6.2 Rules of Serpent Thinking
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
For you and me to cast down the accuser for the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we must have a brief and simple knowledge of the serpent’s accusation and deceit. Against those words of deceit, of course, we know the words of Christ our life infinitely greater.
And so for the purposes of this text in equipping ourselves for victory for the sake of the Church of Christ, we will reduce the ideas of the serpent down to three. These three ruling ideas, then, sit at the gateways of hearing and seeing, altering every single word that might be spoken into the human mind by using definitions that might sound similar to Christ, but are not Christ.
Three Ruling Ideas. I will list these three ruling ideas first, and then we will look at how they work as religious mental conceptions in the mind opposing and striking down the good words of Christ inside the heart.
Serpent Rule 1: Christ is “superior” and separate.
Serpent Rule 2: God and Man are mirror opposites and live by different substances.
Serpent Rule 3: Salvation is correction and betterment.
These three work together, but the primary attack is to drive Jesus away from being a part of Christian’s own being, and the primary goal is to convince him that he lives by a different substance, that he possesses his own “sinful human nature.”
Replacement Knowledge. The serpent knows that Christian is created to contain and to reveal all the fullness of God. The serpent also knows that God does not force His knowledge on anyone, that the knowledge of God can enter only through a personal faith.
But God designed humans to be symmorphic, to be capable of sharing form with the Father through the Son. If the serpent can prevent the knowledge of God from entering into Christian – by replacing that knowledge with words that are almost, but not quite Christ – then Christian would be “empty of God” in his knowing.
But man cannot be empty; another spirit will inhabit him.
Serpent Rule 1. Christ is “superior” and separate.
You know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the pattern by which God designed and created humans. Yet that pattern is not a static blueprint tucked away in some drawer. Rather, with God, all things are here and now, continuously becoming and dynamically complete. Jesus IS our source and our completion, not separate from us, but inside of us as part of us and we of Him. We come out from God’s thoughts concerning us through the active and living good-speaking of Jesus every moment.
The serpent cannot change that, but he does have the power to convince Christian of an entirely different story.
Defining “Superiority.” The serpent cannot make Christ “superior” in Christian’s eyes except for his own desire for superiority. Man is the master, and Christian must desire to be an image outwardly better than a weak and stumbling Jesus before the serpent could offer him such a wondrous sight.
We must define superior as we are using the word here. God sees the nature of Jesus who humbles Himself beneath of others to carry them through a way they cannot go as the greatest thing in the universe. This other “superiority,” however, is about superior outward appearance and performance, tinged with haughtiness. It is a “superiority” that always expects you to “do better,” out from an unreachable position “above” you.
Defining “Far Away.” Every born-again Christian knows the Jesus who carries them in grace in their hearts. But the serpent, in order to turn Christian away from such a Jesus, “anoints” a mental image in Christian’s mind that he imagines Christ to be. If Jesus were to appear visibly in the room where you are and sit in a chair next to you, that “Jesus” would be far, far away from you, incapable of saving you. We do not know Him in that way now (2 Corinthians 5:16).
By whispering “you should be like Jesus,” the serpent is always turning Christian away from the real Jesus alive inside his heart to follow after an unreachable mental image. That unreachable mental image is not Christ, but rather the serpent presenting heavenly appearance as the “image” of God.
Serpent Rule 2. God and Man are mirror opposites and live by different substances.
You know that God created mankind by the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ to contain and to reveal all that Father is through all the ages to come. You know that you are coming out from God’s thoughts, thoughts that are part of God Himself, through the good-speaking of Jesus every moment.
But once the serpent gets Christian to look upon his own mental image of a “superior” and demanding “Christ,” his primary goal is simply to convince Christian that he has a life of his own, that he generates himself, and that he is “vile.”
Temptation. Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness to see Himself as His own person, challenging His identity as the Son of God, by quoting Bible verses at Jesus. Those Bible verses in the serpent's mouth were a temptation of evil designed to turn Jesus away from Father to Himself as His own substance.
