Special Tests for Special Purposes – Part 4

Our response to chastening should be to repent our response to testing should be to endure but if we persist in trying to endure when we should repent we are guilty of stubbornness and insensitivity.

The basic issues of sin or righteousness are defined in satan’s original temptation of Adam and Eve. His Greek title diablos (English devil) means slanderer. To slander someone means to defame their character. This is satan’s primary activity. First and foremost, satan defames the character of God Himself, hence his original question to Eve: “Has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:2)

Satan implied that God was a despot – arbitrary, unfair and unloving. God was shutting Adam and Eve out from a higher level of knowledge of good and evil. His goal was to undermine their trust in God’s goodness when, in actual fact, God had already provided them with everything that was good and delightful. From mistrust of God’s goodness, Adam and Eve moved to disbelief in God’s word and then to the act of disobedience. Through faith in Christ, God has provided a redemption that reverses the downward process of the fall. It replaces disbelief with faith, disobedience with obedience and mistrust with trust.