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God is the Creator of all reality; He is the source of life, health, and happiness. His laws are the constants upon which life operates in His kingdom—such as the laws of health, physics, and the moral laws. Deviating from God’s design laws injures us and, without remedy from God, will result in our death.
God’s laws cannot be changed. We are either living in harmony with them or not.
This is why the Bible says that God’s law is what gives sin its destructive power:
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Corinthians 15:56 NIV84).
Or as the New Living Translation renders it:
For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.
Sin “stings” us by taking us out of harmony with God’s design protocols for life, causing all the pain and suffering in the history of the world. Without remedy, it results in death—eternal death. The power to cause eternal death comes from the law—God’s design protocols built into reality.
It is like someone who jumps into a lake with weights tied to their feet; they are breaking the law of respiration. The power that causes them to die is the law of respiration—the law upon which life is built and with which they are now out of harmony. God’s law cannot be changed so that a drowning person can live without breathing. The only way to save the drowning person is to put them back in harmony with the law—that is, to get their head above water so they can breathe.
This explains why God’s plan of salvation is for Him to restore His law in our hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10): Because the law cannot be changed, the only way to save sinners is to put them back into harmony with the law.
With this in mind, we can now examine how Satan uses God’s design laws to advance his kingdom, to destroy and injure people, by getting them to use the law in ways that are not in harmony with God’s design for life.
The Law of Worship
This is the law of modeling; by beholding we become changed. It is a law that we become like that which we worship, admire, watch, value, esteem, and internalize. We are changed neurobiologically and characterologically based upon what we worship. If we worship a God of love, we become more loving. If we worship an authoritarian, punishing god, we become more tyrannical. If we reject God altogether and believe we evolved from lower life forms, we become more survival-driven and practice methods in which the ends justify the means—it is understood that it is only right and natural for the strong to survive.
Satan exploits the law of worship through every false system of worship—idolatry, paganism, godless evolution, humanism, secularism, and false views of God taught within Christianity. Jesus is God who became human and lived among us. In Jesus, we see God’s true character, His law and His methods, lived out perfectly. This is why the Bible tells us that we are to “fix our eyes on Christ” (Hebrews 12:2), because it is by worshiping Him that we are transformed to be like Him.
But as Satan gets us to either reject God and believe in godlessness or to worship a false god who is like the evil one in character—a mere rule-maker who is the source of inflicted pain for rule-breaking—then love is destroyed in our hearts and we become ever more like the father of lies.
The law of worship—by beholding we are changed—is why in the first commandment God says, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 NIV84). God isn’t setting up a rule to enforce by punishment. God is saying, “I want only your health and happiness. You are the highest created beings on planet earth. There is nothing on earth you can worship that will improve you, heal you, and develop you. It is only by worshiping me, the infinite God of love, that you can advance, develop, and thrive, becoming all that I have designed for you to be. All other gods are false and worshiping them degrades and damages you. For all who trust me, all who see the truth, you will have no other gods before me.”
By getting us to worship false gods, Satan abuses the law of worship to harden our hearts, inflame fear, and solidify selfishness into our characters.
The Law of Love
The law of love is the principle of giving, beneficence, and self-sacrifice upon which God built life to operate. It is other-centeredness. Jesus said:
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:12, 13 NIV84).
Love manifests as the willingness to lay down one’s life for something other than self. Satan exploits this by getting people to love something worldly, something corrupt, something perverse, so that they willingly sacrifice themselves for a cause greater than themselves, but the cause is not a godly one. Suicide bombers who blow themselves up to advance their agenda are examples of the perversion of the law of love.
This is why the Bible tells us to guard our hearts, to be careful what we love, become attached to, and are willing to sacrifice ourselves for. Just because someone is willing to die for a cause doesn’t mean the cause is a godly one, or that the person is under the influence of the Spirit of God. Millions throughout history have willingly gone to their deaths fighting for causes that they believed in, but those causes were antagonistic to God’s kingdom of love.
The Bible is about relationships, not human organizations or institutions. Jesus said those who love will be willing to give their lives for their friends—not for some cause, some nation, some organization, some institution. Nations, organizations, and institutions are not saved; people are saved.
