The lesson continues the Christian Life series on Satan and demons, focusing on ways they attack a Christian. Previous sessions treated independence from God, Job, discouragement, and disappointment. Three further attacks are taken up: doubt, spiritual cowardice, and lying. The aim is awareness so that the believer can respond without fear and, later in the series, take up the defense.
Doubt is set against faith. Several Greek words are rendered “doubt.” The passages used here employ diakrino. The word can mean to distinguish or to differ from another; in the middle or passive it is often “doubt,” because one is differing with oneself and second-guessing what is so.
Matthew 21:18–22 records the withered fig tree. Jesus tells the disciples that if they have faith and do not doubt they will not only do what was done to the tree but may speak to the mountain and it will be done, and whatever they ask in prayer, believing, they will receive. Christians are expected to walk by faith; doubt is the opposite.
James 1:5–7 applies the same contrast to asking. If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and does not upbraid, and it will be given. Let him ask in faith, nothing doubting. The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed and is not to think he will receive anything from the Lord. Asking is for what is in God’s will; wisdom is such a request. Asking while wondering whether it will work is not asking in faith.
Romans 4:19–20 gives Abraham as the positive example. He was not weak in faith. He did not consider his own body as good as dead, about a hundred years old, nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not stagger at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. Unbelief is unfaith. Faith and this kind of doubt cannot coexist regarding the same promise.
Faith is a piece of the armor of God, the shield of faith in Ephesians 6, to be treated later. Romans 14 shows why doubt is dangerous: one cannot act on faith and on doubt at the same time. In the matter of food, nothing is unclean of itself, yet to the one who reckons it unclean it is unclean. Love limits liberty so a brother is not destroyed. Happy is the one who does not condemn himself in what he allows. But the one who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith. Whatever is not from faith is sin. Satan can take an otherwise innocuous act and make it sin by bringing the person to do it without believing it is right.
Satan and demons often work first on frame of mind, attitude, or mental state, then present an action. Job shows the same pattern: long labor on the inner life aimed at getting him to curse God, which he never did. The sin nature campaigns through what appeals. Satan’s method is frequently different: produce a state, then an act that may not in itself look like a listed sin.
Spiritual cowardice is such a state. It is fear that begins to govern behavior. Luke 22:31–34: the Lord tells Simon that Satan has asked to have “you” (plural, the disciples) to sift them as wheat, but He has prayed for Simon that his faith not fail, and when he is converted he is to strengthen the brethren. Peter claims readiness for prison and death. Jesus answers that the rooster will not crow before Peter has denied Him three times. After the arrest, Peter denies the Lord three times by the fire (Luke 22:54–62) and weeps bitterly. Between the warning and the denials he had even struck with the sword; fear of prison and death then changed his conduct. The denials are lies produced by that fear.
2 Timothy 1:6–9: Paul reminds Timothy to stir up the gift of God. God has not given a spirit of cowardice (deilia, timidity that affects behavior, not general phobos), but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Timothy is not to be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord or of Paul His prisoner, but to share the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. Given who God is and what He has done, is doing, and will do, such cowardice is not logical. Unpleasantness may be ahead, as the garden showed of the Lord, without calling the path off.
1 Peter 5:8–9: be sober and vigilant, because the adversary the devil walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; resist him steadfast in the faith. The roar is not appealing; it is meant to freeze. Peter knew the method from his own denials.
Lying is itself an action and is tied to Satan. Acts 4:34–5:11: early in the church, possessors of lands sold them and laid the prices at the apostles’ feet. Ananias and Sapphira sold a possession, kept back part with the wife’s knowledge, and brought a portion as if it were the whole. Peter asks why Satan has filled Ananias’s heart to lie to the Holy Spirit. The land was their own before and after the sale; they lied not to men but to God. Ananias expires; about three hours later Sapphira repeats the lie and likewise expires. The reasoning was convenience and fear of looking bad when others gave all. Satan filled the heart; the line of thought made lying seem safer.
John 8:43–45: those who cannot hear Christ’s word are of their father the devil and want to do his desires. He was a manslayer from the beginning and did not abide in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. “The lie” is specific. Manslaughter here is a means to an end, distinct from the flesh’s appeal in Galatians 5.
The lie reaches back to independence from God in the garden: “You will not surely die.” Romans 1:18–25: men suppress the truth in unrighteousness though what may be known of God is manifest. They knew God and did not glorify Him or give thanks; they became vain in their reasonings; they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into images; they exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. Satan is involved in a world system that teaches independence from God.
2 Thessalonians 2:7–12: the mystery of lawlessness already operates; the restrainer will be taken out of the way; the lawless one will be revealed, whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness in those who perish, connected again with the lie. In the tribulation many will know they face the wrath of God and still choose independence, growing angry at Him.
Christians are not to lie. The references given with the outline include putting away the lie and speaking truth (Colossians 3:9; Ephesians 4:25; James 3:14).
The collection of attacks differs from the flesh. Doubt and fear are not themselves the act; they are used to change the mind so that conduct follows. Lying is the act. Additional resources: wordofgracestudies.org for verse-by-verse teaching and notes; thechristianlife.org for ongoing Bible teaching through the week.
