Allegiance, Truth and Power: Three crucial dimensions for Christian living

 

Jesus did all this to demonstrate God’s love (a relational thing), to teach us what God and the Christian life are all about (knowledge/truth things), to free people from Satan (a power thing). Thus He showed us how we should go about our lives as participants in the Kingdom of God that Jesus planted in the middle of Satan’s kingdom. He gave to us the same Holy Spirit under Whom He worked, saying that whoever has faith in Him will do the same things He did, and more (Jn 14.12). Since today, as in Jesus’ day, the enemy is doing power things, Jesus gave us His authority and power (Lk 9.1) to carry on the freedom-giving activities of Kingdom builders.

When Jesus left, He gave us power in His name. We, then, are to operate in His authority to bring about the same ends He came to bring. We are to focus on bringing people into a relationship with God as Jesus did. But we are to recognize, as He did, that many are in captivity and, therefore, in need of freedom from the hold of the enemy. Only when they are freed will they be able to understand the Gospel and, building on that understanding, to commit themselves to Christ.

This is the dimension that Westerners and the Westernized understand the least. Many in the West fail to see either the extent of the satanic blinding (mentioned in 2 Corinthians 4:4) or the possibility of breaking through that blinding by using the power Jesus gave us. If we are to imitate Jesus, though, our ministries should be filled with instances of healing and deliverance as well as authoritative praying and teaching. The evangelists of Argentina have been demonstrating to us the effectiveness of an approach to evangelism that starts with breaking the enemy’s power over people before witness takes place.

After witness and conversion, then, many are still captive to emotional hurts and demons. How different our churches would be if classes leading to church membership employed the power of God as the Early Church did to heal and “clean up” the new converts before they joined the church. God’s power is available both at the start and throughout a Christian’s life to bring healing and deliverance.

Many Christian leaders ignore the fact that their followers remain captives, even after conversion. Then they consciously or unconsciously heap blame on their constituents by teaching that all past hurts will be gone when we convert. Others attempt to rectify this situation by throwing knowledge about spiritual warfare at converts. But the power of Satan cannot be countered merely by knowledge and truth. Knowledge and truth are very important in their place, but power can only be fought with power. So those Christians still under the power of Satan wielded through wounds of the past and demonization will get little or no help from sound teaching on spiritual warfare if they do not experience the application of God’s healing and delivering power to their specific problems.

 

Tags: allegiance, christian, crucial, dimensions, living, power, truth

Category: Fall 2010, Living the Faith