Doing the Devil’s Deeds.

Slander. It’s a vicious little term, isn’t? Just sounds like an oily, weaselly, evil little word. Slander... slanderous... slanderer. Nobody wants to be called this but few people seem to mind engaging in it. Oh irony of ironies.

‘Slander’ is defined in one modern dictionary as ‘to make false and damaging statements about someone.’ As a noun it is ‘the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation.’ You seeing this? We can offer a litany of synonyms here: ‘to defame someone’s character, assassinate their reputation, blacken someone’s name, to tell lies about, speak evil of, to libel, smear, spread words of scandal, to besmirch, tarnish or taint, to vilify, denigrate, mudsling {election year, anyone?}.’

Did you know diabolos, Satan’s NT designation as “the devil,” means- accuser, slanderer, traitor? When you speak evil against the Family of Faith, when you slander the Children of God, when you defame the character of another believer, you are literally ‘doing the devil’s deeds.’ Because that’s what he’s about! You’ve taken on the attitude and the arrogance of the adversary of God, the opponent of all that is good.

James 4:11 kicks off with a single command: “Brothers and sisters,” my fellow Warriors on the Battlefield of Faith, “do not slander one another.” I.e., stop this practice of ‘speaking evil of each other,’ stop this ongoing habit you’ve developed of ‘slandering one another,’ put an end right now to ‘defaming the good name of your Brothers in the Battle,’ your friends in the Faith, your Kindred in the Kingdom! The rest of this section is merely commentary on this command... with a question thrown in at the end of v. 12 to remind us of exactly who we are and the humility which is required of us when we remember who we are.

Think: what’s the theme of this entire context, going back to v. 1? It is the wars within and the battles without which rage when we refuse to live as subjects under the will of a Sovereign, when we refuse to surrender the ‘rights’ of our hearts and lives as creatures to our Heavenly Creator. And the chaos which comes from not asking our Creator for what it is we need! Or ...asking with utterly arrogant motives: to get what I want, not what I need, so I can surround myself with sinful “pleasures” {notice my distinction: not ‘pleasure,’ sinful pleasures, unholy and unhealthy}. We wind up seeking deeper and deeper intimacy with the enemy and his 3D system of distraction, deception and destruction rather than passionately pursuing communion with Christ Jesus.

This is the theme down through v. 5. But what is the solution ...beginning in v. 6 and carrying forward through v. 10? Humility. It is the humbling of our selves under the shadow of His grace, a willing surrender to the Spirit of Grace, and the honest acceptance of who and what we are = the Sons and Daughters of God in whom Jesus dwells, and who live in and from our Abba’s Kingdom. We love from our Abba’s Kingdom, we forgive from our Abba’s Kingdom, we embrace the lonely from our Abba’s Kingdom, we comfort the weary from our Abba’s Kingdom, we tend to the wounded from our Abba’s Kingdom, we help heal the brokenhearted from our Abba’s Kingdom. All our resources flow from the abundance of Jesus’ Kingdom, from the riches of the Kingdom of Grace. And it takes humility and trust, the trust of a child dependent on their parent, surrendered to a strength far greater than their own, to access them.

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org