1 Peter 5:8,9

THE PERSONALITY OF EVIL

‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist stedfast in the faith.’

1 Peter 5:8

‘Your adversary the devil’—is he a figure of speech, or a real person? I venture to ask you to consider that question to-day. It is a venture, because it requires some courage in these days to ask men to bring the belief in the personality of evil out of the dim and obscure regions in which they leave it and to face it as a practical fact. But if there be a personal power of evil using all the defects of body, or of mind, or imagination to attract or impel what is wrong, if that belief is involved in the very authority which gives us the hope and strength of Christianity, then it has a very real being upon our practical struggle. To ignore it is to wage our warfare for nothing, and to involve the issue from the first in a great mistake. If we believe, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that the recognition of the personal power of evil gives enormous strength and decisiveness to the moral conflict, then to ignore it, or to leave it to some dim, undetermined region, must bring corresponding feebleness and uncertainty. The question, indeed, which I have put to you goes to the very root of the most practical issue which every life must face.

I. How am I to explain, to deal with, and it may be to overcome, this evil which I know is within and around me?—For sooner or later every man must face for himself the problem of the origin of evil. A man may be settling down to the assumption that evil, after all, comes from circumstances. It is involved in them, and cannot be dealt with until they are removed. This is a truth, but a half-truth. The reformer passionately seizes it, and struggles rightly to remove and change the conditions which he thinks are the sources of evil. But if this is the only explanation, then while, on the one hand, he is building a country on improved conditions, on the other he is sapping the only foundation upon which this can securely rest—the foundation of individual responsibility. For let a man really believe that the evil which he knows comes from circumstances, and the power of personal resistance will be blunted, and the sense of personal responsibility will be quenched. He will blame everything and everybody rather than himself. Thus he stands still or falls backwards. Or again, the mind drifts into the tendency of regarding evil as due to some inherent corruption of our human nature. It is, alas! true; but, once again, it is only a half-truth, and if it is regarded as a whole truth it results sooner or later in that resentment against human nature, that distrust of its capacity and desires, which we see in the gloom and the exaggeration of the ascetic.

II. Whence, in the last resource, comes the attractiveness of evil—whence comes this tendency to violate the true order, and pass into the wrongness which certainly was not in the purpose of God? Was it due to some inherent spontaneous malignity? Then, if it was, you are back again in the old belief that evil is inherent in human nature, which is the cause of all the hopelessness and feebleness of moral struggle. And thus, amid all this natural and inevitable groping of the human mind, there comes the declaration which has been made from the very first by that historic religion through which the Spirit of God has been training the spirit and the thought of men. It declares that man was made good, meant to be good, is capable of goodness, yea, is capable of being a partaker of the Divine Nature. It declares that the first impulse to an abuse of freewill came from an external power, and that mankind has passed under its sway, but that that sway has been met and broken by the entry into our human nature of the Redeemer, the Son of Man.

III. This truth is presented by our Christian faith in two striking ways: first of all, in the Divine allegory in which the Spirit of God, making use of the Eastern imagery, reveals to man all that he can know or needs to know about the nature and purpose of his creation. Evil is revealed as this intruding power coming upon and thwarting the will of man. ‘The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.’ Next, and more impressive, from the bewilderment and confusion of man’s mistake of his own true nature, there shone forth in the clear light of an historic person God’s ideal of human life—human nature as God meant it to be, in the Person of Jesus Christ. He is represented to us as sharing the fulness of our human nature, as absolutely free from sin, and yet as tempted. Whence came the power of that temptation of God’s own manhood? ‘Then was Jesus led up of the spirit in the wilderness’—shall we say to be tempted by some subtle attractiveness in His own nature towards disobedience? It is impossible. We cannot understand the Christian faith unless we believe the words which follow—‘to be tempted of the devil.’ And thus the truth of the personality of evil is involved in the Christian faith. It is impossible to read its records without seeing that it was of the spirit of that faith presented to the first Christians.

