A cautionary limitation of the OT is that it sometimes presents a distorted image of God. This distortion was formed by people who labored under "developmental limitations" (in a spiritual sense, remember Paul likens OT saints to schoolchildren in Galatians).
OT saints wrongly conjoined God and Satan together at the hip. Under their hyper-sovereign view of things, they saw Satan as God's angry voice, God's minister of wrath, God's "left hand" in other words. The resultant image leaves us with a frequently un-Christ-like, Janus-faced, and bipolar image of God.
But, Jesus came to reveal that Satan is NOT the left hand of God. Jesus may be seated at the right hand of the Heavenly Father, but Satan is not seated at His left hand. Jesus is BOTH hands of God. In Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. If you see Him, you have truly seen the fullness of the Father's boundless goodwill toward us.
Yet, many claim to this day that Satan IS the left hand of God, doing only what God expressly commands him to do. Many Calvinists believe this (that Satan is on God's leash). Ancient and modern Judaism believes this. Islam believes this. In fact, even the Old Testament saints believe this.
But, thankfully, Jesus doesn't believe it. He came to reveal that Old Testament thinking was misguided on this point. Jesus came to correct Old Testament thinking about the relationship between God and Satan.
The problem was that Old Testament saints had an UNDIFFERENTIATED view of God and Satan. In other words, they didn't know the crucial DIFFERENCE between God and Satan. They didn't know where God ended and Satan began. In fact, they often confused Satan's voice for God's voice. These OT believers were not Spirit Baptized and lacked the ability to fully and accurately process the nature of God. This is why John 1:18 says no Old Testament saint had accurately perceived the Father's true nature. Only Jesus accurately and faithfully reveals the essence of God.
Old Testament saints wrongly believed God and Satan were joined at the hip, working together, and that all the following couplets--good and evil, forgiveness and wrath, healing and destruction, ALL came from God's hand. The Old Testament, in other words, believed Satan was God's "left hand" while the coming Messianic King would be God's "right hand."
Most every modern misunderstanding of God's nature comes about when we slip into Old Testament UNDIFFERENTIATED thinking. Here are some particular insights into Old Testament versus New Testament thinking about God and Satan.
The Old Testament saints saw God as having TWO sides, a LIGHT SIDE of LOVE and a DARK SIDE of WRATH. Jesus taught us God has one side--God is ONLY light and in Him is NO darkness at ALL (1 John 1:5).
Old Testament thinking wrongly believed Satan was God's official MINISTER OF WRATH who obediently "carried out" the Lord's "dark side" orders. The New Testament teaches us Jesus came to "destroy" Satan's ministry of wrath (1 John 3:8) and that Satan was all the following: the fallen god of this world, a cosmic rebel, the father of all lies who has NO truth in him, and a treacherous murderer from the beginning (2 Corinthians 4:4; John 8:44).
Old Testament saints believed the Lord "expressly commands" Satan to inflict all the curses of Deut 28:15 -58, which include destruction, plague, war, oppression, lack, captivity, failure and death. Jesus came to show that the Father ONLY operates in dynamics of "LIFE" -- the giving of it, the protection of it, the restoration of it, the expansion of it, and the fulfillment of it (John 10:10).
The Old Testament saints believed that God has the power of death. The New Testament teaches Satan has the power of death, that death is an enemy of God, and that God only has the power of life (Hebrews 2:14; 1 Corinthians 15:26).
The New Testament Bottom Line: Satan is not the "left hand" of God. Jesus is the ONLY hand of God, a hand which opposes Satan on every level. It is time for all Christians to know their spiritual right hand from their left.
Excellently put!
Posted by: Amy J | January 01, 2016 at 11:36 PM