terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the
But we do not have only these demonic powers involved in world governments, such that governments can become empires of evil. There are also agents of God for good who are involved in nations and in governments. We find an example of that in the book of Daniel, where we read: "At that time Michael shall stand up, the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people, and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered ..." (12:1a).
Michael is identified earlier in the book of Daniel as an archangel. We distinguish levels of authority among the angelic hosts in Scripture, and the difference between an archangel and an angel is simply a difference in rank and authority. The word arche in Greek means "in the beginning," "chief," or "ruler." John uses it in the first verse of his Gospel when he writes, "In the beginning was the Word ...." Usually, however, the word is used to refer to that which is in the highest place of authority. It comes across into English as the prefix "arch." We have enemies and we have archenemies. In football, we have rivals and we have archrivals. The Roman Catholic Church has bishops and archbishops. In construction, we have builders and we have architects, which literally means "chief builders." So we see this word frequently used in the English language.
Well, it also functions that way in the Greek, and we can distinguish between an angel and an archangel. The angels who are archangels are commanders of the heavenly host, who are seated in positions of authority to exercise God's rule and authority over creation. And one of those who is named in Scripture is Michael, who appears here in the book of Daniel as the angelic manifestation of the power of God to redeem His nation. Also, Gabriel is understood in biblical history to be an archangel, and we will look at his activity later on, as he serves as the chief messenger of God in Scripture.
The angels that we encounter in the Old Testament often manifest themselves in human form. Let's take an example that we find in Genesis 18. The passage says, "Then the LORD appeared to him [Abraham] by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground, and said, 'My Lord, if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant'" (vv. 1-3).
There is something a little difficult here. Angels are not to be worshiped, and yet the response of Abraham to these three who come to him by the oaks of Mamre is a response of worship. He falls on his face before them, which causes many commentators to believe that what we have here are two regular angels plus the Angel of the Lord, who is so closely connected with God that he wears, as it were, the very mantle of God and can be seen as either a theophany or as a christophany, that is, an outward manifestation of God Himself or as an outward manifestation of the preincarnate Christ. Many people believe that Melchizedek (Gen. 14) was really Christ appearing in the Old Testament in human form, and the commander of the LORD's army in Joshua is also often seen as a christophany (Josh. 5).
In any case, we find these three, who appear here in Genesis to consult with Abraham, and Abraham says: "Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. And I will bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts" (vv. 4-5a). They go on to have a conversation in which Abraham intercedes for the future of Sodom.
Then, in chapter 19, we read:
Now the two angels [presumably the two angels without the Angel of the Lord] came to
Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose
to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. And he said, "Here now,
my lords, please turn in to your servant's house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then
you may rise early and go on your way." And they said, "No, but we will spend the night in
the open square." But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house.
Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. Now before they lay
down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every
quarter, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men
who came to you tonight. Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally." (vv. 1-5)
Apparently, these angels are so magnificently attractive that the Sodomites seek to use them sexually. As the story progresses, Lot, trying to protect the angels, offers his daughters to the crowd instead. They'll have none of that, but what's significant for our concern is in verses 9-11: "And they said, 'Stand back!' Then they said, 'This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.' So
they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door."
So these angels, who are supposed to receive biblical hospitality in the house of Lot, intercede to save Lot and his family, pulling him away from the mob, into the safety in the house, and then using their powers to strike the wicked Sodomites blind. In this case, the angels are there to minister to Lot and to his family in a time of crisis. That's a key that we want to hold onto for future consideration, because that also is one of the functions of the angels that God sends to work out His providential rule over history.
12 Angels as Ministers
One of my favorite angel narratives in all of Scripture is found in the second book of Kings, and I enjoy this particular narrative because it reveals, directly and indirectly, many important things about the nature and function of angels. It is a narrative that takes place during the life of the prophet Elisha. It begins this way: "Now the king of Syria was making war against Israel; and he consulted with his servants, saying, 'My camp will be in such and such a place.' And the man of God sent to the king of Israel, saying, 'Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are coming down there.' Then the king of Israel sent someone to the place of which the man of God had told him. Thus he warned him, and he was watchful there, not just once or twice" (6:8-10).
