Christian Life Lesson 20, Satan and Demons Part 5, continues the study of attacks from Satan and demons. Five are taken up from Ephesians 4 and 1 Timothy 5: stealing, rotten communication, idleness, gossip, and being a busybody. Bitterness remains for the next lesson, after which the armor of God is taken up.
Ephesians 4:20–24 sets the frame. Believers have not so learned the Christ. Having heard Him and been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus, they put off the former manner of life, the old man, corrupt according to deceitful lusts, are renewed by the spirit of the mind, and put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and true holiness. Lying is put away and truth is spoken with the neighbor, because believers are members of one another. Anger is permitted without sin, and the sun is not to go down on wrath. Neither is a place to be given to the devil.
Stealing follows that warning. The one who stole is to steal no longer, but to labor, working with his hands what is good, so that he may have something to give to the one who has need. Stealing does not appear in the works of the flesh in Galatians 5. Covetousness is the nearest item there, and the two are listed separately in 1 Corinthians 6:10. The Ephesians 4 setting is not simply greed. It is the person who does not labor and therefore takes from another.
In 1 Corinthians 6:8–11, wronging and defrauding even brethren stands beside the warning that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, the effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, the covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners are named. Such were some of the Corinthians. The contrast is not that they stopped. They were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. Righteousness is in Christ. Inheritance of the kingdom is not earned by being less carnal than another. At least one known fornicator remained in Corinth, and the assembly was boasting of its tolerance.
1 Peter 4:12–16 distinguishes suffering as a Christian from suffering as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a busybody in other men’s matters. Reproach for the name of Christ is a cause for happiness, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon the believer.
Stealing and covetousness are not the same act at two stages. Covetousness can be a desire from the flesh for a particular thing. Other motives also produce theft. Where there is no work, no income, and no food, the attack carries a line of reasoning: this is needed in order to survive. Ephesians 4 connects that case with the devil and answers it with labor that supplies both one’s own need and a gift for another.
Corrupt communication is the next item in Ephesians 4:29. No rotten word is to proceed from the mouth, but what is good for edifying, so that it may minister grace to the hearers. The phrase is sapros logos. Sapros is used of food that goes bad and of fruit in Matthew 12:33: make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten, for the tree is known by its fruit. The Holy Spirit, by whom believers are sealed unto the day of redemption, is not to be grieved.
Colossians 3:1–10 uses a different word for foul or abusive communication, and Satan is not named in that immediate context. Those co-raised with Christ seek things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, and set the mind on things above, not on things on the earth. They died, and their life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is their life, appears, they also appear with Him in glory. Members on the earth are put to death: fornication, uncleanness, passion, bad desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry, things for which the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. Anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and foul communication are put off, and believers do not lie to one another, having put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man, renewed in knowledge after the image of the One who created him. The list mixes what can come from Satan and what can come from the flesh, gathered around what proceeds from the mouth.
1 Timothy 5 supplies the remaining three. Widows indeed are to be honored. Children or grandchildren first show piety at home and repay parents. Care falls to the assembly where a widow is truly alone, because the culture gave no guarantee of support without family. Younger widows are not to be enrolled in the same care given to the older widow without family. When they grow wanton against Christ, they desire to marry, having judgment because they cast off their first faith. They learn to be idle, wandering from house to house, and not only idle but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things they ought not. The determination is that younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, and give no occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully, for some have already turned aside after Satan. Believing families relieve their own widows so the assembly can relieve widows indeed.
Idleness in spiritual things is implied already in Ephesians 4:28: willing to steal, unwilling to work. Titus 1:12, not 1:2, quotes a prophet of the Cretans: always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies. 2 Peter 1:3–8 moves from partaking of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world through lust, to diligence: faith, virtue, experiential knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly fondness, and love. If these are present and abounding, they keep the believer from being idle and unfruitful in the full knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Good works are prepared, as Ephesians states, and idleness leaves them undone. The interval between past-tense salvation, believing the gospel, and future-tense salvation is not an idle void. What James says about faith shown by works does not stand against Paul. Paul also presses the importance of works and the refusal of idleness. God provides things for each person to do.
Gossip and the busybody are two sides of one coin in 1 Timothy 5:13. A busybody puts his own attention into another person’s affairs. A gossip puts other people’s attention into those affairs by talking. One acquires what is not his business. The other passes it on, not exactly as the truth, exaggerated or taken out of context. Both give the adversary occasion for reproach where some have already turned aside after Satan.
3 John 9–10 uses the same gossiping word of Diotrephes, who loves preeminence and did not receive the apostle. His works include prating against them with malicious words. He does not receive the brethren, forbids those who determine to receive them, and casts them out of the assembly. The speech is not mere passing along and not only dishonest. It is malicious and aimed at preeminence, stirring the pot, and it links to the earlier attack of lying.
Busybodies appear again in 2 Thessalonians 3:6–15. Believers withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not after the tradition received from the apostles. Paul did not behave disorderly among them, did not eat any man’s bread for nothing, and worked night and day so as not to be chargeable, not because he lacked authority as an apostle, but to set an example. If any does not want to work, neither should he eat. Some walk disorderly, not working at all, but busybodying. They are commanded to work with quietness and eat their own bread. The rest are not to weary in doing good. The one who does not obey the word of the epistle is noted and not accompanied, so that he may be ashamed, yet counted a brother and admonished, not an enemy.
Acts 19:19 uses the busybody word for curious arts. After the sons of Sceva failed, because authority belonged to Paul and not to a formula of names, many who believed confessed, and those who pried into such secrets brought their books and burned them. The sense is prying into what is not one’s business. 1 Peter 4:15 closes the set with one compound word: a busybody in other men’s matters, listed with murderer, thief, and evildoer as suffering a believer is not to incur.
Five attacks are thus tied to giving a place to the devil or turning aside after Satan: theft in place of labor that can give, rotten speech in place of edifying speech, idleness in place of prepared good works, gossip that spreads what is not accurate, and busybodiness that enters what is not one’s own. Bitterness is left, and then the armor of God.
