Angelic Conflict IV: Why the Human Race?

Why has there been a period of time between the judgment of the fallen angels and the execution of that judgment? It is never stated anywhere in Scripture as such but it is a legitimate deduction from Scripture based on a number of different inferences that that Satan challenged God, and there are three ways in which he did this. It is on the basis of understanding this challenge and the issues that they reveal that we begin to understand why the spiritual life of the church age is so important, and why the character qualities that are emphasised in the church age for the believer are so crucial. It all plays a part in this fantastic cosmic drama of which we are a part. Our life did not just happen; we are being watched on a daily basis by the angels. The point is that we are to be demonstrating the grace of God and demonstrating His character, that God is just and fair.

1. Satan challenged the judicial integrity of God. God has isolated His attributes to ten primary attributes. The reason we isolate these ten is because anything that is an attribute of God as opposed to a characteristic of God must be something that is not creaturely dependent. In other words, God is sovereign whether there is a creature in existence or not or whether there is the anticipation of a creature or not. God is the ultimate authority. God is omniscient, and that has nothing to do with wether or not creatures exist either in reality or anticipation. There are other characteristics of God, a multitude of them, and we have to distinguish between a characteristic of God and an attribute of God. The ten attributes of God are that He is sovereign, absolute righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent, immutable (in His character), veracity. The issue at stake here has to do with the integrity of God: perfect righteousness, absolute justice, immeasurable love and absolute truth. We see these attributes linked together in Psalm 89:14 ^NASB “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Lovingkindness and truth go before You.” This is the idea that it is righteousness that is the absolute standard of His character. Justice is the application of that standard. Satan challenged this before the Supreme Court of Heaven and he said that God was really not fair, that He hadn’t given him a chance to show what he could do. He challenged the love of God. How can a loving God throw His creatures into the lake of fire? He challenges God veracity. How can that be true? You haven’t given me a chance to prove what I can do. At the core level he is challenging the integrity of God.
2. He challenged the fairness of God in terms of giving him a chance to prove that he could be like God, that he could rule creatures as well as God could.
3. He challenged the standards of the divine plan in terms of the character of God. In the divine plan and operation, even among the angels, it was based ultimately on submission to authority. Authority was in the Godhead before God ever created the first creature. The Son is subordinate to the Father, the Holy Spirit is subordinate to the Father and the Son, and yet they all partake of these attributes. They are equal in their personhood but they are distinct in their role. Submission to authority is necessary, and what goes along with this is humility—grace orientation, understanding that everything we have and are is not the result of who and what we are. All of our talents and abilities came from God. We are who we are because God made us that way, so ultimately we have nothing to be proud or arrogant about. So Satan is arrogant and proud of his talents and abilities and yet God is the one who gave them to him. So he challenged the standards of the divine plan—submission to authority, humility, grace orientation, and even being a servant.

The result of this is that there was a trial and God decided to give the angels a chance, to give the angels a big object lesson so that Satan and the angels will understand the dynamics and the reality of His grace, His character and His integrity. He is going to create a creature a little lower than the angels whose ultimate destiny is to raised above the angels and to judge the angels, because the creature, mankind, is going to learn things about God and develop an understanding about the character and nature of God, and is going to be able to reach a level of spiritual advancement far superior to anything the angels ever saw or knew. But it is only by following the plan of God.

What are the issues at stake? First, the integrity of God: understanding His righteousness, His love, and His truth. Truth always relates to the expression of His thinking. His thinking is truth. Truth is not some external standard God’s decisions conform to; truth is His character and He always conforms to His own character. Second, authority orientation based on Satan’s contention that a loving God could not cast His creatures into the lake of fire, and based on his contention that God is not really being fair in the way He is treating Satan and the fallen angels.

Two things that characterise Satan’s thinking. We have already seen that he is antagonistic to God so we have divine viewpoint thinking on one hand, and that relates to authority orientation, humility, grace orientation, and being servant. Being a servant relates to the application of role. If humility and authority orientation aren’t there then being a servant won’t happen. Only the other hand, human viewpoint. Human viewpoint, or what we see here in this case, Satan’s viewpoint, is autonomy: he is being independent of God, a law to himself; he determines what is right. It is characterised by arrogance and antagonism. There is an opposition to God’s plan and an antagonism to God’s way and God’s thinking. So as we look at human viewpoint, also called the thinking of demons in James 3:13-15, what we are beginning to isolate here is the characteristic of what we will see as the cosmic system. The cosmic system is not overt; it is thought, ideas, the realm of ideas that produce action.

Three factors, then, are going to be emphasised in the believer’s life in order for him to be a positive testimony or witness in the angelic conflict. They relate to his mental attitude. The first relate to his personal love for God. When we graph out the advances in the spiritual life we don’t put love for God until and advanced stage because, as Jesus said in John 14: “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” If we are going to love God we have to keep commandments. That means we have to learn the commandments, we have to know the commandments, it takes time to learn and assimilate the doctrine so that we can know how to think and how to live. We may be able to love God in small ways at an early or infancy stage of our spiritual life but it is directly related to the amount of doctrine that we have assimilated. Love for God is not an emotion but an attitude that is going to correspond with authority orientation.