The king of Syria is trying to plan an ambush against the king of Israel. Somehow, all of the secret plans that the king of Syria is making are told to the king of Israel, so he avoids the trap. Then we read, "Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was greatly troubled by this thing; and he called his servants and said to them, 'Will you not show me which of us is for the king of Israel?'" (v. 11). He automatically assumes that he has a spy in the camp, so he inquires about it. "And one of his servants said, 'None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.' So he said, 'Go and see where he is, that I may send and get him.' And it was told him, saying, 'Surely he is in Dothan'" (vv. 12-13).
You get the picture. The king of Syria is told that it's not one of his men who are betraying him, but that his plans are being communicated supernaturally by the prophet Elisha to the king of Israel. So, the king of Syria changes his plan. He thinks, "If I'm ever going to capture the king of Israel, the first thing I must do is get rid of Elisha." He inquires as to where Elisha is staying, and he's told that Elisha is in Dothan. So he sets about to execute his plan to capture Elisha.
The narrative continues: "Therefore he sent horses and chariots and a great army there, and they came by night and surrounded the city. And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with the horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, 'Alas, my master! What shall we do?'" (vv. 14-15). Elisha goes to sleep in Dothan. His servant gets up first thing in the morning, goes outside, and sees all the chariots and soldiers of the Syrians. Then he goes to the other side of the house, but he still sees nothing but chariots. He goes to the front and he goes to the back, but there are chariots everywhere. So he runs and wakes Elisha, and he tells him of the predicament. He says: "We're surrounded by chariots and armies. What are we going to do?"
Listen to Elisha's response. "So he answered, 'Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them'" (v. 16). I can only imagine that Elisha's servant is completely flabbergasted by Elisha's words. "You don't get it," he probably says. "I just told you there are countless soldiers and chariots around us, but here there's only you and me. What do you mean that those who are with us are more than those who are with them?"
Then we read: "And Elisha prayed, and said, 'LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.' Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, and said, 'Strike this people, I pray, with blindness.' And He struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha" (vv. 17-18).
There are so many things that we can learn from this passage. One has to do with an ongoing controversy among theologians in the history of the church over the idea of guardian angels. In the New Testament, Jesus tells His disciples not to forbid little children to come to Him, "for of such is the kingdom of God" (Luke 18:16b). Elsewhere He says, "Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 18:10). The idea that was extrapolated from that statement of our Lord was that every person in the kingdom—every Christian—has a guardian angel assigned to take care of him or her. As we will see a bit later, the author of Hebrews tells us that the primary function of angels, in terms of this world, is to minister to God's people. So there is a strong tradition in church history that every person has a particular angel assigned to him. But what
we find in this story of Elisha is that there is not just one angel watching out for him, but the whole heavenly host is mobilized to defend him in his critical hour of need.
In chapter 9, I related the story of a pair of miners who were trapped underground for several days and how they testified that they had been ministered to by angels. That was how they explained their survival. The news media automatically assumed that they were hallucinating, and the assumption in the secular world in which we live is that anyone who claims to see an angel must be suffering hallucinations, for a hallucination occurs, by definition, when someone sees things that aren't really there. I also mentioned how Rudolf Bultmann said we can't live in our sophisticated society and still believe in ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night, or in invisible realities such as angels.
But at the heart of the Judeo-Christian worldview is an uncompromised supernaturalism that says that there is much more to reality than meets the eye. God Himself is invisible, and yet there's nothing more central to Christianity than the reality of the existence of God. The thing that makes it so difficult for us to be faithful to God, I believe, is that He's invisible, and it's hard to worship that which you do not see and to obey One you've never heard speak, and so on. But the same thing may be true of angels. They're invisible most of the time. There are times throughout biblical history, as we read in the case of the visitors to Sodom and elsewhere, when the angels manifest themselves, usually in human garb, but under ordinary circumstances, they conceal themselves. They're real; they're creatures; but they're also spirit beings who are invisible. If we really do believe in the message of the Christian faith, we have to understand that the reality in which we live contains much more than meets the eye.
Now, that should not be too much of a stretch for us, living on this side of the Enlightenment, on this side of the invention of the telescope, on this side of the invention of the microscope, because the scientific revolution of the modern era has increased and enhanced our perception of reality by means of instruments that enable us to see things that cannot be seen with the naked eye. One of the crises in the time of Galileo was that the scientists of his day, as well as the bishop of his city, refused to put their eyes on his telescope because they didn't want to believe the evidence that the telescope was revealing about how the heavens really are structured and how the planets travel in their orbits. The Copernican revolution was a
revolution in science that was provoked by a sudden ability to see what previously was unseen. If that revolution took place with the invention of the telescope, how much greater is the revolution that has taken place in our lifetimes with the microscope. There are millions of real entities in the air around each of us, and if we could see them with the naked eye, the sight would probably strike terror into our souls. But fortunately for us, we go along our merry ways, completely oblivious to the myriads of microbes that have the capacity to kill us.
