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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 034. Each One Must Choose
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Each One Must Choose
Every man must make his own decisions. No one can make a choice for another. Every man must do his own thinking.
We can accept another's choice for ourselves, but that is simply accepting the other's help in making the choice. We still choose to take his choice as our own. Another could not choose for us unless we were willing. That is, of course, where there is no force or coercion used, but every man free to act as God intended he should. Just as certainly every man must do his own fighting, and lose or win the fight.
With the greatest reverence let it be said that God cannot make decisions for us. With the same reverence be it said, too, that not even our Lord Jesus can fight our fights for us. He can put all of His power, and all the advantage of His sweeping victory at our disposal. But we must choose to accept and use. He works through us. So working He makes our victory as full and sure and sweeping as His own, by placing His strength at our disposal. Every victory won is by His strength through our own wills.
This explains why there should be a present struggle going on by Satan. It seems strange that after a defeat, the defeated is left free to fight. Defeat, of as radical and crushing and sweeping a sort as Satan has suffered at the hands of our Lord, usually means a settling of the conflict at once and forever. But here is a strange and striking exception. Satan has been defeated, but he has been and is fighting as hard as ever, apparently, and with tremendous results for himself. Why is this? The question is an intensely practical one, or I certainly would not bring it up, here. For in the thick of the fight there is only time and spirit for the intensely practical. And the answer is tremendously practical, because the whole matter is thrown over upon our action.
It is because of us, that the fight continues. Were it not for us men, and the part we have in this thing, Satan's activity would have been summarily settled long ago.
The core of the answer is gotten at once by noticing that our Lord Jesus was acting for us. His whole life as well as His death was on our behalf. It was for our sakes that He came down to this earth, and lived as He did, and was tempted, and suffered, and died. His whole thought was to do something in our place.
It was something in which we had sorely failed. Our failure cost us, and lost us, mastery of ourselves, and the dominion over nature. It brought us suffering and death. It cut us off from God. It makes us slaves of Satan.