Satan’s Thought was Injected in our Soul to make it the Self: we need to Deny the Self

We need to realize that Satan’s thought was injected into our soul to make it the self, and today we need to deny the self for the building up of the church.

According to Matt. 16, the building up of the church depends on the shutting of the gates of Hades through the exercise of the keys of the kingdom; first, we need to exercise the key of denying the self, for the thought of Satan has been injected into our mind to cause our soul to become the self. Oh, Lord Jesus!

We need to open to the Lord and allow Him to shine on us to show us what is the self and what are the subjective obstacles to the building up of the church today.

It has been two thousand years since the Lord said that He will build His church, and even though there are so many Christians on the earth, the church is not yet built up.

This is because, even though Peter exercised two of the keys of the kingdom in the book of Acts, we believers in Christ do not actively exercise the keys of the kingdom in order to deny the self, lose the soul-life, and take up our cross to follow the Lord.

When the Lord Jesus mentioned that He would build His church, immediately He said that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it, and that He gives us the keys of the kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 16:17-18).

On the positive side, the Lord is building His church on Himself as the rock and with the believers in Christ as stones, the transformed human beings.

On the negative side, Satan attacks the church and wants to damage the church, and we need to exercise the keys of the kingdom to shut and lock up the gates of Hades so that the church may be built up.

Especially as we see that the Lord’s coming is very soon.

Since there are so many signs in outward human history pointing to the end, we need to learn to cooperate with the Lord to build up the church.

The greatest prophecy of all related to the Lord’s coming is that He will build His church; when the church is built up, the Lord will return.

The place of death, the gates of Hades, are right there by the church, ready to attack and damage the church.

Through the gates things go in and come out; these gates are ready to swallow up any life in the church and hinder the building up of the church.

The unique enemy of Christ, Satan, fights through the gates of Hades in order to prevail against the church.

But praise the Lord, we today can lock the gates of Hades – not only shut the gates but even more, lock them up so that we may stop the spread of death and release the building up of the church.

We need to take the Lord’s word, say amen to His word, pray over His word, and cooperate with Him by exercising our spirit to do what we can on our side for the building up of the church.

Amen, we need to deny the self today!

Learn to Exercise the Key of Denying the Self – the Created Soul plus the Satanic Mind

Throughout history, the church has been damaged not merely by persecution and heresy as much as it has been damaged by the self.

The building up of the church depends on shutting up and locking up the gates of Hades through the exercise of three keys (see Matt. 16:24-26).

We need to not only shut the gates but lock them up so that no one can open them.

This is why the Lord gave us the keys of the kingdom, which we need to exercise in order to lock up the subjective gates of Hades so that the church may be built up.

May we be saved from unlocking the gates of Hades by unwittingly or even willingly living in the self, indulging in our soul-life, and rejecting the cross. Oh, Lord Jesus!

First, we need to learn to exercise the key of denying the self (Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23).

If we want to follow the Lord, coming after Him and following in His steps, we need to deny the self and take up our cross and follow Him.

What is the self?

In the Bible there are two negative terms related to the fallen man: the flesh and the self.

The flesh is the created body which was corrupted by sin, the nature of Satan (Rom. 6:12, 14; 7:8, 11, 17, 20); the self is the created soul plus the satanic mind, the mind of Satan.

The self embodies the fallen soul that has become poisoned, that has become saturated with Satan.

When man fell, on the one hand, his body was transmuted to become the flesh, the fallen flesh which is at enmity against God.

At the same time, his soul was corrupted and poisoned, for Satan infused his mind, his evil thought, into man’s soul and therefore the fallen soul became the self.

The self is the embodiment of the soul declaring independence from God, not needing God, and being apart from God, “thinking for himself” yet being poisoned by Satan with his mind.

We can say that the self, the soul, and the fallen mind are three-in-one, and the Lord tells us that, if we want to follow Him, we need to deny the self.

Behind the self is Satan, who manipulates the self in order to damage the church life.

We see the expression of the self right after the Lord speaks concerning the church.

Peter received the divine revelation concerning Christ being the Son of God, and then the Lord went on to say that He will build His church upon Himself and the revelation concerning Himself, with transformed believers like Peter who are living stones.

What a glorious, marvellous, and stupendous revelation!