So, we have learned through modern science that there are realities out there beyond the scope of our ability to perceive them. Why is it that we believe that germs that we can't see are out there, but we have a bias that says there cannot be supernatural, heavenly beings—spirit beings—like angels, even though the Scripture texts are full of them? That's one of the things that I love about this story: the servant couldn't see what was really there until Elisha prayed and said, "Please, Lord, open his eyes, let him see what's really out there." When God opened his eyes, the servant saw that the assembled host of angels was vastly superior in number and power to all of the chariots and armies of the king of Syria.
A similar incident is recorded in the New Testament during the account of the temptation of Jesus. Immediately after Jesus' baptism, the Spirit leads Him into the Judean wilderness to be tempted of Satan. The Devil suggests that Jesus isn't really the Son of God, even though the last words that Jesus had heard before going into the wilderness were those of the Father speaking from heaven: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17). Satan says, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread" (4:3). That is the first temptation, to which Jesus responds by saying, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'" (v. 4). He was saying: "I am involved in a fast here. I'm involved in a test. I'm sorry, Satan, but I'm not going to turn those stones into bread. I can do it, but I don't have the permission of My Father to do it; so get away from Me." Then He quotes Scripture to Satan.
In the midst of this temptation, Satan quotes Scripture back to Jesus. When he takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and urges Him to throw Himself down, he says, "It is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you,' and, 'In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone" (v. 6b). Jesus had to correct the Devil's hermeneutic and
say, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God" (v. 7). He's saying: "Yes, the Bible says that, but you have to interpret Scripture by Scripture. You can't set Scripture against Scripture, and the Bible also says, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.' So I'm not going to do what you suggest."
When the temptations are finished and Satan has departed, we are told, almost as a footnote, that angels come and minister to Jesus (v. 11). They were there all the time. It makes you wonder whether He could see them, as Elisha could. But God had given His angels charge over Him, and the angels came to Him in the midst of that crisis in His life. Immediately after the fallen angel departs, the heavenly host comes, and they minister to Jesus.
It's significant that this host of angels attends Jesus again and again throughout His lifetime, not only at the announcement of His birth, which we will look at separately, but also at the time of His resurrection. When the disciples come to the tomb, angels are there, in the garden or in the tomb itself, according to the various accounts. They say to the women who come to anoint Jesus' body: "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!" (Luke 24:5b-6a). These angels are the escorts of Christ when He ascends into heaven, when He goes to His enthronement for His coronation as the King of kings.
When I think of the events that transpired during the life of Jesus, I ask myself, "If I could have been an eyewitness of any event in the life of Jesus, which one would I choose?" That's really a hard question for me. Obviously, I would have been delighted to witness the resurrection. Who wouldn't? That would have been fantastic. But it's hard for me to choose between the resurrection and the transfiguration. To have seen that bursting forth of the glory of Christ through the veil of His humanity, where His countenance was changed, would have been incredible.
But there is another event that I really savor, because I've been to the Holy Land. I remember the time we went to Bethlehem, and we went to the Church of the Nativity and took the guided tour, and I was not really engaged by that. I left the company of those who were taking the tour and walked out by myself to the edge of the church. There was a primitive stone wall, and I went out and sat on that stone wall. It looks out onto a vast plain, the fields of Bethlehem, and I just let my imagination run wild. I sat there and imagined that night, pitch dark, maybe a little campfire bursting
through the darkness, peasants sitting around, trying to keep warm, trying to watch over their flocks. Suddenly, all heaven breaks loose with the glory of God shining around as the heavenly hosts begin to sing of the birth of Christ. Oh, if I had seen that, I would have said like Simeon, "Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace" (Luke 2:29), for I would have seen all I ever needed to see.
The angels attend our Lord in the manifestation of His glory. But when the glory of God is eclipsed in a culture and in the church, as it is in our day, angels are dismissed as insignificant. When the glory of God is honored and the exaltation of Christ is upheld, we see attending those moments the heavenly host, who serve as an escort for the King.
