Two antagonists are at hand-grips in every one of us. On the one
hand, the 'God of peace,' on the other, 'Satan.' If you believe in
the personality of the One, do not part with the belief in the
personality of the other. If you believe that a divine power and
Spirit is ready to help and strengthen you, do not think so lightly
of the enemies that are arrayed against you as to falter in the
belief that there _is_ a great personal Power, rooted in evil,
who is warring against each of us. Ah, brethren! we live far too much
on the surface, and we neither go down deep enough to the dark source
of the Evil, nor rise high enough to the radiant Fountain of the
Good. It is a shallow life that strikes that antagonism of God and
Satan out of itself. And though the belief in a personal tempter has
got to be very unfashionable nowadays, I am going to venture to say
that you may measure accurately the vitality and depth of a man's
religion by the emphasis with which he grasps the thought of that
great antagonism. There is a star of light, and there is a star of
darkness; and they revolve, as it were, round one centre.
But whilst, on the one hand, our Christianity is made shallow in
proportion as we ignore this solemn reality, on the other hand, it is
sometimes paralysed and perverted by our misunderstanding of it. For,
notice, 'the God of peace shall bruise Satan _under your feet_.'
Yes, it is God that bruises, but He uses our feet to do it. It is God
from whom the power comes, but the power works through us, and we are
neither merely the field, nor merely the prize, of the conflict
between these two, but we ourselves have to put all our pith into the
task of keeping down the flat, speckled head that has the poison
gland in it. 'The God of peace'--blessed be His Name--'shall bruise
Satan under your feet,' but it will need the tension of your muscles,
and the downward force of your heel, if the wriggling reptile is to
be kept under.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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