Two Kinds of People

In a movie not long ago a character says, "There are two kinds of people in the world; those who get stomped and those who do the stomping."

In I Love Lucy Fred tells Ricky, "There are two kinds of people in the world; the earners and the spenders, or as they are more popularly known; the husbands and the wives." (Hard to believe our culture has changed so much, isn't it?)

During the Normandy invasion in June of 1944 an officer ran up and down the beach trying to get his men to move out of the killing zone saying, "Two kinds of people are staying on this beach! Those who are dead that those who will soon be dead!"

I'm not sure that I agree with any of these statements. But the apostle John did divide all the people into two groups. Here's how he put it in 1 John 5:19, "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one."

There are truly two kinds of people in the world; those who have been born again by faith in Jesus' saving work on the cross, and those who are under the power of Satan.

Christians are "from God" in two senses. First, we are from God because we have been born again spiritually. John put it this way in his gospel (John 1:12-13), "But to all who did receive him (Jesus Christ), who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor or the will of man, but of God."

We are of God because God caused us to become his children spiritually. But we are "from God" in another sense as well. The apostle Paul tells us that, as Christians, we are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). An ambassador is a person who has been sent to another country by his government, to represent his government in that foreign country. In other words, we have been left here on earth to represent our king to a people who don't know him. In a sense, we have been sent to our communities to represent God to them and to make him known to them.

There are also two reasons why the whole world lies under the power of Satan. The first reason has to do with the sin nature that we inherited from our ancestor, Adam. The apostle Paul often called this sin nature the "flesh". This is what he had to say about the sin nature in Romans 7:18-20, "For I know that nothing good dwells within me. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."

All of us have had this experience, haven't we. We know the right thing to do, we want to do it, but for some reason, we end up doing what we know to be wrong. After all, we all know that we aren't perfect, and the reason we aren't perfect is because there is within us something that is attracted to sinful actions. We are tempted by sin; we don't want to do it, but something inside us compels us to give in to sin.

The second reason that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one is the evil one himself. In a passage in Ezekiel the prophet writes what many consider a description of Satan before he sinned (Ezekiel 28:12-15), "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you."

First, Satan is a created being, just like you and me. He is not as powerful as God who created him and everything else. It was God who discovered the unrighteous-ness in him and God who drove him out of heaven. Satan will never defeat God's purposes....he just isn't that powerful.

But he is powerful enough to control human beings who have a sin nature. He deceived Eve and Adam, and he has thousands of years of practice in deceiving men and women. The world lies under his power because we are not as intelligent as he is, and we are not as powerful as he is.

There are, indeed, two kinds of people in the world; those who have been saved out of the power of Satan by Jesus Christ, and those who remain under Satan's powerful control. Which kind of person are you?