13 Angels as Messengers
One of the major tasks of angels is to serve as messengers for God. This function is clearly demonstrated in the birth narratives of the Gospels, and perhaps pre-eminently in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. There we read:
There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the
division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And
they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the
Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well
advanced in years. And so it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order
of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he
went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside
at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of
the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
(vv. 5-12)
Zacharias was a priest of the tribe of Levi. The Jews' central sanctuary was the temple in Jerusalem, and it was the practice that local priests from the various districts around the nation were selected by lottery to have one turn in their lifetime, if they were fortunate enough, to serve in the temple of Jerusalem. Zacharias won the lottery, the unforgettable experience of going up to Jerusalem to participate in the ministry of the temple—in this case, going in and offering prayer at the altar of incense in the Holy Place. On this occasion, when the priest would go in, he would pray for the nation, and so it would always attract a large group of people who would surround the temple and watch the priest go in and wait for him to come out. It was something like what happens during the election of a pope. Huge throngs of people gather around in St Peter's Square and watch the chimney of the
Sistine Chapel to see the smoke that comes out. If it's black, that means the vote has failed to elect a new pope; if it's white, that signifies that a new pope has been elected, and the people go wild when they see that sign. In the same way, the people in Jerusalem awaited the return of the priest, because if he came forth quickly, that meant the prayers had been offered and God had favorably heard the intercession of the priest.
However, on the day Zacharias goes in to pray, there is a delay. The cause is a radically unexpected intervention in the life of Zacharias as he is ministering in the temple. There appears to him an angel, and Scripture records that "he was troubled, and fear fell upon him."
That's noteworthy for this reason: The biblical worldview is unintelligible apart from the biblical teaching of the reality of the angelic world. But in our culture and in our time, there is skepticism about these things, because people say the perception of angels is not part of our common experience. When we look back to the Bible, we sort of "telescope" the events in the Bible and assume that angels were appearing every fifteen minutes. That's not the case, though angels did appear from time to time. We forget how many events were occurring in addition to those recorded in Scripture. The visible manifestation of one of these spirit beings was actually extraordinarily rare. Normally the angels were invisible, as was the case with Elisha and his servant, so that Elisha had to pray that his servant's eyes would be opened in order for him to see the reality that was there. When we see that this priest is devastated by fear when the angel appears, that should alert us to the rarity of that kind of experience even then. Zacharias was not accustomed to meeting and speaking with angels every day.
Luke then writes:
But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife
Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and
gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and
shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from
his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He
will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, 'to turn the hearts of the fathers to
the children,' and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared
for the Lord." And Zacharias said to the angel, "How shall I know this? For I am an old man,
and my wife is well advanced in years." And the angel answered and said to him, "I am
Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and was sent to speak to you and bring you these
glad tidings. But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take
place, because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time." (vv.
13-20)
The angel identifies himself as Gabriel. Only two angels in all of Scripture are identified by name—Michael, whom we looked at already, and Gabriel. Both Michael and Gabriel are said to be emissaries sent from the immediate presence of God, and to hold the rank of archangel, a commander of the host of heaven. Notice that Gabriel's function in this setting is, first of all, to be a messenger. He delivers a message. He makes an announcement. He tells Zacharias what is going to come to pass. But not only does he bring a message, he speaks the command of God. So he's not a mere messenger boy sent to communicate some information; he comes from the presence of God with the authority of his divine Master upon him to command Zacharias to do certain things. One of the things that he commands is that this child that is to be born is to follow a certain order of behavior in his life, similar to the Nazirite experience.
Another command is that the child's name is to be John. This command is significant because, in the Jewish tradition, whoever names someone or something has authority over that thing or person. For instance, the first task that God gave to human beings in the Garden of Eden was to name the animals, showing the dominion of humans over the animal kingdom. The animals didn't name Adam; Adam named the animals. Historically, throughout biblical history, when children are born, it is the parents of the child who have the authority to name the child. But on rare circumstances, that authority is withheld from the parents, and God intervenes into the situation, indirectly saying, "This child will serve Me in a special way, and so I am reserving for Myself the right to give his name." So, the angel comes from the presence of God and says: "Look, you're not going to call your son Zacharias Jr., and you're not going to name him after Uncle Abraham. His name shall be John."
Zacharias is dazed by unbelief. He finds this message very hard to believe. So the angel says that he will be mute until the things announced by the angel take place. Months later, when the family comes together to
name this child, they're considering different names, including naming the child after his father, Zacharias (Luke 1:59). But Elizabeth declares that his name is to be John. The family is shocked, so they ask Zacharias, and he writes on a tablet, "His name is John" (Luke 1:63). He submits to the authority of the mandate that was given to him by Gabriel, and when he manifests his obedience, his ability to speak is restored.
