Packer: The devil is on a chain.

Altogether, the devil is an enemy who has to be taken very seriously. Yet we should not panic in the face of his attentions. Christ has overcome him (Jn. 12:31); Satan is now a defeated foe, a lion on a chain, and what he can do against us is sovereignly restricted on a day-to-day basis, for “God … will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Cor. 10:13). We who are Christ’s should detest Satan but not dread him, since God now provides us with all-purpose combat equipment for use against him. It is the Christian’s privilege to “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground” (Eph. 6:13).

Running scared of Satan is not the Christian way; it is, rather, an expression of unbelief. Wisdom directs, not that we should spend our time worrying about Satan, as if there is no limit to what he can do, but simply that we should watch for signs of his being on the move—that is, for actions, passions, and circumstances that make war against the cause and the honor of the Creator. Such events call for precisely the reaction of prayer and countermoves that we see in Nehemiah. Nehemiah’s battles as the wall went up can teach us much about winning our bit of the war into which, with Nehemiah, we who seek to serve God have walked.

Packer, J. I. (1995). A passion for faithfulness: wisdom from the book of Nehemiah. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Comments

Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

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