If God won the War, Why isn't It Over?

A Problem with Many Sides

The activity of God since Lucifer's rebellion in heaven has had but one goal: to eradicate sin from the universe. And all of the activitiey of God's sanctuary -- illustrated by the eartly and carried out in the heavenly -- has been in service of that same goal.

But sin is a problem with many sides. To see the sin problem as too simple is to expect too simple a solution. Our study of the final judgment will only frustrate us unless we see it in the context of all that God is doing to eradicate sin. And in order to do that, we must have a clear picture of the nature of the sin problem.

At its very core, sin is a problem of relationships -- broken relationships between God and His people. but in only one way can Satan either cause or maintain a broken relationship between free, thoughtful creatures and their Creator. And that is to deceive them about the character of their wonderful God. The fundamental activity of Satan is to lie, to delude, to mislead minds. And his primary focus of attack in on the frontal lobes of the brain.

Jesus labeled him a liar by nature -- indeed, the very father of all lies. His power over the nations has been through deceit. Satan drew away more than a third of the angels of heaven, misleading them into choosing his tyranny rather than God's fairness. Using the very same method -- implying untruths about God, that he might tear down their faith in Him -- Satan enticed our first parents into rebellion. Seven times in the book of Revelation, Satan's last-day activity on this earh is identified as deception.

To know God is to love Him and trust Him. Satan therefore fears nothing more than that people might come to a knowledge of the truth. Not "truth" in the abstract, but truth about a Person. Sin, therefore, has both its origins and its continued power in deception about God.

To help us keep track of these various parts of the sin problem, let us consider the first element of a diagram which we will continue to develop in this chapter:

The Sin Problem

When deception reaches its target -- the minds of God's free creatures, and they choose to believe it -- the result is a shattered relationship. Trust in God gives way to skepticism, loyalty to rebellion, and intelligent submission to defiant independence. That dignified, mutual relationship between God and His people is known as "faith," and Satan's deceptions fracture faith. No longer seeing God as One whom they can trust with the lordship of their lives, His prodigals strike out to set up separate sovereignty over their oen lives. Their resulting stupid and self-destructive behaviors are not the real sin problem. They are but the result. The real sin problem, the very heart of the matter, is the broken faith relationship.

More than anything else, it is the broken faith relationship with His creatures which has greived the heart of our God. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would convince the world of this great sin, "because men do not believe me."Paul asserts that what ever a person does, even good deeds, apart from a faith relationship with Jesus Christ, is sin, "for everything that does not come from faith is sin."

The broken faith relationship causes three distinct -- through, of course, related -- results. We will look at them separately, since they each call forth a different part of God's healing work.

God Told Adam and Eve that maintaining the vital faith relationshp with Him was so essential that sould they ever break it (as symbolized by eathing from the forbidden tree), the result would be death. Notice that God did not threated to kill them, as in revenge. Rather he shared with them a profound and accurate truth about the results of separation from the Lifegiver. Notice, too, that the death which is the inherent consequence of alienation from Life is a death of eternal separation from God. The Bible terms it "the second death."

But when Adam and Eve did choose another master, God immediately interposed, holding off what would have otherwise resulted in their immediate destruction. God has never wanted "anyone to perish"; instead He desires "everyone to come to repentance," And bringing one to repentance takes time -- time to replace error with truth and distrust with confidence.

Yet even though God had purchased for them time to repent, still they knew that they deserved to die. This rightful sentence of death, properly hanging over the heads of all humanity, is passed because of our guilt.

Guilt is not just a feeling of remorse -- though such feelings are involved. Guilt is an accurate, legal status. It does not call forth God's anger or His personal rejection of us as sinners. Indeed, the fact that we are alive (even though guilty) rather than eternally dead is proof of God's loving compassion for sinners. But not even God can change the facts, the reality, of the situation: separation from Life will result in death. To be guilty is to be deserving of death.

But a broken relationship with God changes more than my legal status. It changes me! Perhaps far more than I may recognize, estrangement from God directly affects how I view myself and thus how I view others. Adam and Eve immediately became defensive of themselves and accusing towards others. Alienation from God devastates my self-worth, making me utterly self-centered. All of my values become grasping, distrustful, exploitive. I become totally unfit to live in heaven's society. Were Christ, by some miracle of grace (and contrary to His own wisdom) to transport me to the heavenly realms, I would be totally out of place there. Being still duped by Satans's deceptions and thus a rebel at heart, I would surely start the sin problem all over again in heaven.

So another aspect of the sin problem must be addressed.

The third consequence of a broken faith relationship is the damage which sin does to this organism in which I live. Even though it is sometimes difficult to draw clean lines between this body in which I live and the things I do while in this body, there is value in speaking of them as distinct aspects of the sin problem. (One of the times we see the value in speaking of them in this way is when we consider the humanity of Jesus. He was born in a body just like ours, yet that body presented no ultimate deterrent to His living a life of perfect submission to the will of His Father.)

Paul is refering to this sin-damaged organism when he discusses sinful flesh. because Satan has had such great success in perverting the normal drives of the body and in taking advantage of hunger, weariness, and pain, the body can indeed be viewed as a "source" of sin. More precisely, it is a "door of access" through which Satan most often gains control over the mind. But God's plan must reckon with it.

Keep in mind not only the different parts of the sin problem as illustrated here, but also their sequence. For we would expect that God's solution must match the problem in every particular.

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