Gabriel is sent on another mission in the first chapter of Luke's Gospel. We read:
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named
Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The
virgin's name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, "Rejoice, highly favored
one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women." But when she saw him, she was
troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to
her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be
great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of
His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there
will be no end." Then Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I do not know a man?"
And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be
called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old
age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will
be impossible." Then Mary said, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me
according to your word." And the angel departed from her. (vv. 26-38)
This passage is the source of a huge controversy in church history, a controversy that goes on even in our own day. In the Roman Catholic Church, there are two camps that are strongly divided theologically in terms of their understanding of the role of Mary in redemptive history. These camps are called the maximalists and the minimalists. The minimalists think that Mary has a significant role, but they want to minimize it; the maximalists think of Mary as Co-Redemptrix with Christ, and they hold to what they call the Eve/Mary parallel. In the New Testament, a parallel is drawn between the destructive impact of Adam and the redemptive impact
of Christ as the new Adam. The Eve/Mary parallel goes along the same vein: just as through one woman the world is plunged into ruin because of her disobedience, by another woman's obedience—Mary's—redemption comes into the world. So, members of this camp want to maximize her position.
It is in the context of this discussion that we find references to what is called "Mary's Fiat." When Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and she will bring forth a child who will be the Son of God, her response to Gabriel is this: "Let it be to me according to your word." She's saying, "So be it." The construction in which she responds to the angel is in the imperative, and that is where the word fiat appears; the Latin word fiat is translated as "let it be." So, the theory is that Christ could not have been born apart from this imperative of Mary. By contrast, the Protestant understanding of this text is that Mary's expression is one of emphatic acquiescence to the authority of God, whose message has come to her, and it's a sign not of her authority over Gabriel but of her willingness, in a servant's posture, to be obedient to the call that has been given to her by God.
So here we see, again, the angel functioning both as messenger and as authoritative communicator of the Word of God.
There is one last passage I want to call to your attention regarding the visitation of angels, but it is one that has been somewhat problematic and enigmatic. We find it in the fifth chapter of the book of Joshua, when Joshua is preparing his army to go against Jericho. The people of Israel have realized that Jericho is a fortress and that the soldiers of Jericho are formidable, so if Joshua and his troops are going to be victorious in the conquest of Canaan, they're going to have to get past Jericho. Just before the battle occurs, Joshua has a memorable experience: "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, 'Are You for us or for our adversaries?'" (Josh. 5:13).
Joshua has an eye for military talent. He can see that this man looks like a formidable warrior, but he has never seen him before, and he's not sure whether he's one of his own soldiers that he has never met or if this is a ringer brought in to fight for the inhabitants of Jericho. So Joshua wants to find out whose team he is on. He goes up to the stranger and says, "Are you
for us or for our adversaries?" The answer is wonderful. The answer is, "No." He says, "No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come" (v. 14a). With that, Joshua falls on his face to the earth and worships him. And Joshua says, "'What does my Lord say to His servant?' Then the Commander of the LORD's army said to Joshua, 'Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.' And Joshua did so" (vv. 14b-15).
We have seen that Gabriel and Michael have the title of archangel, or commander of the heavenly host. But as we will see in the next chapter, angels are never to be worshiped. Yet here we see Joshua falling down and worshiping the Commander of the army of the LORD, with no subsequent rebuke from the angel. When humans do worship angels, the angels always stop them; since this angel accepts worship from Joshua, most scholars believe that what we have here is a pre-incarnation christophany—that this Commander is Christ. When He appears to Joshua and Joshua says, "Are you for us or for them?", the Commander replies: "No, I'm taking over. It's not a question of whether I am for you, but whether you are for Me."
14 Angel Worship?
In antiquity, the issue of whether or not Christians should give worship or veneration to angelic beings became a major problem. Adherents to certain Eastern religions openly practiced the worship of angels. Because some of the converts to Christianity brought these habits with them from pagan culture, there emerged the problem of Christians involved in angel worship. The Christian community had to deal with this issue. Paul's letter to the Colossians, for example, is one of his epistles that deals specifically with the issue of angel worship; but nowhere do we find a more comprehensive view of the superiority of Christ over angels than in the book of Hebrews.
