“Get thee, behind me, Satan” (Matt. xvi. 23).
When your old self comes back, if you listen to it, fear it, believe it,
it will have the same influence upon you as if it were not dead; it will
control you and destroy you. But if you will ignore it and say: “You are
not I, but Satan trying to make me believe that the old self is not dead;
I refuse you, I treat you as a demon power outside of me, I detach myself
from you”; if you treat it as a wife would her divorced husband, saying:
“You are nothing to me, you have no power over me, I have renounced you,
in the name of Jesus I bid you hence,”—lo! the evil thing will disappear,
the shadow will vanish, the wand of faith will lay the troubled spirit,
and send it back to the abyss, and you will find that Christ is there
instead, with His risen life, to back up your confidence and seal your
victory.
Satan can stand anything better than neglect. If you ignore him he gets
disgusted and disappears. Jesus used to turn His back upon him and say,
“Get thee behind Me, Satan.” So let us refuse him, and we shall find that
he will be compelled to act according to our faith.