Satan tricks people into loving the systems of this world—the corporations, denominational churches, creeds, or various ideological constructs—more than people. And in doing so, he tricks people into protecting systems while destroying people. As the high priest said about murdering Jesus, “it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” (John 11:50 NIV84).
But when we love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, then our self-sacrifices are for the benefit of other people—our love is directed and poured upon other individuals, not causes, crusades, or some form of social institutional reform.
Satan exploits the law of love by getting people to love things other than God and their fellow human beings.
The Law of Liberty
This law is the principle of freedom. Our love, personal development, wisdom, and capacity for thinking, reasoning, and choosing grow only in atmospheres of freedom. Coercion, threat, intimidation, external pressure, control, domination, and inflicted punishment all destroy love and instill rebellion—the desire to be free, to rebel against the control. But if a person chooses to stay under such domination when they have the option to leave, then their individuality is eroded and the ability to think for themselves is eventually destroyed. People without liberty eventually become mindless beings obeying rules without thought, following others out of fear of punishment.
Satan exploits the law of liberty by promising freedom but through greater violation of God’s laws for life.
- According to Satan, you can have more freedom only if you have more regulations, more restrictions upon those who don’t agree with you. The solution, therefore, is to pass laws that restrict other people’s free exercise of their religion or speech; cancel people who say things you find offensive; censure people who post blogs that question your narrative. You will be free only if you can get rid of all disagreement through imposed laws and punishing those who break your laws. But history has shown that all such actions result in societies with less freedom, under the lie that it is through more governmental protections that we get greater liberty. The U.S. Constitution was established not to give us our inalienable liberties—those come from our Creator; the U.S. Constitution was written to restrain the three historic abusive powers from encroaching upon our individual liberties. Those powers are: the government, the church, and the aristocracies—big business. And what we see happening in society today is that the government, big business, and the new religion of godless evolutionism, with its green humanistic agenda, is advancing a program it claims to be “just” and “equitable” to establish greater freedom and justice for all, while it actually tramples upon the inalienable liberties given to us by our Creator.
- Satan says you are free to express your sexuality in any way that you want without consequence. While it is true that we have the liberty to do so, we do not obtain greater freedom by doing so. Exercising our God-given power of choice to act outside of God’s design laws for life does not bring us more freedom, because it always injures us, undermining our health, which restricts our abilities, thereby taking away our freedom. Having wanton sex outside a loving marriage leads to contracting various diseases that undermine health and, as one loses health, their freedom is naturally lost—or people become addicted to porn, which enslaves them in compulsive behaviors. Only in God’s design for sexual expression is there true freedom.
- Satan says you are free to put whatever substances you want into your body. This is another trap. If we exercise our liberties in violations of the laws of health, we injure ourselves and trap ourselves in various chemical addictions that undermine liberty, making people slaves to their preferred substance. The same is true for those who eat anything without regard to health—they end up with obesity, heart disease, dementia, and other problems—and all illness undermines liberty. People cannot engage in the full domains of life—climbing stairs, playing sports, even simple tasks such as shopping, playing with grandchildren, or doing household chores—when health is lost. Violating God’s design laws always takes away our freedoms.
Satan exploits the law of liberty by promoting the truth that people do, in fact, have the freedom to take such actions, but when people exercise their liberty to violate God’s design laws for life, they actually enslave themselves into physical illnesses, addictions, fear, guilt, shame, and sin—all the while blindly touting how free they are.
When people reject God and pursue life outside God’s design, they often claim their way is better, that they have more freedom, more liberty, and that those who obey God’s design laws are foolish. But the apostle Paul described the people who disregard the truth about God and His laws for life:
Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them (Romans 1:28–32 NIV84).
This is surely the state of the godless humanistic world today—people destroying themselves while claiming they are doing what is right and giving praise and approval to those who join them in their godless way of living.
Don’t be duped by the claims of the godless in society, that you can experience greater freedom by doing anything and everything you want. Freedom is found only in Christ, in living in harmony with God and His design for life.
So have no other gods before our Creator God of love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind [and] … love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 38 NIV84). And then live free, because “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1 NIV84).
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