Self-Effort is Satan-Effort

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We are all forms of God’s fire-self, the self of infinite desire. But God, by the begetting of His Son, transmuted His fire-self into the light-self which is eternally the self of other-love. Satan, however, turned his self of fiery desires into the consuming love of self-for-self, and imparted his own fallen nature to us as though it were ours.

So all self-effort is actually Satan-effort, whether good or bad in appearance. Paul’s good self-efforts to combat his uprising sin desires,
unknown to him, were still Satan masquerading as Paul. And our desires and self-reactions, good or bad, are still Satan’s self-for-self expressed as us. Paul described his experience this way: “When I would do good, evil is present with me” (Rom. 7:21).

The great light is lit when we finally see that our precious humanity has every ability to respond on soul and body level; but the forms the responses take are not ours. There is no such tiling as plain self reactions. Through the Fall, our responses formerly expressed Satan’s self-for-self nature, whether in apparent good or evil form. But now through Calvary, having learned that our Romans 7 delusion of independent self-reaction is Satan, our responses express Christ in His self-for-others nature. This is who we really are, as we shall see further in Romans 8.