False Interpretation

The devil was the first to interpret God’s word. God had spoken to Adam and Eve and given them His commandment. But immediately Satan was there to explain away and pervert what God had said. What is dangerous about his interpretations has always been that he has presented things in a seemingly more beautiful light than what God has given. He stretches our thoughts beyond the real glory of God’s word to something that seems even more glorious. The mind is deceived by the apparently greater brilliance, and the soul goes outside its spiritual boundaries and falls away from God.

“God knows,” Satan said, “that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” Gen. 3:5. Adam and Eve had received their commandment from God; they knew what they ought to know. Now Satan comes and says, “God knows!” “What God knows, that must be glorious, it must be beautiful and nothing but good! To be like Him! To get your eyes opened like His! That must be worthwhile!”

“It is written,” Satan said to Jesus, quoting the scripture correctly, but injecting his will into it instead of God’s will. Satan puts his spirit into the words of the scripture in order to deceive. He presented God’s promises and wanted Jesus to act accordingly. It must be glorious to act on God’s promises! No, not according to Satan’s will, even if he presents them as beautifully as he can.

Satan’s interpretations of scripture often look brilliant through their beauty. One will apparently become more like God, make more progress, obtain an apparently greater faith. But it is all deception.

Satan’s great interest is not in interpreting God’s Word for the world. It is the people of God who are the target for his interpretations and teachings. He came to Adam and Eve before the fall, to Christ, the Son of God, and the people of God today are no exception.

Paul exhorted Timothy, saying, “O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge—by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.” 1 Tim. 6:20-21. People obtain false knowledge about God when they go outside of God’s light and into Satan’s interpretations of God and His words. These interpretations can be beautiful for the flesh; they can add to God a love that stretches beyond His righteousness, an indulgence that goes beyond His truth. Satan interprets God and makes Him beautiful in accordance with how man desires Him to be, but not in accordance with God’s own nature. They go astray according to the faith through believing something about God and His words which is not in Him. Like Israel, they secretly do things against the Lord their God and His word, things that are not right. 2 Kings 17:9. They think what seems to be more about God than many others, but when anyone thinks something more about God other than what is actually in God, then they come into darkness. Many go astray concerning the faith today. They believe things that seem to make God great, for example, that He makes the way to follow Jesus easier than it actually is. God is love, and accordingly people believe that He will conduct Himself according to what people call love. Faith outside of God’s being creates false knowledge. It is through going astray concerning the faith that the contradictions to the true knowledge of God come. Only true knowledge is the truth, a fruit of the faith of Jesus, the son of God, and not of what people think about Him. Whoever contradicts the truth and knowledge which comes through the faith of Jesus Christ can only do this by false concepts and perversions of the truth.

The body of sin. A doctrine that was spreading in those days was that inherent or indwelling sin, or sin in the flesh, the body of sin, is taken away when one receives the baptism of the Spirit. The whole thing is a deception of Satan, a dazzling miracle that already led many into corruption. [Even today many scorn the truth about “original sin” and believe that man is inherently good. Most Christians do not understand the difference between “having sin” and “committing sin”.]

We know that in Christ, the body of sin has been destroyed, because it is written about Him that He condemned sin in the flesh. Rom. 8:3. Now, as the children of God, we shall by faith enter into the same work, because the flesh where sin is situated is crucified with Him, so that the body of sin should be destroyed, that we may no longer serve sin. Rom. 6:6. For when the flesh, which is where sin works, is crucified, sin has no way of escape, and the body of sin is destroyed. Here we are formed through fellowship in the sufferings of Christ to be conformed to Christ in His death. Phil. 3:10. And how was Christ in His death? Yes, He cried out: “It is finished.” Therefore, all sin in the flesh is condemned. It is true in Him; but now it shall by faith be true in us, as the death of Christ becomes active in our inner being. “Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.” 2 Cor. 4:10. Dying is called here in Greek necrosis, which means death, consumption or gangrene. In this way, by carrying about the dying of Jesus, the whole of our self-life shall get consumed. We die to the law through the body of Christ through being completely surrendered to the death of Christ. The baptism of the Spirit gives us the power not only to overcome sin but to lay our life down. Jesus sacrificed Himself in the power of an eternal spirit.

The false doctrine says that the indwelling sin is removed by the baptism of the Spirit. Right away the soul is led astray concerning the faith, and then tumbles into the most confusing thoughts and ideas that even exclude the most childlike spiritual logic.