"Victory over the Darkness"
by Neil T. Anderson
Neil Anderson's book rests on the premise that if we are in Christ, then we can experience true freedom. We can, in the here and now, experience the abundant life Christ has promised. Freedom doesn't mean a license to do as we please; true freedom is liberty, and it's found in the power to become the people God wants us to be. It's said of a sailing ship that when its sails are filled with the wind, and the tack is right with the wind, the ship is at 'liberty'--it's sailing as it was intended to sail, and the result is freedom on the waves. When ships are turned against the wind, the ship fails to live up to its full potential. So it is with Christians: when we are living the way God wants us to live--walking by the Spirit rather than the flesh, living in truth rather than in lies, and submitting ourselves to God rather than the devil--we are able to truly flourish as God intends. God's ultimate desire is that we become like Christ, and Christ shows us what humanity is supposed to look like.
The Bible teaches that all those who are outside Christ are
enslaved by sin; we serve the 'god of this world,' and though we may believe we
are free, we are actually living in chains. The 'fruit' of this life is
restlessness, anxiety, butterness, anger, and disjointedness inside and out.
When we become Christians, we are 'in Christ,' and we are not only justified
(made right with God) but also sanctified (made righteous by Christ's
righteousness being imputed to us, and we are given the Holy Spirit who breaks
the chains of sin in our lives and enables us to live holy lives that are
pleasing to God). The sad reality of modern evangelicalism is that many
Christians (most Christians) stop at justification. We believe that
we are made right with God, but we fail to own the truth that we are filled
with the Holy Spirit and empowered to resist the world, the flesh, and the
devil. We fail to comprehend that God's grace doesn't just forgive us
of our sin but also enables us to live righteous and holy
lives in greater and growing degrees. When we 'walk by the Spirit', as St. Paul
commands, we are changed from the inside out. We who are holy are changed on
the inside to reflect our holiness in everyday living, and this is beautiful
and liberating. Christians who 'walk by the Spirit' resist the world, the
flesh, and the devil, and they are marked by the 'fruit of the Spirit' in
Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.
But the reality is that few Christians live the abundant life
Christ offers.
And the question must be asked: "Why?"
It certainly isn't because it is impossible--God has made it
possible through Christ.
The answer, I believe, lies in a lack of knowledge.
As the prophet Hosea said, "My people are destroyed for a
lack of knowledge."
As I made my way through Anderson’s book, I spied at least four
ways we fail to comprehend, and thus appropriate, the freedom and flourishing
that is available to us in Christ.
First, we often stop at
justification. Any Christian who pays attention to Sunday sermons can
understand what it means to be justified, to be made right with God because of
the forgiveness of sins purchased by Christ’s death. Christ’s death brought us
peace with God, and when we share in His death our sins are forgiven, our slate
is wiped clean, and we stand before God as we had never sinned. We are fully
and completely justified—but that’s not
the end of the story. We are also sanctified—we are made righteous by
Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us, we are broken from our enslavement
to sin, and we are filled with the Spirit and enabled to live a victorious life
in obedience to God and against the evil patterns of the flesh, the world, and
the demonic forces that are at work in the world. But if we stop at
justification, and sum up Christ’s work by simply making us right with God, our
Christian life becomes one of simply trying to ‘measure up’ to what God desires
of us, and we can easily become overwhelmed by the triumvirate of enemies that
stand against us (I speak, of course, of the flesh, the world, and the devil).
Second, we are unaware of what
God desires for us. The Apostle Paul is clear when he writes in Romans that
it is God’s desire that we be conformed to the image of His Son. This is God’s
greatest goal for His children. He isn’t in the business of pampering us,
spoiling us, or making our lives easy. He is in the business of changing us from the inside out. It is
His desire that we grow in Christ and develop into the sort of people He wants
us to be, the kind of people He created us to be. Too many of us, in our
obsession with heaven, believe this life prior to death is a “vale of tears”
that must be endured until God takes us to our ultimate destination; we fail to
comprehend that this life is a training ground for the new heavens and new
earth, and that the struggles we go through—“trials and tribulations” in Bible
speak—are allowed or orchestrated by God to hammer us into the kind of people
who will flourish in his new creation.
Third, we fail to recognize
that life in the Spirit is far superior to any other kind of life. In
Galatians 5 Paul tells us that those who walk by the Spirit will be fertile
ground for the growing of the Spirit’s fruit: love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. On first
glance, absent any genuine pondering, such a life may appear stale, especially
since we’ve spent so long living according to the works of the flesh; but the more
we imagine what a life of love, joy, peace, and so on would actually look life,
the more appetizing it becomes. After all, love, joy, and peace is what we all
crave, deep down, and it is what we are aiming for (and missing) in our
worldly, fleshly pursuits. When we come to understand that life according to
the Spirit is far superior to life lived in the flesh, we will be filled with a
growing desire to experience that life.
But can we truly experience it? A fourth reason many Christians
fail to experience the abundant life in Christ is because, deep down, we fear that it isn’t possible. It may
be possible for others, but certainly not for us! Such doubts, while
understandable, go against what the Bible clearly teaches. We are told in 2
Timothy 1:7 that God has given us a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and
self-control. We are filled with the Spirit, and the Spirit enables us to put
to death the works of the flesh, and as we walk in the Spirit—pursuing
obedience to God, diligently bringing every thought captive to Christ, and
being renewed in our minds as we spend quality time with God and in His Word—we
are, more and more, enabled to live and experience the sort of life God wants
us to live, the abundant life that is available in Christ.
Much of Anderson’s book tackles Spiritual Warfare, our day-to-day
struggle against the flesh, the world, and the devil (a more recent book, The Bondage Breaker, deals more
specifically with the latter, and that book will be reviewed in a subsequent
post). Regarding the devil (and demonic forces/fallen angels), the Bible is
clear that these spiritual enemies are opposed to God’s people and work against
Christians. Often, when pondering the devil’s work against Christians, our
first thoughts leap to temptation. Sure, demonic forces may tempt us, but more
often our temptations are the results of our fleshly desires and worldly
cravings (which must be put to death). More often, the devil’s work against
Christians is that of deception. He
aims to deceive us, filling our minds with lies, promoting false teachings
within the church, and accusing us before God. Because of the devil’s
activities, many Christians fail to walk by the Spirit and embrace the abundant
life because they are filled with false beliefs about God and themselves. If
the devil cannot steal our salvation, he can at least aim to make us impotent.
The heart of Anderson’s book is the declaration that Christ offers
us freedom and an abundant life, and that abundant life must be seized in the
context of a day-to-day war against our flesh, the world, and the devil, in
which we put to death the works of the flesh, walk by the Spirit, and dispel
Satan’s lies through the truth of God’s Word. We are more than conquerors in
Christ, and God has given us everything we need to live victoriously and to
flourish. In the links below are some of my favorite quotes from his book.
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