THE VINDICATION OF GOD

All the war between God and Satan is summed up in Satan’s determination to prove to God that we don’t love Him, won’t love Him; that nobody will love Him or accept His gifts, much less declare their love for Him by laying down their life and earthly pursuits, if need be, in response to that love.

Therefore, the bottom line in the war for the souls of men is that God cannot be vindicated in the face His Enemy in the matter of love unless we receive and respond to His love! Only then will Satan’s dispute and contention against God be silenced.

And because we are with God and He is with us, and because we both have the same enemy, God cannot be ultimately vindicated before His Enemy unless we are vindicated, justified, proven innocent, and acquitted before ours. The justice we long for and the righteous judgments of God we cry out for are innately tied into His own vindication, that He was and is faithful, in all circumstances, to bring us back home to heaven.

And if we are God’s, He belongs to us and we belong Him. To be His, to belong to the Most High, to be a precious part of His family, to have entered into son or daughter ship with the Father through the Blood of Jesus, means we are in a covenant relationship with the God of the Universe, the One true God, the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit.

THE COVENANT RELATIONSHIP

As part of that covenant, everything He has belongs to us including the great privilege of entering into the fellowship of His sufferings. We become part of those who are called to fill up the measure of His sufferings through the sufferings of love. Even as love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things, part of love’s calling is to partake with Him in this great labor of love, often described and experienced as suffering.

However, because much suffering comes out of foolishness and many things are given out of fear and coercion, love only counts for those things suffered or given in love. Giving that is done through fear or manipulation is not counted as love. That is why those who “get saved” because they don’t want to go to Hell have not yet understood the depths of the love of God or the power of love.

The scripture says that even though I give my body, the most basic thing that I have to give, to be burned, and have not love it profits me nothing. If there is fear, intimidation, coercion or threats of judgment, the matter in no longer one of love but of fear.

To be love, love must be freely given. If the relationship is one gained through conquest it is a matter of enslaving. If the relationship is gained through contractual agreements, the transaction is not love but business. Only when there is a willing surrender of all that I have, freely given and exchanged for all that you have, is there a true covenant relationship.

Love can only be had and enjoyed in a covenant relationship based on trust in and the integrity of the two consenting parties. Faith, love and good will prevail against fear and unbelief because the one who loves will keep the promise even to the laying down of his or her own life. Nothing is greater than the power of love.

HOW IS GOD IN NEED OF VINDICATION?

How is it then that God Who needs nothing needs to be vindicated? Is God not constantly being judged in the hearts of men? Are we not constantly being tempted to judge God in light of what happens to us? If good things happen to us, we may be tempted to attribute it to some good thing we did, (Karma). If something bad happens to us we ask “Why me God” and “Where is (was)God”?

We immediately begin to search for the curse or cause or assume it is because we did something wrong, that it is our fault, that we had it coming, we are guilty, and God is punishing us. We thus end up judging ourselves as deserving of judgment and attribute that judgment to God by charging Him with doing or permitting the bad things that have been happening to us. Our confidence in God’s love for us is shaken, threatened by the negative circumstances that suggest He has abandoned us and betrayed our trust.

We assume He is mad at us for breaking His Law, when, in fact, the Lord has satisfied and completed the demands death made against us through the Law Himself, by dying in our place. The demands and indictments the Law was able to make in defining sin and implicating us as guilty of it, (either because of the sin we did or of the sin that was done against us), has brought us under the influence and counsel of the Evil One. The spirit of Religion and the Accuser have tricked us into making our life all about sin or getting rid of it. If the Enemy can get us to focus on our sin he can distract us from the true source and center of all things necessary to salvation – the Son of God.

If the Liar can get us to believe God is all about us being perfect or good, the Enemy has succeeded in getting us to agree with him in redefining love as conditional, provisional and restricted. There is no such thing as conditional love though we see it everywhere! Putting conditional love in the place of true love destroys the very essence of a love which, by definition, cannot be earned.

Making God’s love and the Gospel of Jesus Christ about works instead of letting the fruit of good works flow out of our relationship with the Vine is not only a perversion of the intentions of God in His relationship with us, but also a discounting of the work of the Cross of His Christ.

