(a) It illustrates the real nature of sin, and the depth of the ruin to which it may bring the soul, to reflect upon the present moral condition and eternal wretchedness to which these spirits, so highly endowed, have brought themselves by their rebellion against God.
(b) It inspires a salutary fear and hatred of the first subtle approaches of evil from within or from without, to remember that these may be the covert advances of a personal and malignant being, who seeks to overcome our virtue and to involve us in his own apostasy and destruction.
(c) It shuts us up to Christ, as the only Being who is able to deliver us or others from the enemy of all good.
(d) It teaches us that our salvation is wholly of grace, since for such multitudes of rebellious spirits no atonement and no renewal were provided—simple justice having its way, with no mercy to interpose or save.
Philippi, in his Glaubenslehre, 3:151-284, suggests the following relations of the doctrine of Satan to the doctrine of sin: 1. Since Satan is a fallen angel, who once was pure, evil is not self-existent or necessary. Sin does not belong to the substance which God created, but is a later addition. 2. Since Satan is a purely spiritual creature, sin cannot have its origin in mere sensuousness, or in the mere possession of a physical nature. 3. Since Satan is not a weak and poorly endowed creature, sin is not a necessary result of weakness and limitation. 4. Since Satan is confirmed in evil, sin is not necessarily a transient or remediable act of will. 5. Since in Satan sin does not come to an end, sin is not a step of creaturely development, or a stage of progress to something higher and better. On the uses of the doctrine, see also Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 1:316; Robert Hall, Works, 3:35-51; Brooks, Satan and his Devices.
“They never sank so low, They are not raised so high; They never knew such depths of woe, Such heights of majesty. The Savior did not join Their nature to his own; For them he shed no blood divine. Nor heaved a single groan.” If no redemption has been provided for them, it may be because: 1. sin originated with them; 2. the sin which they committed was “an eternal sin” (cf. Mark 3:29); 3. they sinned with clearer intellect and fuller knowledge than ours (cf. Luke 23:34); 4. their incorporeal being aggravated their sin and made it analogous to our sinning against the Holy [pg 464]Spirit (cf. Mat. 12:31, 32); 5. this incorporeal being gave no opportunity for Christ to objectify his grace and visibly to join himself to them (cf. Heb. 2:16); 6. their persistence in evil, in spite of their growing knowledge of the character of God as exhibited in human history, has resulted in a hardening of heart which is not susceptible of salvation.
Yet angels were created in Christ (Col. 1:16); they consist in him (Col. 1:17); he must suffer in their sin; God would save them, if he consistently could. Dr. G. W. Samson held that the Logos became an angel before he became man, and that this explains his appearances as “the angel of Jehovah” in the Old Testament (Gen. 22:11). It is not asserted that all fallen angels shall be eternally tormented (Rev. 14:10). In terms equally strong (Mat. 25:41; Rev. 20:10) the existence of a place of eternal punishment for wicked men is declared, but nevertheless we do not believe that all men will go there, in spite of the fact that all men are wicked. The silence of Scripture with regard to a provision of salvation for fallen angels does not prove that there is no such provision. 2 Pet. 2:4shows that evil angels have not received final judgment, but are in a temporary state of existence, and their final state is yet to be revealed. If God has not already provided, may he not yet provide redemption for them, and the “elect angels” (1 Tim. 5:21) be those whom God has predestinated to stand this future probation and be saved, while only those who persist in their rebellion will be consigned to the lake of fire and brimstone (Rev. 20:10)?
The keeper of a young tigress patted her head and she licked his hand. But when she grew older she seized his hand with her teeth and began to craunch it. He pulled away his hand in shreds. He learned not to fondle a tigress. Let us learn not to fondle Satan. Let us not be “ignorant of his devices” (2 Cor. 2:11). It is not well to keep loaded firearms in the chimney corner. “They who fear the adder's sting will not come near her hissing.” Talmage: “O Lord, help us to hear the serpent's rattle before we feel its fangs.” Ian Maclaren, Cure of Souls, 215—The pastor trembles for a soul, “when he sees the destroyer hovering over it like a hawk poised in midair, and would have it gathered beneath Christ's wing.”
Thomas K. Beecher: “Suppose I lived on Broadway where the crowd was surging past in both directions all the time. Would I leave my doors and windows open, saying to the crowd of strangers: ‘Enter my door, pass through my hall, come into my parlor, make yourselves at home in my dining-room, go up into my bedchambers’? No! I would have my windows and doors barred and locked against intruders, to be opened only to me and mine and those I would have as companions. Yet here we see foolish men and women stretching out their arms and saying to the spirits of the vasty deep: ‘Come in, and take possession of me. Write with my hands, think with my brain, speak with my lips, walk with my feet, use me as a medium for whatever you will.’ God respects the sanctity of man's spirit. Even Christ stands at the door and knocks. Holy Spirit, fill me, so that there shall be room for no other!” (Rev. 3:20; Eph. 5:18.)