There’s always a “yes but God also.” Thank God.
ProDeo sees the “yes, but.” Thats a GOOD thing to see them both. That’s what he did earlier when he gave TWO sets of verses and said episkopos teaches and focuses on only one set and therefore teaches false and scares people 24/7. (It’s not true that he teaches only one. Episkopos teaches both and uses an equal weight and divides correctly but to men struggling to work out their salvation with fear in the outer man, the one set looms large and stands out, as it should. That IS the struggle.)
He only makes a mistake by saying the one set is the core gospel message. They both are or there is not a necessary balance needed to progress and find the way.
More about the base, I am reading the book The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee once again. The last time I did was in the late 70's when I was a babe in Christ. Finished reading the first chapter, the man is good and thorough! What impressed me most -
What then of our attitude to Satan? This is important, for he accuses us not only before God
but in our own conscience also. ‘You have sinned, and you keep on sinning. You are weak, and
God can have nothing more to do with you.’ This is his argument. And our temptation is to look
within and in self-defense to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or our behavior, some ground
for believing that Satan is wrong. Alternatively we are tempted to admit our helplessness and, going
to the other extreme, to yield to depression and despair. Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest
and most effective of Satan’s weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us with them
before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down immediately.
Now the reason why we so readily accept his accusations is that we are still hoping to have
some righteousness of our own. The ground of our expectation is wrong. Satan has succeeded in
making us look in the wrong direction. Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective. But if
we have learned to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder if we sin, for the very nature
of the flesh is to sin. Do you understand what I mean?
It is because we have not come to appreciate
our true nature and to see how helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves,
with the result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.
God is well able to deal with our sins; but He cannot deal with a man under accusation, because
such a man is not trusting in the Blood. The Blood speaks in his favour, but his is listening instead
to Satan. Christ is our Advocate but we, the accused, side with the accuser.
We have not recognized
that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as we shall shortly see, we are only fit to be
crucified anyway. We have not recognized that it is God alone that can answer the accuser, and
that in the precious Blood He has already done so.
Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the Blood of the Lamb
has met the whole situation created by our sins and has answered it. That is the sure foundation on
which we stand.
Never should we try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the
Blood. Yes, we are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us from every sin. God looks upon
the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and Satan has no more ground of attack. Our faith
in the precious Blood and our refusal to be moved from that position can alone silence his charges
and put him to flight (Romans 8:33,34); and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation 12:11).
Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of the value of God’s eyes of the precious
Blood of His dear Son!
