Part 4 – Mankind’s Faux (false) Father – The Devil

This Article is part of a multi-part Study Series called The Nature of Man.

Now we can better understand why it is that Jesus would speak to the religious leaders of Israel in His day saying,Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts (desire) of your father ye will do.(John. 8:44a) Israel’s leaders were only doing the will or “lust (desire)” of their faux father – the Devil. Jesus is thereby saying they had no nature of their own – they simply lived and expressed the fallen nature that came to them via Adam, the federal head of all humanity. To expect righteousness from any unregenerate person would be like expecting brain surgery from a plumber – he’s just not properly equipped to do surgery. The unregenerate man is not equipped to do genuine righteousness.

Thus, all mankind is infected with that Sin-nature of Satan. Every baby born into this world is infected with the Sin-nature. That sweet child or grandchild has the Serpents Sin-nature. You will note that their first lies came naturally to them. The Devil is thereby the false father of sorts to mankind.

Thankfully, we who have been born of God’s “Seed, which is Christ” (Gal 3:16, 1Pet 1:23), have a new righteous nature of Christ desiring to be governed His “Spirit of life” as we trust His “word” and innermost restraints.

Ignorant people blame God for the evil in the world since they fail to see the Devil as the usurping faux father of all mankind, who is called “the god of this world.” The Devil is a created being who is not capable of procreation, The Devil is not a life-giver, he has no life to father, yet his words have infected all of humanity forever. He only has “sin and death” to pass on to those who are deceived. Satan is a usurper of the man who was created with the intent of being a living container for the life and nature of God.

Religion’s Source:

Religion is rooted in the wrong tree of trying ‘to do good and not evil.’ It promotes man’s SELF-effort to find, serve and please God as though one can be deserving of God’s blessing. Sin-nature would actually support religions error of promoting good works as the means of satisfying God. The Sin-nature and legalistic religion make man a failure in his self, promoting religion’s hypocrisy. Trying to live under religion’s righteous demands that YOU can’t do just promotes hypocrisy we see in religion. Satan is opposed to the reality of the living Christ who is the genuine righteous life in every man who receives Christ. So, religion with its laws, go hand in hand with the Sin nature to make you fail; in fact, (religious) law is the power of Sin (1Cor 15:56b). Satan does not mind you “trying” to live godly; he knows you can’t do it in and of yourself. By offering the substitute of religion’s self-effort program, Satan can sidetrack you from coming to know the truth of God’s unconditional love, grace and life, that are now yours in Christ. Thankfully, we are “not under the law (religious law) but under grace” (Rom 6:14b). Knowing this truth helps relieve us of Satan’s Sin-nature that works through religion.

Recall that it was religion that called for the crucifixion of Jesus. Today, many worship Jesus Christ as though He were a dead historical leader, as though he is not alive within the believer, and so they should try imitate Jesus of Nazareth and following His words spoken to Israel, not the Gentiles. This is trying to substitute the imitation of Jesus for actually living by His life now in us. Why settle for trying to copy Jesus, which is hopeless, when we have Him actually and literally present in us, desiring to live through us? 

The erroneous idea of religion, to imitate Jesus (what would Jesus do?) is even more evil than you think. John says denying the living Christ is nothing less that “the spirit of anti-christ.” (1 John 4:2-4) This denial of Christ living in each member of “the Church which is His body(Eph 1:22b-23a) as He has lived and will live in believing Israelites, makes His life in the believer “of no effect” (Gal 5:4).

Galatians 5:4 Christ is become of no effect (no benefit) unto you, whosoever of you (think you) are justified by the (works of) law; ye are fallen from grace.

Two thousand years ago Jesus of Nazareth walked in human flesh; today He walks in our flesh bodies, since we are the members of “the body of Christ” on earth today.  No matter how religious we may appear, whenever we live our lives, ignoring the Christ who lives in us as our life and Lord; we then are anti the Christ who lives in us. This then is “the spirit of antichrist.”

When we live religiously, or legalistically, trying to do what we think may make us to look or sound religious or righteous, we actually are making Christ in us “of no effect” in our living. We thereby deny Him who is the righteous One in us the opportunity to live through us as He wills, however that may be.