“I wrote to you as I did to test you and see if you would fully comply with my instructions. When you forgive this man, I forgive him, too. And when I forgive whatever needs to be forgiven, I do so with Christ’s authority for your benefit, so that Satan will not outsmart us. For we are familiar with his evil schemes.”
2 Corinthians 2:9-11 NLT
Paul wrote that he had forgiven the man who opposed him and disrupted the other Corinthian believers, and Paul asked them to forgive the man, too. But he went on to mention the devil and his evil schemes. The devil has nothing new that will impact Christians, but we must be aware of his strategies and methods, and who he is most bothered by. Peter warned the believers in Asia that he is like a roaring lion: “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Peter proceeded to say, “Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith…”. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6 about the weapons we have available to “stand firm” when the devil is on the prowl: “Put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11).
“Stand firm … and be strong in your faith”
So what are these devilish “strategies”? From our verses today, there is a connection with forgiveness, or lack of it. If the believers in Corinth had decided that the man causing the offence was beyond being forgiven, even if he had left the church, there would have been an opportunity for the devil to point an accusatory finger at them for denying Christ’s teachings. Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, said, “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15). And as the Roman soldiers hammered home the nails, “Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing … “ (Luke 23:34a). Unforgiveness is a spiritually debilitating disease that will sap our strength and stunt our Christian lives. But it is pretty serious if any of us hold unforgiveness in our hearts, because, as Jesus said, God will treat us in the same way, and without forgiveness, there is no possibility of salvation.
The devil will fight against us, and many a Christian has fallen under the onslaught of his attacks. If anyone in the Corinthian church had refused to forgive the man in question, then the devil had won the battle. He would have succeeded in snatching someone from God, and if that person never subsequently came to a place of seeking forgiveness both from the man and from God, then they were in danger of being lost forever.
It is worth meditating regularly on the verses that describe our spiritual armour. As we consider the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of peace, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation, we have all the protective armour that we need. And then we have one further offensive weapon that the devil cannot stand before, and that is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Three times in the wilderness, the devil tried to tempt Jesus away from His mission, and each time Jesus had a Scripture ready to block the attack. We can read them in Luke 4. But what would have happened if Jesus hadn’t remembered the Scriptures He required? Come to that, do we know the Scriptures we need to “stand firm” when the devil attacks? There is only one way to resolve ignorance: reading the Bible.
The devil has no jurisdiction over true believers in Jesus. There are many who claim to be believers, but who are confused or ignorant about the Christian faith and what it means. We find them in some of our denominational churches, where liberal theologies abound. In such churches, there are blatant deviations from Scriptural truths, and the people in the pews suffer the consequences. In a church near where I live, the congregation is devoted to its building. The devil isn’t bothered about them because they are no threat to him while they are trying to fix the fabric of their church. And if they even spark into spiritual life God’s way, then all he has to do is to poke another hole in the roof and divert their attention back onto their building. The congregation is now mostly elderly and sadly dwindling.
But we pilgrims are Bible-believing, blood-bought, children of God, and nothing will pull us away from a life spent in His presence. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, “It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first instalment that guarantees everything he has promised us”. With God on our side, we are invincible, but only if we live our lives His way.
Dear Heavenly Father. We pray Jesus’ prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses and deliver us from evil” in faith and with grateful hearts. On Your Word we stand firm forever. Amen
Being a Pilgrim 