus says, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that they have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes. I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4, 5).

If Satan can induce men to regard him as a joke, it is easy to make them follow blindly in his deadly wake. When we consider such men as Charles Manson, it is not hard to believe in demon possession. When we look at his “family” and their surrender to his suggestions to the point of multiple, premeditated murder of people whom they did not even know, we see something of Satan’s power over those whose wills are surrendered to him.

In these days when the occult, spiritualism, and devil worship are to be found in new and even unlikely places, it should make us glad to turn to the One who leads in the paths of righteousness. Otherwise there is left to us only the broad way that leads to destruction.

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