Salvation and the Kingdom of God — Power Over the Darkness
Earlier today I put a document on the Pages part of this blog. The title of the document is ‘What? Someone Wants to Devour Me?? — The Kingdom of God and Victory Over the Powers of Darkness’. I started writing the document as a post. It grew longer and longer and so I removed it from the blog, put it into Word, and edited it until I had about what I wanted. Right now it is over 5000 words long, so I put it in the Pages section of the blog where I think these longer documents should go. Check it out if you have time. Following are the main points of the document, more-or-less in order:
Satan is prowling around like a roaring lion or a crouching demon at our door looking to devour us.
In Christ, all powers and principalities have been placed beneath our feet because we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.
But, and this is a big ‘but’, we must be ‘in Christ’ to have power and authority over the enemy.
‘In Christ’ means to be in the Kingdom of God.
In fact, the gospel as preached by Jesus and Paul is the gospel of the Kingdom of God — the Kingdom of God is here, and because of the atoning death of Jesus and His blood, we have the right to enter into the Kingdom of God and live in the presence of the King for eternity.
Living in the Kingdom of God is ‘salvation’. We are protected from the Devil and his demons, we are given the indwelling Holy Spirit, there is healing and wholeness; there is freedom, power and authority, and intimacy with the triune God.
But we must choose the Kingdom life, we must truly repent of the self life, and we must believe (= faith). Both faith and repentance are gifts, but we must choose them.
Faith is not just believing everything about Jesus that our theology describes (e.g. death, atoning blood, resurrection, heaven) — even the demons believe these things. Faith is this belief plus a total trusting in Jesus for all of our spiritual, emotional, and physical wants, needs, and desires. It is a total leaning on Jesus with our entire personality. It is manifested in total obedience to His word in Scripture and His word spoken into our hearts.
The meaning of salvation is rooted in the Greek word sozo, which among other things means ‘healed and made whole’ as in spiritual, emotional, and physical healing and wholeness. It is not the standard theology of the Church today: “You are going to heaven if you accept Jesus as savior because of His work on the cross”. Some denominational theology even goes so far as to say “and there is nothing you can do. It has all been decided by God, so (as some of my friends in NY would say) ‘fogetaboutit’. Jesus hardly talks about salvation in this sense. He does talk about the Kingdom of God and demonstrates that life in the Kingdom is a life of healing, wholeness, deliverance, and abundant life. He makes it very clear that we must choose, and there will be consequences if we choose incorrectly.
Salvation is deliverance, freedom, and protection from the darkness of life enslaved to the enemy. Salvation begins today, the moment we repent of the self-life and believe in the Kingdom life.
Isaiah 35: 8-10 and Psalm 91: 9-15 continue the theme of Satan as lion.
In Isaiah 35, Isaiah introduces the beautiful image of the “Highway of Holiness”, which only the redeemed will walk on. No lions or other wild animals will travel on the highway. This image is a picture of life in the Kingdom of God.
Holiness and growing in holiness is part of life in the Kingdom. We don’t hear so much about holiness in certain mainline Protestant churches today because the idea is irrelevant if God has already decided whether or not you will be saved (meaning in this sense ‘going to heaven’). If you can’t choose ‘salvation’, nor can you lose it for any reason, then how you live today is largely beside the point.
The redeemed on the Highway of Holiness “enter Zion with singing, everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them.” They will not be overrun by will animals. As we see in Matthew 11:4, Jesus tells John the Baptist, that He is the fulfillment of the Isaiah 35 prophesy.
David, in Psalm 91 also ties rescue, deliverance, and protection from lions, cobras, and serpents to dwelling with the Most High. “If you make the Most High your dwelling — even the Lord, who is my refuge — then no harm will befall you”. We have the right and privilege to dwell with the Most High when we choose the Kingdom of God and turn away from life in the kingdom of self, aka the kingdom of the world.
Genesis, 1 Peter, Ephesians, Isaiah, and Psalms all deal with Satan and his demons, forces that are arrayed against human beings. Christians are set free from slavery to these dark forces and protected from them as we live in the Kingdom of God. This freedom and protection is ‘salvation’. Salvation begins now, in this world, and continues for eternity.
The requirements for life in the Kingdom of God are, according to Jesus, Peter, and Paul, repentance and faith. Both are gifts, really two sides of the same coin, but even so we must receive and implement them. In fact, we must repent daily. It will be made available to us, but we must do it. In my prayer time I heard these words “I will do it for you, but you must do it with me.” You could turn this phrase around “you must do it, but I will do it with you”. Either way, this is close to what Paul said in Philippians 2: 12, 13.
There is mystery in all of this. Scripture tells us that we have power over the powers of darkness, no harm will befall us if we live in the Kingdom of God, and no lions will get up on the Highway of Holiness. Even so, Godly Kingdom men and women are attacked by the enemy.
In my last post I wrote about how what Satan meant for harm, Jesus used for good. Perhaps that is part of the way it works. But we cannot know how much evil and harm God protects His Kingdom people from each day. Furthermore, I am going to trust in the Scripture and live my life as one who is victorious over the powers of darkness as I live in Christ, in the Kingdom of God.
All of this boils down to one of my favorite verses in Scripture: “But first seek His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6: 33 NIV). All what “things”? Freedom, forgiveness, deliverance, protection, healing, liberation, and restoration. In other words ‘Salvation’. And not just when I die, but today.
Have you made a solemn decision to give up finding all of your acceptance and value in the self-life — self-reliance, self-sufficiency, self-confidence? God wants all of our life — spirit, soul, and body — to live daily in His Presence, in His Kingdom. It is only here that we will find victory over the darkness that is trying to devour us, it is only here that we will find the salvation that a gracious God died to give us. Radical? Yes, this is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God that Jesus taught and preached. No wonder they crucified Him.
Hallelujah!