Враг

Our true enemy is the devil, who teaches people to persecute us, and so for the most part he is the cause of our bitterness, and not people; He persecutes us through people and embitters us, and we should hate him, and sympathize with people for listening to him. Our true enemy is the devil, who seeks both our soul and body and tries to embitter and destroy. This crafty and hostile spirit teaches people to persecute and embitter us. And so, for the most part, he is the cause of our embitterment. He drives us through people and thereby tries to divert us from the patience and love of God, to lead us into enmity and quarrel, which he, as a spirit of malice, rejoices at. We must direct all our enmity towards him as a true and everlasting enemy, resist him with firm faith, and not allow his will to be done to us. Against enemies and blasphemers one should be as if deaf and dumb, as the psalmist says about himself: but I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a dumb man, I did not open my mouth (Ps. 37:14). Then God, in whom you trust, will proclaim in your place Himself, as the prophet says: Reveal your way to the Lord, and trust in Him, and He will do it. And he will bring out your righteousness like light and your destiny like the noonday (Ps. 36:5-6). In a visible battle, the more evil and cunning the enemy, the more dangerous he is, just as there is no evil and more cunning enemy than Satan and his demons, so fighting with them is very dangerous for us. Oh, how fierce is the enemy from whom Christians must be guarded! Oh, how skillful and vigorous the guards must be who preserve Christians from the enemy! He desires and seeks not to take our houses, not to take our cities, but to take our souls captive; He is not trying to take away our property, gold, silver and other substances, from us, but he is trying to steal eternal salvation, found through the Blood and death of Christ. And he is as cunning and cunning as he is evil, learning this evil art of his from the beginning of the world; knows how to approach, how to deceive, how to seduce a person, how to sneak up on him, and so on. He steals and kidnaps our salvation through unbelief, heresies, schisms and every sin. Many Christians, seeing their enemies falling into some kind of trouble or having hurt them at will, rejoice and say: “Now my spirit has calmed down.” - Why did the spirit calm down? - “Here, they say, my enemy is suffering!..” The spirit calmed down, but this spirit is the spirit of hostility, which rejoices at our destruction and laments in bliss. Christ did not act like this, not like this: He shed tears for the destruction of His enemies. Therefore, such Christians are not Christ’s, although they are called Christians, because they do not have the spirit of Christ. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His (Rom. 8:9). For the Spirit of Christ is at peace even over his enemies.