The victory of Christ
The victory of Christ
What the New Testament affirms, in its own uninhibited way, is that at the cross Jesus disarmed and triumphed over the devil, and all the ‘principalities and powers’ at his command. First-century hearers of the gospel will have had no difficulty in accepting this, for ‘it is perhaps hard for modern man to realize how hag-ridden was the world into which Christ came’.4 Still today in many countries people live in dread of malevolent spirits. And in the supposedly sophisticated West a new and alarming fascination with the occult has developed, which has been ably documented by Michael Green in his I Believe in Satan’s Downfall. And yet at the same time many ridicule continuing belief in a personal devil, with evil spirits under him, as a superstitious anachronism. Rudolf Bultmann’s dogmatic statement is well known: ‘it is impossible to use electric light and the wireless, and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.’5 Michael Green sums up this anomaly of the coexistence of curiosity and incredulity by suggesting that two opposite attitudes would be equally pleasing to the devil: ‘The first is that of excessive preoccupation with the Prince of evil. The second is that of excessive scepticism about his very existence’ (p.16). Michael Green goes on to give seven reasons why he believes in the existence of that immensely powerful, evil and cunning being who is called Satan or the devil. They relate to philosophy, theology, the environment, experience, the occult, Scripture and above all Jesus. It is a cogent case; I have nothing to add to it.
But how did God through Christ win the victory over him? The conquest is depicted in Scripture as unfolding in six stages, although the decisive defeat of Satan took place at the cross. Stage one is the conquest predicted. The first prediction was given by God himself in the Garden of Eden as part of his judgment on the serpent: ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel’ (Gen. 3:15). We identify the woman’s seed as the Messiah, through whom God’s rule of righteousness will be established and the rule of evil eradicated. This being so, every Old Testament text which declares either God’s present rule (e.g. ‘Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power....Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom...’) or his future rule over the nations through the Messiah (e.g. ‘Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’) may be understood as a further prophecy of the ultimate crushing of Satan.6
The second stage was the conquest begun in the ministry of Jesus. Recognizing him as his future conqueror, Satan made many different attempts to get rid of him, for example, through Herod’s murder of the Bethlehem children, through the wilderness temptations to avoid the way of the cross, through the crowd’s resolve to force him into a politico-military kingship, through Peter’s contradiction of the necessity of the cross (‘Get behind me, Satan’), and through the betrayal of Judas whom Satan actually ‘entered’.7 But Jesus was determined to fulfil what had been written of him. He announced that through him God’s kingdom had come upon that very generation, and that his mighty works were visible evidence of it. We see his kingdom advancing and Satan’s retreating before it, as demons are dismissed, sicknesses are healed and disordered nature itself acknowledges its Lord.8 Moreover, Jesus sent out his disciples to preach and to heal as his representatives, and when they returned, excited that the demons had submitted to them in his name, he responded that he had seen ‘Satan fall like lightning from heaven’. Here, however, is his most striking statement on this topic: ‘When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him (nikaō, to gain the victory over), he takes away the armour in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.’ It is not difficult to recognize the strong man as a picture of the devil, the ‘someone stronger’ as Jesus Christ, and the dividing of the spoils (or, in Mark, the robbing of his house) as the liberation of his slaves.9
The ‘overpowering’ and ‘binding’ of the strong man did not take place, however, until the third and decisive stage, the conquest achieved, at the cross. Three times, according to John, Jesus referred to him as ‘the prince of this world’, adding that he was about to ‘come’ (i.e. launch his last offensive), but would be ‘driven out’ and ‘condemned’.10 He was evidently anticipating that at the time of his death the final contest would take place, in which the powers of darkness would be routed. It was by his death that he would ‘destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – ’ and so set his captives free (Heb. 2:14–15).
Perhaps the most important New Testament passage in which the victory of Christ is set forth is Colossians 2:13–15.
