754  God Will Gain Only Those Who Utterly Overcome Satan

I

Everything that God does is necessary and possessed of extraordinary significance, for all that He does in man concerns His management and the salvation of mankind. In other words, regardless of what God does or the means by which He does it, regardless of the cost, regardless of His objective, the purpose of His actions does not change. His purpose is to work God’s words into man, as well as God’s requirements and intentions for man; in other words, it’s to work into man all that God believes to be positive in accordance with His steps, enabling man to understand God’s heart and comprehend God’s essence, and allowing man to submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements, thus allowing man to attain fear of God and shunning of evil—all of this is one aspect of God’s purpose in all He does.

II

Because Satan is the foil and service object in God’s work, man is often given to Satan; this is the means God uses to allow people to see Satan’s wickedness, ugliness, and contemptibility in its temptations and attacks, thus causing people to hate Satan and be able to know and recognize that which is negative. This process allows them to gradually free themselves from Satan’s control and accusations, disturbances, and attacks—until they triumph over Satan’s attacks and accusations by relying on God’s words, their knowledge of God, their submission to God, their faith in God, and fear of God; only then will they have been completely delivered from the power of Satan.

III

People’s deliverance means Satan’s been defeated, it means they’re no longer the food in Satan’s mouth—instead of swallowing them, Satan has relinquished them. This is because such people are upright, because they have faith, submission, and fear toward God, and because they completely break with Satan. They bring shame upon Satan, they make a coward of Satan, and they utterly defeat Satan. Their conviction in following God, and submission to and fear of God defeat Satan, and make Satan completely give them up. Only people such as this have truly been gained by God, and it is this which is God’s ultimate objective in saving man. If they wish to be saved, and wish to be completely gained by God, then all those who follow God must face temptations and attacks both great and small from Satan. Those who emerge from these temptations and attacks and are able to fully defeat Satan are those who have been saved by God.

IV

Those who’ve been saved unto God are those who have undergone God’s trials, and who’ve been tempted and attacked by Satan an untold number of times. Those who’ve been saved unto God understand God’s intentions and requirements, and are able to submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements, and they don’t forsake the way of fearing God and shunning evil amid Satan’s temptations. Those who are saved unto God possess honesty, they are kindhearted, they differentiate between love and hate, they have a sense of justice and are rational, and they are able to care for God and treasure all that is of God. Such people are not bound, spied upon, accused, or abused by Satan; they’re completely free, they have been completely liberated and released. Job was just such a man of freedom, and this is precisely the significance of why God had handed him over to Satan.

from The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself II