As the Body of Christ and as ministers of Christ, we need to understand fully that Jesus Christ's misson on this earth was more than to die on the cross of Calvary. That was only part of His mission of salvation.
The purpose of Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ came here for a purpose. What had been lost to man in the Garden of Eden and wrestled from him through temptation, God sent Jesus to reclaim. For that responsibility, Jesus came in the form of the Second Adam to face the same temptation and to face the same enemy that the first Adam had faced.
When Jesus came face to face with the enemy, even though He was God incarnate, He was 100 percent man. The Bible says that this was so that He could be taken from among men, that He might one day qualify to be the High Priest of every man and every woman:
"Therefore in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2:17, NKJV).
Jesus Christ now sits at the right hand of God in the heavenlies as our High Priest.
Because Jesus prevailed as man, He is able to succor those in need today:
"For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, he is able to aid those who are tempted" (Heb. 2:8).
Jesus is able to understand. He is touched with the feelings of our infirmities.
If Jesus were just divine, if He were God only, He could not understand the feelings of our infirmities, but He was 100 percent man, human in every respect, tempted in in every point like as we are:
"For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).
Prior to His death on the cross, Jesus did not draw on His inherent deity to overcome Satan while He was on this earth. The resources He use are the same resources which God has place at the disposal of His believing disciples today.
Jesus was tested as a man
Being tried, Jesus was tried as a man. Being tested, He was tested as a man. Overcoming, He overcame as a man.
Why? So that some day, you and I might realize that because He overcame as a man, we can over overcome as men, without inherent deity.
He came here for a purpose, to engage the enemy in bitter spiritual combat, and He won. He had no more resources than those available to you and to me. And He won.
Every time Jesus confronted Satan or any of his evil power, Jesus won. He defeated the Devil soundly on every battlefield where they met.
We have the same resources, the same authority for defeating Satan that Jesus had.
God-given directives and strategies
The spiritual warfare we are in, we are in it to win! We must win. And to win, we must have a strategy. We must know the God-given methods and rules of winning this victory once and for all. There are several specific rules for spiritual battle I want to share with you that are very important.
1. You must locate your enemy
You cannot do battle against an enemy if you cannot locate him. One of the reasons why we have such great failures as ministers is because we have not zeroed in on our enemy; we have not located him.
Most of our activity in ministry is surface. It deals only with the exterior. We have not fully learned that our battle is not with flesh and blood:
Paul said: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalitites, against power, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12).
We are not dealing with just young people who are rebellious. Many parents have raised their children in Christian homes but now those young people are on drugs, are living lives of promiscuousness. And they wonder what went wrong. One thing parents must not do is, never let the Devil put them under condemnation.
That does not mean that we give up on them; but if we try to deal with those young people on the surface, we are battering our heads against a stone wall.
You can talk to these young people until you are blue in the face, but there is no way that you can communicate through words because the battle is not in the natural world. It is not with natural things or circumstances.
It is time we learned how to locate our enemy so that we do not dissipate our fire power by putting it in the wrong direction.
There is an underlying reason for sin which goes beyond the surface. There is an underlying reason for sickness that goes beyond the surface.
If you can go beyond the surface in intercession, in prayer, in travail, in the power of the Holy Ghost and get hold of these things at the root cause, you can defeat them and destroy them. You can lay the axe at the root of the tree. As you do this in the Name and the power of Jesus Christ, the surface takes care of itself. The victory comes.
After we have realized where our battle is, who enemy is, where and how he operates, there is another very important rule of winning the battle....
2. You must assess the enemy's strength and know your strength
You must never understimate the Devil's strength. You must not be afraid of the words demons, Devil, principalities and powers.
There is nothing mystical about the power of God; it is simple. It is mystical only because we have taken it and put it off somewhere out of man's reach. The same thing is true with Satan and Lucifer.
Paul said: "... lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices" (2 Cor. 2:11).
There are only two forces in this world: God and the Devil, good and evil.
Satan and denominationalism
Satan tries to destroy the strength of God's people through disunity. Let us examine one of his methods for doing this:
John 4 tells of a time when Jesus sat at Jacob's well. A Samaritan woman came by and Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink" (John 4:7). She looked at Him and then said in surprise, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan" (John 4:9).
In those days, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans.
One of the biggest curses in the world is the spirit of denominationlism that divides the Body of Christ. Many Churches within their own denominations cannat get along with each other, much less those of other denominations.
Do you see what Satan tried to do? Religious differences and doctrines and divisions did not start with the Church.
Satan and doctrinal differences
If Satan cannot get us to be divided because of the denominational walls that we have, he tries to get us to be divided, to dissipate our strength, through doctrinal differences. More people have been sent to hell through the Church of Jesus Christ and their differences than I care to try to evaluate.
There are many people who believe that Christian can be demon possessed. I hold deep respect for people who may believe this, but I do not believe that a Christian can be demon prossessed. I believe than a born-again, Spirit-filled believer cannot be demon possesses, so I do not get any demon. Not so for those Christians who believe otherwise. You get what you believe for.
I do not believe that the Devil inhabits the same vessel inhabited by Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God. I am talking about demon possession, not about oppression. I am not talking about outside forces coming against us. I am talking about possession.
Jesus Christ possesses me and He so fills this temple which is the temple of the Holy Ghost that He does not leave any place for the Devil.
However the enemy does have a certain amount of power which God has permitted him to have for a season, and we need to know how to assess his strength.
The strength of Satan and the Strength of Jesus
The Scripture tells us that one third of the angelic beings of heaven followed Lucifer in revolution. Satan must have been very powerful to persuade on third of the angelic host of heaven to follow him.
God not only knew the strength of Satan's power by his attack on heaven but also by his attack against man on earth.
Now let me ask you this question: If God knew the strength of the enemy's power when He sent His Son Jesus here to engage that enemy in spiritual battle, do you think for one minute that God did not give His Son the necessary tools, weapons, equipment to engage that enemy and to work the works of His Father Who sent Him?
How much power did God give Him?
Jesus said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matt. 28:18, KJV).
Even if that power were not spelled out in many, many Scriptures, that one would be enough to settle. "All power" means that Jesus was given complete, total, unquestionable power and mastery over the Devil. Yes, God gave all power into the hand of His Son to accomplish the task to be fulfilled.
Isaiah said: "So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11, NKJV).
God guaranteed the success of His Word, Jesus Christ, Who did indeed accomplish what He was sent to do.
John said: ".... For this purpose of the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8).
As a result of His victory over Satan, Jesus has led the way. He has given to you and to me the keys not only of working the works of God once in a while here on this earth, He actually has given us the keys to complete victory and dominion over Satan here on earth.
In effect, Jesus Christ by His life, death, resurrection and ascension has given to us, as His disciples, the keys of dominion over the kingdom of the world.
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