“Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.” (Eze. 28:15) What God created had the ability of sinning against Him, which infers that He who made us has placed within us the free will to choose, to serve or rebel.
In the context of the angels at their creation, they had that same ability, that same choice, and there is no other way to view this subject, that choice was placed into them when they were created. Why the demons have no opportunity of ever returning to their first estate, (Jude 1:6) and why man does no one knows for sure, although many men blessed by God have attempted to expound on this topic, we at this time, simply have not been told. There is no grace for demons, there is no verse that says, “For God so loved the fallen angels…..”
I am not exactly consumed, at least in my interpretation of the word, with that one particular moment in time, but I do contemplate it quite often, and at great length, for it is the beginning of sin, and I believe that it began before Satan said, “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” (Isaiah 14:14) Satan is a sentient, conscious being, no different then what we are, save in form and abilities, in one sense the knowledge and understanding he has can be compared to the amount of information that one can store in their cell phone to the information and data that can be placed into a super computer, we are not even comparable in this area, one may as well attempt to teach an ant to drive a car, but we do have one thing in common, we have emotions.
I have always wondered, the seraphim that fly around the throne of God and cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come,” (Rev. 4:8) continuously without end, do they have emotions, do they enjoy what they do, would they ever desire to do anything else? One may as well attempt to describe Ezekiel’s vision of the “wheel in the middle of a wheel,” (Eze. 1:16) better than the man who stood there and saw them. But in the context of Satan’s emotions, of one thing we can be sure, there was an emotion, perhaps many of them, before he said those words that led to where we are today, words that we hear everyday in almost everyone around us in one form or another, “I will.”
The very first thought of sin happened in heaven, perhaps in the moment that Lucifer was over the very throne of God, (Eze. 28:14) I do not know, but the when is not as important as the why. “The righteous man wisely considereth the house of the wicked: but God overthroweth the wicked for their wickedness.” (Prov. 21:12) We are not to be wise in the ways of the world, (1 Cor. 3:19) we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we do not become like the world. (Romans 12:2) The whole world lies in sin (1 John 5:19) and any who love and seek the ways of the world are at enmity with God. (James 4:4) Yet, unless we understand what sin is, we cannot stop the fiery darts of our enemy, (Eph. 6:16) and unless we understand as much as we can about that enemy, we will never know when to bring our shield of faith up to stop those darts.
That one first thought of our adversary was based in an emotion, that emotion was based in a perceived need, one that he felt that he was not only not receiving, but one that was due him, and that emotional thought brought with it, after contemplation, pride. The pride is what brought the statements in Isaiah 14:14, and then was iniquity found in him.
Satan, my friends, did not keep his body under subjection as we are commanded to, (1 Cor. 9:27) he allowed his mind, his cognitive thought processes, to contemplate the emotion that welled up inside of him. The question is, what was that emotion? The answer to that question may always remain elusive to us. I will end this letter to you today with a question I would ask you to ponder, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1) Does this mean that all of our wants will be provided, or that we should never want, for God has provided all we need. Here may lie that emotion.