SINNING IS AN ADJECTIVE THAT DESCRIBES BEHAVIOR

The Love of God, the source and origin of love, is freely given out of the heart of the One who gives it. Sinning is transgression, crossing the line. It is used in the Greek as an adjective that defines the behavior, not the being, of human beings. When we break the law we come under the law of Demonic Retribution, i.e., an eye must be given for an eye taken.

Doing sins makes us eligible for the demonic label of “sinner” and opens the door to the Enemy bringing down his judgments against us. Those judgments get twisted around in our minds to make us think God is mad at us and that we are being judged by Him for what we did.

The truth is that we have been caught, tangled up in the rule that says whom we listen to and obey is the one we become enslaved to. If we listen to lies, including lies fear and guilt have told us about it being “our fault” and we deserve to be punished, we are , in essence rejecting the love and goodness of God to believe the liar.

If the Enemy can get us to take the blame ourselves by making us feel responsible or bad or confused he can slap on us the charges of guilt and the penalty for being irresponsible or for sinning. The troubles and consequences that come out of sinning become the demonic judgments the Enemy uses to convince us God is mad at us and we deserve the things that are happening to us.

The devil can also deceive us into projecting the judgments and destruction and catastrophes happening to us onto God. We are tempted to set God up in a place of judgment where we blame Him for our troubles. This also works to alienate us from God and prompts us to take control of our own life. Thus, we reject the love and help of God in our personal lives, though we may continue to offer God lip service and look like Christians in public.

The real target in Satan’s attempt to justify himself in his war of rebellion against God is the love relationship between us and our Father. The Enemy has tried to make fear and failure our fault. Our faith is constantly being scrutinized by the Accuser. We are called to walk in the Law of Love and continue to believe in the promises of God through faith, not feelings.

The Enemy manipulates our thoughts and feeling to question our faith in the Goodness of God and in His commitment to keep us. We do not understand that the traditions of men and the Law of commandments have been upgraded to the Law of Love. The Law of commandments brings about wrath and transgression, (Rom.4:15). The Law of Love will rule in the final settling of the dispute between God and Satan. It is not about us, or our goodness. We are only the proof point of that dispute.

IT IS NOT ABOUT US!

Therefore, our trials and tribulations are not about us!! They are not about God exposing the motives of our hearts, or testing our faith. Job was tested by Satan because Satan was jealous of Job and because Job was being raised in righteousness, not because he had fallen into sin.

Through the pressure the Enemy is putting on us through our trials he is putting pressure on God. Satan is using us to get back at God. Satan is testing God’s workmanship in us who have been created unto good works (Eph. 2:10). The trial is about God and His desire and ability to keep us safe in the midst of the Devil’s fury.

Paul says “For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that Day.” (II Tim. 1:12) Faith is the victory of continuing on in believing that God knows the truth and is for us and we are loved no matter what it looks like or feels like, even unto death if need be.

We stand steadfast in the faith of Jesus Christ in the face of all the Devil does to obscure the love of God through the trial of hard things including delays in answers to our prayers. We are patient, as was Job, in all his trials, in spite of the Accuser’s constant petitioning of the High Court to conceal, test or discourage that love.

If the Enemy can keep us from receiving the love of God, Fear has won the argument. If we believe the lie perpetrated against the love and goodness of God presented every day in the hearts and souls of men, then God’s love and pursuit of us as His beloved has failed.

If God’s love has failed, then fear and rejection have won. Satan has in essence defeated the God of Love through the cutting off the love for God in His sons and daughters.

The Accuser’s one obsession is to distract us with pain and torment us with guilt or the fear of death, or sinning against God so he can get us to focus on it being all about “us”. This contest, battle, war, assault, accusation, incrimination against us is a false flag. The Issue is NOT even about us, it is about God’s love for us and His commitment to keep us in the midst of the terror and fiery trial the devil has demanded to test us with.

God is not tempted with evil, does not do evil, and does not tempt us to do evil! The trial of our faith is the testing of our confidence in the promise of God and in His goodness to complete the work He has begun in us. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to perfect, protect and deliver us from the fears that surround us and secure us in His love and blessings.

Only as we know we are loved can we love in return. The only way we can know we are loved is to know the revelation of Jesus Christ who is the expression of the Father’s love toward us. This is a war for love, won by love where God is vindicated by our acceptance of His love by loving Him.