Luke 4:18-19: “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel
to the poor; he has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to
the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who
are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Acts 10:38: “…how
God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went
about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was
with Him.”
I John 3:8: “He
who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the
devil.”
Eph. 6:12: “For
we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts
of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
The Lord created both the earth
and man, good. Both have been seized by hostile, evil forces that are seeking
to destroy both earth and man, and also God’s plan and design for time and
eternity. The Cross of Christ has completely defeated Satan, all of his minions,
and every work of the enemy. The church is now the means by which this defeat
is to be enforced and all the powers of darkness subjugated to the will of God.
The “problem of evil” has two primary
theological philosophies. The first is the classical view of God,
the enemy and evil. An overview of this sees evil as a problem related to God’s
providence and character. Augustine held this view, as well as many others
throughout church history. The assumptions of this view are: 1. God is loving
and good, and, 2. God sovereignly holds meticulous, micromanagement over the
earth and all men. This view holds that although God is not the direct agent of
evil and bad things, He is indirectly involved because He has some hidden
purpose behind allowing this evil to happen.
The second view of evil is the warfare
worldview. This base of this worldview assumes God is not in
complete control of either man nor the earth, and evil forces are exercising
themselves in direct opposition to His nature, desires, will and purposes.
God is not exercising meticulous, exhaustive control over the world because
when He gave dominion to man, He never took it back, nor could He. If He had
stepped in after pronouncing the laws and rules governing the earth and its
creatures, processes and purposes, apart from man who was given dominion, God
would have been found to be a breaker of His own word and laws. Apart
from cooperating humans, God has limited Himself from operating, and will not
intervene apart from His people who love, obey and willingly cooperate with
Him. This is the paradigm we see acted out in the life of the Lord Jesus and
the early church.
The former classical view
encourages an approach to evil that defines it as an intellectual problem to be
solved, rather than an opponent to be defeated. We theologize about
evil instead of waging war against it. What we see in the Lord Jesus and the
New Testament church is not a people intellectually baffled by evil, but those
who are spiritually empowered to engage, defeat and vanquish it. To
wage an effectual warfare, all evil must be understood as something that is
unequivocally against God and God is unequivocally against it.
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