Blinded By Satan

I'm reading Martin Luther's "Bondage of the Will" as an assignment for Dr. Zemek's theology class.  Every now and then I come across a section that I actually understand! :)  In this passage Luther reminds us not only of the unbeliever's wretchedness, but also Satan's work of blinding them to this wretchedness. 

But the Scripture sets before us a man who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick and dead, but who, through the operation of Satan his lord, adds to his other miseries that of blindness so that he believes himself to be free, happy, possessed of liberty and ability, whole and alive. Satan knows that if men knew their own misery he could keep no man in his kingdom; God could not fail at once to pit and succour wretchedness that knew itself and cried to Him, for God is proclaimed with mighty praise throughout the Scripture as being near to the brokenhearted. Thus Isaiah 61 bears witness that Christ was sent ‘to preach the gospel to the poor, and to heal the broken-hearted’. Hence, the work of Satan is to hold men so that they do not recognize their wretchedness, but presume that they can do everything that is stated. But the work of Moses the lawgiver is the opposite of this—namely, through the law to lay open to man his own wretchedness, so that, by thus breaking him down, and confounding him in his self-knowledge, he may make him ready for grace, and send him to Christ to be saved. Therefore, the function performed by the law is nothing to laugh at, but is most emphatically serious and necessary.
(Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther.  Baker Book House, 162)

To make things worse, Satan not only blinds men to their ultimate problem he also blinds them to their only solution - the Gospel!

2 Corinthians 4:3-4
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.  

Thanks be to God the verse doesn't end there...

2 Corinthians 4:5-6
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.  For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And this eye-opening work of God is not just a New Testament idea either...

Psalm 146:7b-8
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

Have your eyes been opened? Then rejoice in bewildered amazement as the healed man did in John 9, "...though I was blind, now I see."

This post swiped from www.bclrblog.org.