Right after this, the Lord said that He needed to go to Jerusalem and suffer, be killed, and be raised; when Peter heard this, he pulled the Lord aside and started to rebuke Him, that God would have mercy on Him so that such a thing would never happen.

The Lord Jesus, however, turned and told Peter in front of all the disciples, Get behind Me, Satan! Wow!

Here it was Peter who expressed his good heart and intention that the Lord would not die, but the Lord Jesus identified this as being Satan!

At that time, Peter was the embodiment of Satan, for Peter spoke something from his mind, which was unrenewed and opened the gate of Hades for Satan to attack the Lord and the building up of the church.

Such a good utterance, full of feeling and goodness toward the Lord, was the opening of the gates of Hades; Peter’s human thought was the embodiment of Satan, and the Lord had to rebuke him. Oh, Lord Jesus!

This means that we ourselves, so many times in the church life and in the meetings, may have a good heart, good intentions, and good ideas, and as we express our opinions, we open the gates of Hades for the enemy to attack and damage the church. Oh, Lord!

We need to realize that Satan infused his thoughts into us and our fallen soul is the self, and whenever we speak something from our opinions to express the self, Satan has a way of attacking the church. Oh, Lord Jesus!

We believers in Christ may be just like Peter; we have some good thoughts, good ideas, and good intentions, and we may express them as our opinions in the church life.

There’s nothing wrong with what we say, and we stand by what we say, but because we are not one with the Lord when we say this, we open the gate of the self, the gate of Hades, and Satan has a way to attack the church and damage it.

Satan is embodied in our self and he expresses himself through our unrenewed mind.

May we really open to the Lord concerning this and allow Him to shine on us and expose what the self is so that we exercise the key of denying the self for the building up of the church.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on us and shine on us to expose what the self is and what the manifestations of the self are. We want to follow You by denying the self, taking up our cross, and coming after You. Amen, Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to cooperate with You for the building up of the church. Save us from opening the gates of Hades through our opinions and good intentions. Oh Lord, we do not want to damage the church as the Body of Christ by giving Satan a way to speak and express himself through us. May we be aware that the self is the embodiment of Satan and our opinions apart from You are simply the opening of the gates of Hades! Oh, Lord Jesus! Renew our mind. We exercise the keys of the kingdom to deny the self and take up our cross to follow You. Amen, Lord Jesus, have Your way in our being. We do not want to be manipulated by the enemy to express his intentions and desires; we exercise our spirit to deny the self and release the building up of the church!

Satan’s Thought was Injected into our Soul to make it the Self: we need to Deny the Self!

What is the origin of the self? If we read again in a prayerful way the portion in Gen. 3:1-6 we will see not only how man disobeyed God and partook of the tree of knowledge but even more, how Satan injected his thought into the human soul to make it the self.

Before Even partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into her body, she reasoned and conversed with Satan, who was embodied in the serpent.

You can see, from their conversation, how Satan’s thought was injected into her mind, especially when Satan said to her, Did God really say, You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?

This appealed to her mind. She answered Satan, and as soon as she conversed with him, she was hooked in her mind by the bait of Satan’s thought. Wow.

A bait is something delicious, juicy, and too good to be true, even though it is quite small, and it “dangles” before our eyes; however, there is a hook in the bait, and once we get the bait, we are hooked.

This is what happened to Eve and this is what happens to us also.

Many times Satan comes to us and puts a thought in our mind; we may enjoy the Lord in the morning, but then sometime during the day, there may be a thought doubting God or an accusation against one of the saints in the church life.

If we entertain that thought and consider it, try to reason with it, and give our best to oppose it, we will be hooked, and the result is that we live in the self and the church is damaged (2 Cor. 10:5).

Satan assaults our mind in order to inject his thought into us.

Our soul is fallen, for by default it wants to be independent from God, yet by choosing independence from God, the soul depends on Satan and believes his lies.

Just as Even took Satan’s thought into her mind, so many times we take his thoughts into our mind, and we are poisoned and corrupted.

After Eve’s mind was poisoned by Satan’s thought, her emotion was aroused; she saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make someone wise.

It is as if her eyes were opened; her mind was poisoned, and then her emotion was aroused.

