To find an indictment against the church, it is important to note the enemy must draw his accusations from hell. If we have repented of our sins, no record of them nor of our mistakes exists in heaven. As it is written, "Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies" (Rom 8:33). Jesus is not condemning us, but rather is at the Father's right hand interceding on our behalf.
Let us, therefore, expose the weapons of the faultfinder. The first is our actual sins. Our failure to repent when the Holy Spirit desires to correct us opens the door for the accuser to condemn us. The voice of the enemy never offers hope nor extends grace for repentance. It acts as though it were the voice of God, and we were guilty of the "unpardonable sin." The way to defeat the enemy in this arena is to disarm him by sincerely repenting of the sin, looking again to the atonement of Christ as the sum of all our righteousness.
Yet, Satan seeks not only to accuse us as individuals but to blend into our minds, introducing criticisms and condemnation against others as well. Instead of praying for one another, we react in the flesh against offenses. Our unchristlike responses are then easily manipulated by the faultfinder spirit.
Therefore, we cast down the accuser of the brethren by learning to pray for one another instead of preying on one another. We must learn to forgive in the same manner as Christ has forgiven us. If one has repented of his sins, we must exercise the same attitude of "divine forgetfulness" that exists in heaven. We defeat the faultfinder when we emulate the nature of Jesus: like a lamb, Christ died for sinners; as a priest, He intercedes.
The second weapon this demon uses against us is our past mistakes and poor decisions. Each of us has an inherent propensity toward ignorance. One does not have to read far into the history of the saints to discover they were not called because of their intrinsic wisdom. In truth, we all have made mistakes. Hopefully, we have at least learned from them and developed humility because of them. This faultfinding demon, however, takes our past mistakes and parades them before our memory, criticizing our efforts to do God's will, thus keeping us in bondage to the past.
When the enemy pits us against one another, it first provokes us to jealousy or fear. The security of our place in life seems threatened by another's success. Perhaps to justify our personal failures or flaws, we magnify the past shortcomings of others. The more our jealousy grows, the more this demon exploits our thoughts, until nothing about the individual or his church seems right.
In the final stage we actually wage a campaign against him. No defense he offers will satisfy us. We are convinced he is deceived and dangerous, and we think it is up to us to warn others. Yet the truth is, the person whose mind is controlled by the faultfinder demon is the one who is deceived and dangerous. For his own unrepentant thoughts toward jealousy and fleshly criticism have supplied hell with a "lumberyard" of material to e-r-e-c-t walls between members of the body of Christ.
Sadly, it is often leaders who have fallen from the intensity of their first love who become the fiercest persecutors of others who are moving in the Holy Spirit. Christ's disciples will be persecuted, but this author can find no biblical authorization for Christians to persecute others. Persecution is a deed of the flesh. "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also" (Gal 4:29). Incredibly, those who are given to persecuting others often actually think that they are "offering service to God" (John 16:2).
To combat this enemy we must create an atmosphere of grace among us as individuals and between us as churches. Like the Father who has given us life, we must seek to cause all things to work together for good. If one stumbles, we must be quick to cover him, without condoning hypocrisy, for we are "members of one another" (Eph 4:25). As it is written, "None of you shall approach any blood relative of his to uncover nakedness; I am the Lord" (Lev 18:6). We are family, begotten from one Father. "Their nakedness you shall not uncover; for their nakedness is yours" (v 10). Even under the Old Covenant, it was unlawful to uncover another's mistake publicly. Love finds a redemptive way to cover a multitude of sins.
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