IV. Do not put behind you this fact of a personal evil, but carry it out into the details of your daily conflict.—It must make an enormous difference. It means that, instead of thinking that there is some natural law which is stronger than I am overwhelming me, or some inherent vice of my nature which I cannot resist, which confronts me in my temptation—instead of this, there is a personal will against whom I can pit myself. And upon the side of man there is the everlasting will of strength and the power of goodness. If I believe that, I can go into the struggle with decisiveness and courage and hope. ‘Be sober,’ says St. Peter, remembering your adversary the devil. Be sober—the sobriety of men who recollect the gravity of the issue of the things they do.

V. And lastly, ‘resist stedfast in the faith.’—St. John describes the vision of the unseen which he saw. It was the vision of the kingdom of the world become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, ‘for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.’ ‘And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.’ They overcame by their testimony. This is wonderfully described in the words of St. Paul when he speaks of Christ blotting out the handwriting of ordinances (Colossians 2:14). ‘And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.’ It is the picture of the strong man entering our human nature, and casting off the bonds as Samson cast off the cords of the Philistines, and implanting and restoring there the prevailing power of the righteousness of God. And it is in that faith that we can make headway, steadfast and sure. In our own nature, in the world that lies around us, it seems almost impossible to resist the stream of evil. But we who have this faith know that somehow, somewhere, good will win—that evil has been by a supreme struggle wrecked and vanquished by the Lord of life.

—Archbishop Lang.

Illustration

‘I do not say that we could of ourselves perhaps have imagined or thought out this personal will of evil, but at least it can be said that when it is given to us on the authority of the Christian faith, we find that it violates no point of reason, that it does interpret the experience of human life. There are mysteries around us on every side as great, as puzzling to the mind, day by day. We see that mystery of unseen human wills moving out upon and changing and modifying the natural forces of things. If we believe in God at all, we come across a personal will lying behind the whole system of natural laws, moving through them, controlling them; and to believe that there are superhuman agencies at work, some of them embodiments of evil influence, adds no fundamental difficulties to those which already exist. And certainly the belief does interpret for us the facts of human experience. I know not how to explain the nature God has given me; I know not how to escape from the very bitterness of His contempt, unless I believe that at such a moment the personal presence of the will of evil is revealed to my conscience. There are overwhelming difficulties; we cannot speculate what may be the relationship between the different forms in which this power of evil works. We cannot understand the life of man as it is dimly seen in our own experience; we certainly cannot understand the character of man as it is perfectly revealed in the Son of Man, unless we believe with St. Paul that our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE NEED OF WATCHFULNESS

Beware of that drowsy slumber which destroys the very springs of the spirit’s life. To your soberness add vigilance. Watch against that slothful indifference which would leave your days and hours to flow as they please or as they may chance, not as you, in the strength of God, determine that they shall.

I. But why is this watchfulness needed?—Why is every moment so full of danger? Why do the fairest fruits and flowers of life so often turn to poison; the most sinless joys and duties of life so often lead to sin? ‘Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ It is ‘from the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil’ that you pray to be delivered. The world would be no world at all, it would be the glorious kingdom of your Father; the flesh would be no flesh, it would be the sinless body of the Resurrection; if there were not that ‘murderer from the beginning’ who brought the curse upon both. We are weak, but weakness need not be sin. We might love the world—God loves it, and it is beautiful—but the father of lies is here to persuade us in our weakness to become prodigal sons, to teach us so to gaze upon this world as to forget our Father’s love. He watches, though you may not. He is ever wakeful and vigilant, though your eyes may be closed and your slumbers deep. He waits to lead your blindness to a false step, to turn your false step into a stumble, your stumble into a fall, your fall into death.

II. Have you ever thought that in your light, unguarded moments there is actually an evil spirit watching for your destruction, that ‘your adversary, the devil, walketh about seeking whom he may devour?’ ‘Seeking whom,’ and who is it that the devil may most easily destroy? Who is it that is most open to the attacks of Satan? Who is it that dares to venture among the dangers and temptations of the day without first solemnly committing his soul to God? Who is it that is passing through life with a confident and careless step, and because he will not think of his peril fancies that there is none? Who is it that is content to be swayed by the impulse of the moment, the chance company of the hour, the light and trifling talk which may happen to meet his ear? Who is it that hears it said that the way to life is narrow, and few can find it, and yet makes no hearty effort to enter there? Who is it that knows he is beset by the fiery darts of the evil one, and is content to know it and to sleep? Who is the slothful, the indifferent, the lukewarm? Your adversary the devil is seeking whom he may devour.