Then, her will was exercised to make a decision to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

By the time she partook of the physical fruit of the forbidden tree, her soul was already poisoned and corrupted.

This is the origin of the self: Satan’s injecting his thought into the human mind for man to doubt what God says, question what God says, and even do things that God says we should not do, just because it seems reasonable for us to do those things. Oh, Lord Jesus!

We need to exercise the key of denying the self to shut and lock the gate of the self, one of the gates of Hades, so that we may build up the church.

We need to beware of even the littlest thought in us.

If we allow a little thought, a little doubting thought, to fester in us, it will grow, it will poison our mind, it will take over our feelings, and our emotions will be aroused and stirred up.

The more we are stirred up about someone and what they said or did, the more we may be offended.

The more we think about it, the more we think we are right, for we justify ourselves, and that person is wrong.

We start huffing and puffing, even when our veins are bulging, we take shorter breaths, and our emotion is aroused.

We are now offended by a member of the Body who upsets us or offends us.

In this way the gates of Hades are open and death comes in. We all experience this, and we need to be aware of this.

Everything comes through the mind. Behind the fallen mind, the fallen soul, and the self, Satan is there, manipulating the self in order to damage the church.

We all have to repent before the Lord for our speaking to others, for so many times we uttered a negative or doubting thought, and our speaking as a result of Satan’s instigation damaged the church.

In a moment of carelessness and neglect, we may damage the church simply by opening the gate of the self, one of the gates of Hades, and the church is damaged.

How much we need to cooperate with the Lord today in this matter! How much we need to deny the self for the building up of the church!

Lord Jesus, cause us to see that the mind of Satan has been injected into our mind to cause our soul to become the self, the embodiment of Satan. Oh Lord, save us from trying to reason with Satan or trying to subdue the self; may we learn to simply deny the self and lock this gate of Hades! We exercise our spirit, Lord, and we come to Your word so that we may be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Renew our mind. We take every thought and make it captive to the knowledge of Christ. Amen, Lord, we do not want to entertain or consider any thought that doubts God, the church, the saints, or anything related to the spiritual things. Keep us setting our mind on You each day! Teach us, Lord, to apply the keys of the kingdom to shut the subjective gate of Hades which is the self! Save us from allowing thoughts, doubts, accusations, and opinions to fester in our being and be expressed through our opinions, which will damage the church. Oh Lord Jesus, we give ourselves to You for the building up of the church!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Minoru Chen in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1978, vol. 1, “The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building of the Church,” chs. 5-6, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Living in the Reality of the Kingdom of God (2024 October ITERO), week 4, The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building Up of the Church.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Satan, the mind, the self, and the natural life, a portion from, The Heavenly Vision, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee.
  – Denying the soul life, via, Lamb Follower.
  – Denying the self, a portion from, The Experience of Christ, Chapter 22, by Witness Lee.
  – The Removing of Self to become Pure Gold (2), via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – What is the self? More via, The Hearing of Faith.
  – The Three Parts of Man—Spirit, Soul, and Body, via, Bibles for America blog.
  – Life-study of Ephesians, Message 10: To Head Up All Things in Christ (3), a video message via, LSM Youtube.
  – Dealing with the Self, via, Living to Him.
  – The incarnation and death of the God-man Redeemer, article via, Affirmation and critique.
  – Live one Spirit with the Lord by being Constrained by His Love, via, 21st century Nazarites.
  – Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind – What does it mean and how do you experience it? More via, Holding to Truth in Love.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – By the cross discern the spirit, / Put the soul to death alway; / Bear the cross, deny the self-life, / Walk in spirit day by day. / By the cross discern the spirit, / Through the living Word of God, / Separating soul from spirit, / That the right path may be trod. (Hymns #748 stanzas 1-2)
  – Exercise the spirit! / Natural sense renounce; / Serve with one another, / Christ the Lord announce. / Exercise the spirit! / Soulish life deny; / Helping one another, / On the Lord rely. (Hymns #866 stanzas 3-4)
  – Satan hath himself injected / Into man all things to spoil, / Bringing darkness and corruption / God’s eternal plan to foil. / Christ has come, Himself imparting / Into man as life to save, / That the pow’r of death and darkness / May no more all things enslave. (Hymns #981 stanzas 4-5)