The second factor is related to orientation to life itself, which is genuine humility. Humility is related to two important concepts. Of course, it is related to authority because in humility we have to subordinate ourselves to authority that we may not think are worthy of our submission. In orientation to life we have to develop genuine humility. This involves subordination to authority and teachability—learning and being willing to admit that we are wrong. We have to have the humility to exchange the truth of God’s Word for our time-cherished traditions. We have to be teachable, we have to realise that the Word of God is absolute truth and we have to completely eradicate almost everything we have ever learned because it is always reflective of human viewpoint. As we advance and grow as believers we become oriented to God’s integrity. We are to be holy, a practical holiness, as we live our lives more and more set apart, realising that the sin nature was crucified with Christ and we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin.

The third factor that needs to be emphasised is our orientation to our role, not just roles as men and women but as creatures created in the image and likeness of God designed for a particular function. In Genesis 2:15 we see that the original man, Adam, was created originally to serve. Being created to serve is something that is primary in terms of our role, and yet at the fall man decides to rule autonomously. So part of human viewpoint is the idea that I can run my life apart from God. That mirrors Satan’s thinking: “I can do it as well as God can do it.” We were created to serve; we weren’t created to rule independent from God. There is nothing wrong with being a servant. In fact, Solomon in his prayer 1 Kings chapter three refers to David as “Your servant.” He further defines him as righteous, truth, and having an upright heart. This is critical because there in that prayer he is relating being a servant to righteousness and to truth. So in order to be a servant it is necessary to have righteousness and truth. Yashar lebad is the Hebrew in that passage for “uprightness of heart.” The term yashar is a synonym for tsaddiq, meaning righteousness, but it has an application sense. But what is interesting is that yashar, the verb, becomes a noun by adding a final nun. At that point it becomes jeshurun, and that becomes a title for spiritually mature Israel. So the spiritually mature of Israel was a jeshurun believer; they had upright hearts. They become mature so that they can become a positive witness in the angelic conflict. They recognise their role as being a servant, so to be a servant you have to have righteousness, truth, and uprightness relating to application of doctrine. This same principle is emphasised in Matthew 18:1ff. Why is it that again and again in these parables when Jesus starts emphasising certain character qualities it always comes back to humility, and again and again He uses the analogy of servant to the master. In part of the spiritual life there is a mentality that is demanding to be a servant because the path to rulership in the Millennial kingdom is to learn to be a servant. Satan wants to rule by being a dominant tyrant and in the New Testament the issue is being a servant to those you lead, not a tyrant over those you lead.

Matthew 18:1 ^NASB “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, ‘Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’” They are operating on cosmic thinking: “I want to be the best.” [2] “And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, [3] and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. [4] Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” So what is the character quality that makes one the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Humility, teachability, submission to authority.

Matthew 20:20 ^NASB “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, bowing down and making a request of Him. [21] And He said to her, ‘What do you wish?’ She said to Him, ‘Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left.’ [22] But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to Him, ‘We are able.’ [23] He said to them, ‘My cup you shall drink; but to sit on My right and on {My} left, this is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.’ [24] And hearing {this,} the ten became indignant with the two brothers. [25] But Jesus called them to Himself and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and {their} great men exercise authority over them’.” In tyranny this is typical of the world, of how the world views authority and leadership. [26] “It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant…” He is not saying there is no authority among them. He is saying that the way it is practised is not like that. [27] “and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; [28] and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave…” There is an element of service and subordination that is what makes a believer great, and that is why if we want to understand real leadership and authority from the Scripture it starts with being a servant and not with asserting one’s own position and one’s own ability and talent.

The ultimate model that is played against the arrogance and lack of humility of Satan is Jesus Christ. This is emphasised in two verses: Matthew 20:28 ^NASB “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 ^NASB “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” The important thing to recognise here is that the verb used here for “serve” is diakoneo [diakonew], a synonym for two other words. One is douleo [doulew], the verb for “slave,” and it is also used as a synonym for latreuo [latreuw], a Greek for service of worship. Romans 12:1, 2. So the emphasis, then, is not on a lack of volition. As a diakoneo you voluntarily serve. Whereas bond slave is true and there are other applications, here is being emphasised the voluntary submission to authority, that Jesus voluntarily places Himself under authority. Whereas doulos emphasises the slave’s dependence on the master, here He is indicating that He is voluntarily putting Himself in this position. So ultimately Jesus Christ demonstrates all of the characteristics that are antagonistic to Satan in his whole ploy to gain authority and become like God.

So the angelic conflict is not restricted to just answering the simple question: How can a loving God cast His creatures into a lake of fire. To extrapolate beyond that, in developing the character of Christ in the believer, when the believer reaches spiritual maturity he becomes a living testimony to the fallaciousness of Satan’s challenge. If even one believer trusts Christ as saviour then Satan’s whole charge is destroyed. But there are millions of believers who are advancing to spiritual maturity who by every positive decision for doctrine demonstrate that Satan’s charge is false. And that is why the believer’s advance to spiritual maturity is going to be raised to a level to rule and reign with Christ in the Millennial kingdom as a result of the rewards that they receive at the judgment seat of Christ, and they will be qualified to judge the angels because they have mastered and learned character qualifications in the heat of the battle that angels never developed and never were able to develop. Consequently believers who are failures, who never advance, who lose rewards at the judgment seat of Christ and are ashamed at the judgment seat of Christ, aren’t going to enter into that blessing. That is our inheritance, called inheriting the kingdom. Believers who are failures are not going to inherit the kingdom. They will be there but they won’t have the privilege and responsibility of ruling and reigning with Christ because they didn’t learn it here and now. This is the training ground. Whether or not we pass the course right now determines our position and our place for all eternity. This is how the spiritual life relates to the angelic conflict.