The Ways of the Heart
Chapter 5: The Ways of Satan vs. The Ways of God
Page 1: "Spiritual Masters"
by Frank Allnutt

While we believers have been rescued from old, captive relationships, the spiritual war continues between Satan’s domain of darkness and God’s kingdom of light, and we are very much caught up in the battles and conflicts. Figure 5-1 contains a chart that shows the opposing sides in this spiritual war. In scholarly terms, this is called “dualism” or “diametric dualism.” Teaching on dualism can be found throughout the Bible. In the New Testament it is prominent in the teachings of Jesus and in the writings of His disciples.

Dualism can be seen in Satan as the adversary of God. Then, there is the dualism of dark and light, the flesh and the Spirit, death and life, sin and love, the world order and God’s kingdom, the law system and God’s grace system.

False Masters
In modern times, spiritual warfare has been featured in many motion pictures. Among them are “Rosemary’s Baby,” the “Star Wars” saga, “The Exorcist,” and “The Omen” series. Though these films and other of their genre portray open hostility between the “forces of good and evil,” spiritual warfare also takes on more subtlety, such as deception, temptation, intimidation, and so on. It is this more subtle side of spiritual warfare that will be addressed throughout the remainder of this study. Our premise is that, while we have been removed from relationship with our adversaries, the fleshly and often times unwary among us walk or live in the ways of old spiritual masters and, in effect, establish them as false or illegitimate masters. In doing so, our true Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, is often forsaken, as are His love, His kingdom, and His grace.

Our one, True Master
Our new hearts are forever bound to Christ, and that can never change. Paul assures us: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39).

Paul makes it very clear that the Christian has but one true Master: The Lord Jesus Christ. But some believers serve false masters. The Half-Hearted Christian lives as if he were still enslaved to the darkness, the flesh, Satan, sin, the world, and God’s law. Paul explains that whomever or whatever we depend upon becomes our master and we become its slaves (Romans 6:16). Is he contradicting himself? Not at all. Since Christ is the believer’s one and only true Master, any other “master” is really a false or illegitimate master.

Whether knowingly or unwittingly, we can place ourselves under the temporary and conditional control of former spiritual masters by responding to them as we did before salvation, as slaves to masters. Obviously, we should not do this. Scripture tells us that we do not have authority to submit ourselves to other masters because “you are not your own.... For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). Jesus taught that, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).

The term “mammon” means “riches” in a fleshly or worldly sense. When we place someone or something ahead of Christ, our soulical functions turn from being centered in Christ to being centered in self or someone or something else. And that creates a false master and idol. We cannot serve Christ and, at the same time, submit to other masters—not even to our own will over God’s will.

The Half-Hearted Christian, whether he knows it or not, serves many false masters and worships many idols, and is therefore enslaved to them—not positionally or relationally, but temporarily, conditionally and functionally.

Spiritual Adultery
Ezekiel wrote of “adulterous hearts” (Ezekiel 33:3). The context is in regard to believers who turn from God and, in effect, engage in spiritual adultery with false gods, Satan, sin, the world, and perverted concepts of God’s law and their relationship to it. In the book of James false masters and false idols are seen as illicit lovers, and those who cavort with them are called “adulteresses” (James 4:4).

As with sexual adultery, spiritual adultery is acted upon out of the divided condition of the heart. Jesus said, “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28b). In the same way, the person who lusts after old spiritual masters commits spiritual adultery in his heart, whether or not that lust is acted out.

The Unfaithful Bride
On a recent television talk show, the guest was an attractive young woman with a pleasing personality. Newly married, she told how, after one week of marriage, she resumed an adulterous relationship with a former boyfriend. And she saw no moral problem with it. Apparently, neither did half of the studio audience, because they applauded her.

Such immorality runs against the grain of Christian sensibilities, and so we wonder how a person could be so unfaithful, so immoral, and not have it bother their conscience. But before castigating such a person for not living righteously, we should recognize that every one of us has a history of spiritual adultery. Who among us dares to cast a stone?
Before we were saved, most of us did not know of the spiritual relationships through which we were enslaved. Unwittingly, we had become conditioned to living as slaves—as “spiritual mistresses” you might say. And those ways to which we were consciously or unconsciously conditioned carried over into our Christian walk.

No doubt your life-style changed to some extent after you were saved. Perhaps you joined a church, attended a Bible study, began praying —even gave up some old bad habits. But many Christians are so conditioned by their former life that they continue to behave as spiritual mistresses and to walk in the ways of their former spiritual masters.

Figure 5-2:

If we are honest with ourselves, we don’t have to remember very far back in time to “affairs” with false masters. We had those affairs when we walked in their ways. If we told a lie, for example, we walked in the way of Satan, the “Father of lies.” And by walking in his ways, we had a spiritually adulterous affair with him.

When we became Christians we were made the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-9). But all of us are not always faithful brides. There are patterns of spiritual adultery in the lives of Half-Hearted Christians and occasional episodes in the lives of Whole-Hearted Christians.

The Half-Hearted Christian may not be aware of what he is doing, or he may know perfectly well what he is doing and is undisturbed by it. On the other hand, he may be convicted of his sinfulness and try in vain to repent out of his own strength. For if his fleshly mind is set on what he is repenting of, rather than who he should be yielding to, he will likely fail.

The Whole-Hearted Christian does not demonstrate consistent patterns of spiritual adultery, but he is not impervious to lapses in his faithfulness to Christ. Unlike the Half-Hearted Christian, he deals with such episodes by repenting, reuniting his heart out of love, and resuming his walk in Christ; and with all of this comes the experience of his forgiveness, and the cleansing and renewal of his mind.

As we move on in this chapter, we will examine scriptures that teach you were released from your enslaving relationship with Satan in exchange for a liberating new relationship with God through Jesus Christ. In following chapters we will discuss the “exchange” of other spiritual relationships.

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