22 April 2024 John 10:1-10
It is pretty clear that the “thief” in the Good Shepherd Discourse is the Devil. It is equally clear that the ones the Devil wants to “steal, slaughter and destroy” is us.
But why does the Devil hate us so? Why does he hate Jesus so much?
He doesn’t hate Jesus because he hates us. It is the other way around. He hates us because he hates Jesus.
The name “Satan” means “accuser.” It was Satan’s job as an archangel to be the counsel for the prosecution, as it were, making the case for why we should not be allowed into heaven. One of Satan’s other names is “Lucifer,” a Latin word meaning “light bringer.” Satan means to show us the way we really are, viz., utterly unworthy of heaven.
He is not wrong about any of that. He is completely right about our weakness, our corruption, our unworthiness. We have no claim to righteousness that holds up under examination. We would be stains in heaven. What Jesus calls stealing, slaughtering, and destroying the Devil calls cleaning.
He’s right. We are inferior. We are stains.
What Satan could not abide was Jesus’ plan for dealing with the stains. Jesus proposed to do the cleaning Himself, and not by destroying, but by soaking our lives in His until the only thing left is His life in us. Satan is not wrong about what we are. He is wrong about who Jesus is, and that is why he hates us. He sees us possessing what we don’t deserve (and we don’t), and won’t love Jesus for it, won’t even love Him in spite of it.
The Devil hates Jesus because Jesus’ heaven is bigger than his, and because we are what makes Jesus’ heaven bigger, he hates us, too.
And so the Devil keeps trying to persuade us to choose something other than Jesus’ bigger heaven. He tries to get us to listen to other voices, and those voices are sweet, and powerful, and beautiful – we should never forget that though Satan is fallen with respect to his will, he is not fallen with respect to his power. He is still an archangel, with all the powers of an archangel. We resist the dark angels by knowing the voice of Jesus, and following that.
Keep in mind that learning the voice of Jesus is sheer grunt work. It is learning a language – it isn’t something you pick up all at once. You pick it up by knowing the people who know the voice of Jesus, who know the language, who know the vocabulary, who give you homework, and make sure you do it. You pick it up by practicing, by making sentences, correcting mistakes, making longer sentences, becoming proficient, acquiring the right accent, becoming fluent. Grunt work.
One of the most attractive voices of the dark angels is the one that says, like radio advertisements, “You can be fluent in just 3 weeks! With this brand new method, you can throw away all those books, forget about all that practice, have more time for what you really want to do!” The surest sign of a grifter is when someone says that a method that has delivered results for generations, even centuries, is suddenly obsolete and the same result can be had with minimal effort for a low, low price.
Those are the tempting voices of dark angels. The “low, low price” is your life. Remember that they hate you.
The bigger heaven of Jesus is wide open to everyone who learns the language, knows the language, and follows His voice.
Comments