He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Paul here brings together two different aspects of the saving work of Christ’s cross, namely the forgiveness of our sins and the cosmic overthrow of the principalities and powers.11 He illustrates the freeness and graciousness of God’s forgiveness (charizomai) from the ancient custom of cancelling debts. ‘The written code, with its regulations, that was against us’ can hardly be a reference to the law in itself, since Paul regarded it as ‘holy, righteous and good’ (Rom. 7:12); it must rather refer to the broken law, which on that account was ‘against us and stood opposed to us’ with its judgment. The word Paul uses for this ‘written code’ is cheirographon, which was ‘a hand-written document, specifically a certificate of indebtedness, a bond’ (AG) or a ‘signed confession of indebtedness, which stood as a perpetual witness against us’.12 The apostle then employs three verbs to describe how God has dealt with our debts. He ‘cancelled’ the bond by ‘wiping’ it clean (as exaleiphō literally means) and then ‘took it away, nailing it to the cross’. Jeremias thinks the allusion is to the titulus, the tablet fixed over a crucified person’s head on which his crimes were written, and that on Jesus’ titulus it was our sins, not his, which were inscribed.13 In any case, God frees us from our bankruptcy only by paying our debts on Christ’s cross. More than that. He has ‘not only cancelled the debt, but also destroyed the document on which it was recorded’.14
Paul now moves from the forgiveness of our sins to the conquest of the evil powers, and uses three graphic verbs to portray their defeat. The first could mean that God in Christ ‘stripped’ them from himself like foul clothing, because they had closed in upon him and were clinging to him, and so ‘discarded’ them (NEB). Or better, it means that he ‘stripped’ them either of their weapons and so ‘disarmed’ them (NIV), or of ‘their dignity and might’15 and so degraded them. Secondly, ‘he made a public spectacle of them’, exhibiting them as the ‘powerless powers’16 they now are, and so, thirdly, ‘triumphing over them by the cross’, which is probably a reference to the procession of captives which celebrated a victory. Thus the cross, comments Handley Moule, was ‘his scaffold from one viewpoint, his imperial chariot from another’.17 Alexander Maclaren suggests a unified picture of Christ as ‘the victor stripping his foes of arms and ornaments and dress, then parading them as his captives, and then dragging them at the wheels of his triumphal car’.18
All this is vivid imagery, but what does it actually mean? Are we to visualize a literal cosmic battle, in which the powers of darkness surrounded and attacked Christ on the cross, and in which he disarmed, discredited and defeated them? If it was unseen, as it would surely have to be, how did Christ make ‘a public spectacle’ of them? It seems that we are to think of his victory, though real and objective, in other terms.
First, it is surely significant that Paul brackets what Christ did to the cheirographon (cancelling and removing it) with what he did to the principalities and powers (disarming and conquering them). The bond he nailed to the cross; the powers he defeated by the cross. It does not seem necessary to insist on the latter being any more literal than the former. The important point is that both happened together. Is not his payment of our debts the way in which Christ has overthrown the powers? By liberating us from these, he has liberated us from them.
Secondly, he overcame the devil by totally resisting his temptations. Tempted to avoid the cross, Jesus persevered in the path of obedience, and ‘became obedient to death – even death on a cross’ (Phil. 2:8). His obedience was indispensable to his saving work. ‘For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous’ (Rom. 5:19). If he had disobeyed, by deviating an inch from the path of God’s will, the devil would have gained a toehold and frustrated the plan of salvation. But Jesus obeyed; and the devil was routed. Provoked by the insults and tortures to which he was subjected, Jesus absolutely refused to retaliate. By his self-giving love for others, he ‘overcame evil with good’ (Rom. 12:21). Again, when the combined forces of Rome and Jerusalem were arrayed against him, he could have met power with power. For Pilate had no ultimate authority over him; more than twelve legions of angels would have sped to his rescue if he had summoned them; and he could have stepped down from the cross, as in jest they challenged him to do.19 But he declined any resort to worldly power. He was ‘crucified in weakness’, though the weakness of God was stronger than human strength. Thus he refused either to disobey God, or to hate his enemies, or to imitate the world’s use of power. By his obedience, his love and his meekness he won a great moral victory over the powers of evil. He remained free, uncontaminated, uncompromised. The devil could gain no hold on him, and had to concede defeat.20 As F. F. Bruce has put it:
As he was suspended there, bound hand and foot to the wood in apparent weakness, they imagined they had him at their mercy, and flung themselves upon him with hostile intent....But he grappled with them and mastered them.21
So the victory of Christ, predicted immediately after the Fall and begun during his public ministry, was decisively won at the cross. Its remaining three stages were the outworkings of this.
Fourthly, the resurrection was the conquest confirmed and announced. We are not to regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory. Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection as victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated. ‘It was impossible for death to keep its hold on him’, because death had already been defeated. The evil principalities and powers, which had been deprived of their weapons and their dignity at the cross, were now in consequence put under his feet and made subject to him.22
Fifthly, the conquest is extended as the church goes out on its mission, in the power of the Spirit, to preach Christ crucified as Lord and to summon people to repent and believe in him. In every true conversion there is a turning not only from sin to Christ, but ‘from darkness to light’, ‘from the power of Satan to God’, and ‘from idols to serve the living and true God’; there is also a rescue ‘from the dominion of darkness...into the kingdom of the Son God loves’.23 So every Christian conversion involves a power encounter in which the devil is obliged to relax his hold on somebody’s life and the superior power of Christ is demonstrated. This being so, it may well be right to interpret the ‘binding’ of the dragon for a thousand years as coinciding with the ‘binding’ of the strong man which took place at the cross. For the result of the binding of Satan is that he is kept from ‘deceiving the nations any more’, which seems to refer to the evangelization of the nations which began after the great victory of the cross and its immediate sequel of Easter Day and Pentecost.24
Sixthly, we are looking forward to the conquest consummated at the Parousia. The interim between the two advents is to be filled with the church’s mission. The Lord’s Anointed is already reigning, but he is also waiting until his enemies become a footstool for his feet. On that day every knee will bow to him and every tongue confess him Lord. The devil will be thrown into the lake of fire, where death and Hades will join him. For the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Then, when all evil dominion, authority and power have been destroyed, the Son will hand over the kingdom to the Father, and he will be all in all.25
Is it correct, however, thus to attribute Christ’s victory to his death? Was it not rather achieved by his resurrection? Was it not by rising again from death that he conquered death? In fact, does not this book’s whole emphasis lie too heavily on the cross, and insufficiently on the resurrection? Do the two events not belong together, as Michael Green has argued powerfully in his book, The Empty Cross of Jesus? It is essential that we address ourselves to these questions.