III. You are compassed about with a cloud of witnesses.—There is joy in heaven when you manfully resist temptation. There is a triumph in hell when you believe the lie that bids you forget your heavenly home. The more you try to cast your care upon God, the more deeply will you feel the awfulness of life; the more you feel your own utter helplessness in the presence of your enemy, the more hopefully will you fly to the ‘strong Son of God’ that you may hide under the shadow of His wings; the more you learn of the power of evil, the more earnest will be your gaze upon the Cross of your salvation. And so does the awful warning of the text return to the heavenly promise, and the heavenly promise brings you back to the awful warning. The promise is so strengthening because the warning is so stern. And St. Peter presses both together upon your mind, and both together issue in this one command, the watchword of your life, ‘Whom resist, stedfast in the faith.’ Resist your enemy, because your Friend is near and strong. Resist, because you have your Father’s Name written upon your forehead—steadfast in the faith that the Lamb shall overcome, for He is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords; the faith that He Who placed you in this world of trial will certainly keep you from evil; the faith that His strength shall be made perfect in your weakness; and in all these things you are more than conqueror through Him that loved you.

Illustration

‘ “I went last Tuesday on a hunting party,” wrote Luther to a friend, “and spent two days in learning this bitter-sweet amusement of heroes. We caught two hares and some partridges—certainly a most fitting employment for idle men! but I occupied myself with theological contemplations even among the nets and dogs; and amid the amusement which the spectacle afforded me, there arose a mysterious feeling of pity and pain: for what does the same represent, but a vivid portraiture of how the devil, by his impious huntsmen and hounds, pursues and hunts after poor simple souls, as those here after the innocent beasts! and thereupon followed a still more frightful image and sign, for at my entreaty, a leveret having been caught alive, I wrapped it in my sleeve, and went away with it, when behold! the dogs sprang upon it, bit it through my coat, and then strangled it. And so likewise does Satan rage against rescued souls.” ’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

DANGER AND SAFETY

St. Peter had himself been tempted, had himself conspicuously and signally fallen beneath the tempter’s assault. His denial of his Master was doubtless well known among the early Christians. And his repentance and forgiveness were equally well known, both as a matter of tradition, and as evidenced by his newness of life. It was most appropriate that, in the fulfilment of his apostleship, he should fulfil the command of the Lord: ‘When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.’

I. The Christian’s danger.—This is from an unseen and spiritual adversary, the devil. Such teaching is in accordance with Scripture generally, which represents both our temptations and our succours as proceeding from the invisible world. This enemy is—

(a) Malicious, bent upon the harm, especially of those who are seeking to live a holy life.

(b) Active, ‘walking about,’ putting forth strenuous efforts, leaving no means unemployed to lead God’s people astray.

(c) Destructive, having a purpose to devour, to injure, and to ruin those whom he besets. It is not wise to ignore danger: forewarned is forearmed.

II. The Christian’s safety.—This lies in—

(a) Our control of self. Sobriety becomes the soldier on guard, the sentry at his post. So with the Christian warrior, who needs beware, lest he be carried away by his own desires for earthly good. Watchfulness is an incessant duty. He who is not vigilant will be surprised; for Satan sleeps not. Did Peter remember the reproach of the Master: ‘Could ye not watch with Me one hour?’

(b) Our resistance of the adversary. The Christian warrior is forbidden to retire; his safety lies, not in flight, but in an uncompromising resistance. Faith is the principle of steadfastness; he who relies upon an unseen helper alone can discomfort an unseen foe.

(c) Our fellowship with the saints. St. Peter reminds the tempted that their brethren throughout the world suffer the same assaults. None is free from the attacks of the foe. A united resistance must be offered. The Church of Christ is an army, and each soldier is strengthened by the fidelity and steadfastness of his comrades. Whilst our chief dependence is upon the invisible Captain of our salvation, we shall be strong whilst we stand shoulder to shoulder in the ranks of the consecrated host.