KNOW YOUR ENEMY
By Graham Beynon
10Publishing. 122 pages. £5.99
ISBN 978 1 913 896 058
This book is a call to holy living by resisting temptation. The focus is on how the enemy operates and how to counter this. Every time we sin, we put our faith in Satan’s lies. Instead, we should remember the better promises of the gospel.
Beynon helpfully brings out the distinction between deliberate and negligent sins. The former are sins we choose to do and the latter are the good things we fail to do. Other ways he expresses the difference are overreach (wanting to be like God) and opting out (failing to be like God); vandalism and negligence; vanity and sloth. A respectable evangelical can avoid the former but fail to tackle the latter.
The root
The root cause of sin is loving ourselves rather than God. Thankfully in the gospel God gives us a new heart that enables us to love Him and others; meditating on His great love for us in Jesus Christ helps us to grow in our own love for Him and strive to avoid sin.
Beynon also causes us to see beyond the sugar coating to see the poison that sin is: ‘Reminding ourselves that sin kills is one of the greatest ways to combat it.’ Idols too must be identified for what they are – anything other than God that we believe essential for our happiness. Once again, the abundance we have in Jesus Christ helps us to smash these idols. Embracing that abundance and all the good things we have in Jesus Christ will help us to see how sin is ‘spoiled goodness’ (C.S. Lewis).
There are some strange omissions: the armour of God, the indwelling Holy Spirit. The conclusion could be more upbeat, pointing us to the victory over sin we have in Jesus Christ and the gospel. Nonetheless it is a very helpful book calling us to take sin seriously.