To begin with, it is true beyond doubt that the death and resurrection of Jesus belong together in the New Testament, and that the one is seldom mentioned without the other. Jesus himself, in the three successive predictions of his passion which Mark records, each time added that after three days he would rise again.26 According to John, he also said both that he would ‘lay down’ his life and that he would ‘take it up again’.27 Moreover, it happened as he said it would: ‘I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever’ (Rev. 1:18). Next, it is equally clear that the apostles spoke of the two together. The earliest apostolic kerygma according to Peter was that he ‘was handed over...by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge and...put to death....But God raised him from the dead’, while Paul states as the original and universal gospel that ‘Christ died for our sins...was buried...was raised...and...appeared’.28 And Paul’s letters are full of phrases such as ‘we believe that Jesus died and rose again’ and ‘those who live should...live...for him who died for them and was raised again’.29 Moreover, the two gospel sacraments were acknowledged from the beginning to bear witness to both, since in baptism the candidate symbolically dies and rises with Christ, while at the Lord’s Supper it is the risen Lord who makes himself known to us through the very emblems which speak of his death.30 So this is not – or should not be – in dispute. It would be seriously unbalanced to proclaim either the cross without the resurrection (as I am afraid Anselm did) or the resurrection without the cross (as do those who present Jesus as a living Lord rather than as an atoning Saviour). It is therefore healthy to maintain an indissoluble link between them.
Nevertheless, we need to be clear about the nature of the relation between the death and resurrection of Jesus, and careful not to ascribe saving efficacy to both equally. Michael Green avoids this trap, for he strongly affirms that ‘the cross of Jesus is the very core of the gospel’.31 It is indeed. When we examined the four images of salvation in chapter 7, it became apparent that it is ‘by the blood of Jesus’ that God’s wrath against sin was propitiated, and by the same blood of Jesus that we have been redeemed, justified and reconciled. For it was by his death, and not by his resurrection, that our sins were dealt with. Even in the earliest apostolic kerygma already quoted Paul writes that ‘Christ died for our sins’. Nowhere in the New Testament is it written that ‘Christ rose for our sins’. But was it not by his resurrection that Christ conquered death? No, it was by his death that he destroyed him who holds the power of death (Heb. 2:14).
Of course the resurrection was essential to confirm the efficacy of his death, as his incarnation had been to prepare for its possibility. But we must insist that Christ’s work of sin-bearing was finished on the cross, that the victory over the devil, sin and death was won there, and that what the resurrection did was to vindicate the Jesus whom men had rejected, to declare with power that he is the Son of God, and publicly to confirm that his sin-bearing death had been effective for the forgiveness of sins. If he had not been raised, our faith and our preaching would be futile, since his person and work would not have received the divine endorsement.32 This is the implication of Romans 4:25, which at first sight seems to teach that Christ’s resurrection is the means of our justification: ‘He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.’ Charles Cranfield explains: ‘What was necessitated by our sins was, in the first place, Christ’s atoning death, and yet, had his death not been followed by his resurrection, it would not have been God’s mighty deed for our justification.’33 In addition, because of the resurrection it is a living Christ who bestows on us the salvation he has won for us on the cross, who enables us by his Spirit not only to share in the merit of his death but also to live in the power of his resurrection, and who promises us that on the last day we too will have resurrection bodies.
James Denney expresses the relation between Jesus’ death and resurrection in this way:
There can be no salvation from sin unless there is a living Saviour: this explains the emphasis laid by the apostle (sc. Paul) on the resurrection. But the living One can be a Saviour only because he has died: this explains the emphasis laid on the cross. The Christian believes in a living Lord, or he could not believe at all; but he believes in a living Lord who died an atoning death, for no other can hold the faith of a soul under the doom of sin.34
To sum up, the gospel includes both the death and resurrection of Jesus, since nothing would have been accomplished by his death if he had not been raised from it. Yet the gospel emphasizes the cross, since it was there that the victory was accomplished. The resurrection did not achieve our deliverance from sin and death, but has brought us an assurance of both. It is because of the resurrection that our ‘faith and hope are in God’ (1 Pet. 1:3, 21).