In the same manner, the serpent tempts Christian with every Bible verse that indicates that God hates sin, and that, although God might “love” Christian in a distant sort of way, still He hates Christian’s “sinfulness” and must hold him at arm’s length so long as he lives inside a body of sinful flesh. The serpent’s goal is to persuade Christian to keep his “sinful” actions upon himself and to refuse to place them always into Jesus, our living Scapegoat.
Worshipping Self. You know that every Bible verse that expresses God’s hatred of sin, because of how much sin hurts people, is an exaltation of the cross of Christ by which all our blithering about ourselves is forever silenced. Yet if the serpent can get Christian to hold onto his sin and by it to curse himself, he now has Christian piled up with all the Christian unbelievers in front of the cross, refusing to close their mouths, weeping and wailing before God in twisted self-exaltation, refusing to enter into and to KNOW the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every shadow of self-cursing is a twisted form of self-worship, the Christian now exalting himself as his own sinful self, his own sinful “god.” To say, “I am a sinner,” contrary to Christ, is to say, “I am my own sinful ‘god,’ and I worship me.”
Serpent Rule 3. Salvation is correction and betterment.
You know that all salvation is found only in living inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of you, now part of one another, one Spirit together, one flesh together, Soul with soul walking in sweet communion, two walking together as one. You know as well that God’s end purpose is to reveal Himself through you as you walk together with other humans, God as Love among you, specifically in the manner God has already created you, as weak and foolish humans, filled with all of God. You know that Jesus alone can carry you through the present passage of darkness into incorruptible life, and only as you place yourself utterly into Him entirely through faith.
Words so Familiar. But take a moment to scan across the many sermons you have heard preached as a Christian. In how many of those sermons did the preacher teach you that God placed you into the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane and that from then on, you are already fully united with the Person of Jesus in every possible way? And in how many of those sermons did the preacher teach you that you should be like the Lord Jesus Christ in outward betterment through your own performance?
“You should be better; fix your problem.”
You are so familiar with the serpent’s sermon to Eve, for you have heard it preached countless hundreds of times.
The Exaltation of Death. If Christian is his own “god,” that is, his own sinful self, then only Christian can save himself by pretending with all his might to act “godly” and to “obey.” Christian himself must “correct” his own faults in order to become a “better” person. Why? Christian must become “better” because God did not create him in the superior form Christian is lusting to become.
But in this “sinful flesh,” Christian will always fail. And thus death alone “saves” Christian from his “vile” form, a form Christian hates because it does not allow him to shine as a “heavenly appearance.” And by death, Christian is now instantly changed into a superior being, into a “higher” life. Death has now become savior, and being dead has become salvation in the imagination of Christian's mind.
A Simple Anti-gospel. We have reduced all that is false down to three simple “rules” of thinking. We must know the simplicity of the serpent’s deceit in order to be effective for the sake of our brethren. Just as the gospel is simple in its essence – Christ lives in your hearts through faith, so the anti-gospel is also simple – you have a life of your own through faith, that is, anti-words anointed by anti-spirit and coming through anti-faith. You see “unbelief” is not the absence of faith. Unbelief is receiving the words of not-Christ through faith, and then attaching those words into the places belonging only to Christ.
This lesson, however, provides only a brief look at these three rules of serpent thinking.
Shattering “Heaven.” Starting with the next lesson and then through the end of Chapter 10, we will develop the meaning of the serpent’s simple rules of thinking in relation to how they operate inside the religious intellects of our brethren.
Nothing keeps Christian away from Jesus more than the false fantasy of a “higher life” – “in heaven” someday. By this means the serpent keeps Christian in open refusal against God here, God now, God personal inside of him.
In the next chapter we will discover how the serpent’s words in all of their meanings became the mental thinking and “theology” of Christianity in this world, in the refusal to know Father by knowing Jesus Sent into our hearts.