I. Satan endeavours to keep men from Christ, knowing well that the spiritual life will not thrive on anything but Christ; he endeavours to substitute anything else, no matter what, instead of Him, as an object for the soul to fix upon. And when this is done, the spiritual life becomes soon extinct, or wanes back into a miserable, spiritless formality. How many are checked and stunted in growth by this device of the enemy!
II. He blinds the judgment and spiritual understanding, and so produces a low and inadequate view of the Christian life, so that many of its most imperative requirements are kept in the background, while perhaps, at the same time, others are rigidly insisted on. It is a most important requisite for the Christian to be complete in his self-devotion to God.
III. He weakens our faith. The greatest blessing which any Christian can possess is a simple, unwavering faith in God. And no doubt this would be the direct consequence of the reception of the truth in the love of it, if not hindered and thwarted by the agency of Satan upon our sinful and doubting hearts.
IV. He suggests to the mind evil and hateful thoughts. Frequently such thoughts are thrust in against our wills, evidently not arising from any connection of ideas in our own minds; and this, to those who are given to low and desponding frames of feeling, is a sore trial, believing as they do that such thoughts arise from themselves, and that they betoken a depraved and criminal intention within them. If Christians would believe and recognise more than they do the agency of the tempter within them, they would derive encouragement under such inward struggles from knowing that it is not they themselves, but he against whom they are called on to maintain the good fight, from whom such thoughts arise. The conclusion from what has been said is twofold. (1) Of exhortation "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." (2) Of encouragement It is surely a consolation to be able to see and know with whom we have to contend, to be able to feel that evil as are our hearts by nature, and depraved as are our wills allour inward temptations and suggestions to evil are not our own, and will not, if in God's strength resisted, be laid to our own charge.
H. Alford, Sermons,p. 301.
References: 2 Corinthians 2:12-17. Ibid.,p. 287. 2 Corinthians 2:14. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 259.