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NASB | Mark 1:24 saying, "What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are--the Holy One of God!" |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Mark 1:24 saying, "What business do You have with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are--the Holy One of God!" |
Subject: Satan: On the hook and God won't let him |
Bible Note: I read this recently and found it striking. Satan: On the hook and God won't let him off. "Sin leads to death; not so much to the "act" of dying - which lasts only a moment - as to the "state" of death, that is precisely to what has been called "mortal illness," a state of chronic death. In this state the creature desperately tends to return to being nothing but without succeeding and lives therefore in an eternal agony. From this state comes damnation and the pains of hell; the creature is obliged by One stronger than himself to be what he does not consent to be, that is dependent on God, and his eternal torment is that he cannot get rid of either God or himself. Kierkegaard rightly said that "the formula for all desperation is to refuse to be what one is." "Satan embodies this state. In him sin has run its entire course and is shown in its extreme consequences. He is the prototype of those "who know God (and how he knew him!) but do not give him the glory and thanks that belong to God." It is not necessary to fall back on theological speculation to learn Satan's feelings on this point because he himself shouts them into the hearts of those whom God still allows him to tempt today, as Jesus was tempted in the wilderness: "We are not free," he shouts, "we are not free! Even if you kill yourself, your soul lives on; you cannot kill it, we cannot say no. We are obliged to exist forever. It's all deceit! It's not true that God created us free!" Such thoughts make us shudder as it would seem that we are directly listening to the eternal argument between Satan and God. He, in fact, would wish to be free to return to nothingness. Not because he doesn't want to exist or to be God's antagonist, but because he does not want to be what he is, dependent on God. He wants to exist, but not "through the grace of another." As the power above him is stronger than he is and obliges him to exist, this is the way to pure deperation." Raniero Cantalamessa from Life in Christ translated by Frances Lonergan Villa Vineyard Publishing Freehold, N.J. 1991 |
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Questions and/or Subjects for Mark 1:24 | Author | ||
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edavis | ||
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Emmaus | ||
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Emmaus | ||
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kyne |