Born Again Christian With a Demon in Them
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By John MacArthur
We must remember, first of all, that God's Word is our just reliable source of truth about Satan and demons.
Princeton theologian and scholar Dr. Charles Hodge rightly warned:
No amount of learning, no superiority of talent, nor even the pretension to inspiration, tin can justify a divergence from the . . . truths taught by men to whose inspiration God has borne witness. All teachers must be brought to this standard; and even if an angel from heaven should teach anything reverse to the Scriptures, he should be regarded as abomination, Gal. ane:8. It is a affair of constant gratitude that we have such a standard whereby to try the spirits whether they exist of God (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972], p. 395).
What does God's Word, the touchstone of truth, say? Can demons inhabit or spatially indwell a true laic? Can they walk through an open up door and become a squatter? Proponents of today's spiritual warfare movement say yes, but they base their reply on subjective experience, not on God'south Discussion. The Bible makes it clear that such a claim has no justifiable basis.
In that location is no clear case in the Bible where a demon e'er inhabited or invaded a true believer. Never in the New Testament epistles are believers warned about the possibility of being inhabited by demons. Neither do we see anyone rebuking, binding, or casting demons out of a truthful believer. The epistles never instruct believers to bandage out demons, whether from a believer or unbeliever. Christ and the apostles were the only ones who cast out demons, and in every case the demon-possessed people were unbelievers.
The commonage pedagogy of Scripture is that demons can never spatially indwell a truthful believer. A clear implication of ii Corinthians half dozen, for example, is that the indwelling Holy Spirit could never cohabit with demons:
What harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what understanding has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; but equally God said, "I will dwell in them and walk amongst them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (vv. 15–sixteen).
In Colossians 1:13, Paul says God "delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son." Salvation brings truthful deliverance and protection from Satan. In Romans 8:37, Paul says we overwhelmingly conquer through Christ. In 1 Corinthians fifteen:57, he says God gives us the victory. In 2 Corinthians ii:fourteen, he says God ever leads us in triumph. In 1 John ii:13, John says we have overcome the evil 1. And, in four:4, he says the indwelling Holy Spirit is greater than Satan. How could anyone affirm those glorious truths, yet believe demons can indwell 18-carat believers?
DEMON POSSESSION AND TRUE CONVERSION
Many of the leading voices in today's spiritual warfare motion are as well quick to hail every profession of organized religion in Christ equally proof of salvation. That reflects the easy-believism that has swept this generation.
A thorough biblical understanding of the doctrine of conversion makes information technology articulate that demons could never indwell or possess a believer. Jonathan Edwards wrote well-nigh truthful conversion:
Scripture describes conversion in terms which imply or signify a change of nature: being born once again, becoming new creatures, rising from the dead, being renewed in the spirit of the mind, dying to sin and living to righteousness, putting off the onetime homo and putting on the new, becoming partakers of the divine nature, and and so on.
It follows that if there is no existent and lasting change in people who call back they are converted, their organized religion is worthless, any their experiences may be. Conversion is the turning of the whole man from sin to God. God can restrain unconverted people from sin, of grade, but in conversion he turns the very heart and nature from sin to holiness. The converted person becomes the enemy of sin.
What, then, shall nosotros make of a person who says he has experienced conversion, but whose religious emotions soon dice abroad, leaving him much the same person every bit he was before? He seems as selfish, worldly, foolish, perverse and united nations-Christian as ever. This speaks against him louder than any religious experiences tin speak for him.
In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither a dramatic experience nor a quiet one, neither a wonderful testimony nor a dull one, counts for anything. The just thing that counts is a new creation (The Experience That Counts! p. 99).
In Matthew 12, Christ rebuked those who were post-obit Him just for the sake of witnessing great signs and wonders:
When the unclean spirit goes out of a homo, information technology passes through waterless places, seeking residuum, and does not find it. Then it says, "I will render to my firm from which I came" ; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in society. Then it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and alive there; and the last land of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation (vv. 43–45).
Instead of responding with spectacular signs and wonders, Christ addressed their demand for salvation. Many people appear to have their lives in society. But in reality, they take not trusted Christ as Savior and Lord. Their souls are "unoccupied" — that is, the Holy Spirit does non indwell them. Thus they are open up to demonic invasion. That cannot exist truthful of those whose bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Cor. half dozen:16).
According to i Peter i:5, when Christ reigns in a person's life, that person is kept past God's power. Every bit a result, "the evil one does not bear upon him" (1 John 5:18). When the Holy Spirit inhabits a person, no demon tin prepare house equally a squatter. Indwelling by demons is only evidence of a lack of genuine salvation.
This article originally appeared in Pulpit Mag , an online magazine of the Shepherds' Fellowship , Grace Customs Church building .
Source: https://www.gty.org/library/questions/QA191/can-christians-be-demonpossessed
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