Again, angels are heavenly beings who come from the very presence of God, but even so, they are creatures, and to ascribe worship to a creature of even the highest importance or rank is to engage in the sin of idolatry. In Paul's letter to the Romans, in the very first chapter, he writes that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, who suppress the truth and hold it in unrighteousness, and so on, and what he gets at there is our propensity toward idolatry—serving and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. The first, second, third, and fourth commandments all prohibit, in one way or another, any involvement in the worship of a creature.
The book of Hebrews opens with these words: "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds" (vv. 1-2). This is not the only place in sacred Scripture where Christ is revealed as the Creator of the universe. In John's Gospel, the Word is identified as the One by whom and through whom all things were made. The book of Colossians also stresses what we call the "cosmic Christ," the Creator of the universe. So, the things that call attention to the uniqueness of Christ in this opening word show why He is the consummate revelation of God. God spoke in various ways in various times in the past, but now He has spoken in this
way: by the One who is God's heir and who is the Creator. Christ alone is the appointed heir of the Father. We become joint-heirs with Him by virtue of our adoption, but only Christ has, as it were, the natural or essential relationship to the Father as the only begotten Son, as the rightful heir of God.
Then the author of Hebrews goes on with this marvelous verse: "Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high" (v. 3). This is as high a Christology as you will find anywhere in the Bible. When we think about the glory of God, the refulgent majesty that blazes from time to time through biblical history—such as in the Shekinah cloud, in the glory that surrounded the appearance of the angels around Bethlehem, in the glory cloud that takes Christ up to heaven, and so on—we think of a brilliant light that is associated with the glory of God. The author of Hebrews says that the Son is the very brightness of that glory; that is, He belongs to the essence of the divine being. Again, in the biblical period, to ascribe glory was to ascribe deity. Glory was principally a divine attribute. One of the most important early hymns of the Christian church was the "Gloria Patri," in which we sing as follows:
"Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be
World without end, amen. Amen."
That is an eternal concept of divine glory that has no beginning in time and no end in time. It is something that goes forever. So here in Hebrews, the glory of Christ, as the brightness of the Father's glory, is affirmed as the express image of His person.
This may mean that Jesus manifests to us the perfection of the image of God like no other human being ever has. When Adam was disobedient to God, he failed to manifest and reflect the holiness of God, and that's every human being's sin. We're still the image of God in a certain sense, but that image has been tarnished so that we cannot accurately reflect the perfection of God's holiness, which is what we were created to do. Of course, the only
one who ever achieved that perfect reflection or manifestation of divine holiness was Jesus. So we might read in this text that He is the express image of the Father's person, that He is the perfect image-bearer, referring to His humanity.
However, I think the author has something else in mind when he writes this, because he says that Jesus is the brightness of the divine glory. That's an affirmation of His deity. He's the express image of the divine person of the Father. That seems to be the import of what the author is saying in this text. However, this is all anticipatory for what comes next. He writes that Jesus is "upholding all things by the word of His power, [and] when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they" (vv. 3-4).
Now, the emphasis in this passage may be shifting to the ministry of the incarnate Christ, because obviously there is no elevation of the divine nature above the angels as a result of some kind of earthly ministry. The elevation above the angels is the elevation of the incarnate Christ over the angels. The psalmist asks, "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels" (Ps. 8:3-5a). Human beings are a lower order of creation than the angels. Angels are of a higher order. This means that the incarnate Jesus, as He clothes Himself in humanity, the human nature, is, at least at this point, lower than the angels.
However, it doesn't end there. The author of Hebrews says that Jesus has "become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they" (v. 4). Now, the author of Hebrews doesn't tell us what is the more excellent name that Jesus receives. It may be, in light of the immediate context of the passage, that the more excellent name than the angels is simply the title "Son," which is the focus of attention here. On the other hand, elsewhere in the Scriptures, we're also told of Jesus gaining a name as a result of the perfection of His obedience, and that name is not "Son" but "Lord." In Paul's letter to the Philippians, he admonishes us to have that same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, who, even though He was in the form of God, took His equality with God not as something to be grasped or to be jealously guarded, but emptied himself (2:5-7). Obviously He did not empty Himself of His deity, but He emptied
Himself of His prerogatives, of His glory, of His exaltation, and He took upon Himself the form of a man and becomes obedient as a servant, even unto death. So what Paul is saying there is, "Look at this pattern that has been given to us by Christ, who gave up the privileges that He enjoyed in heaven to condescend to our loneliness, to take upon Himself our humanity, and to bear humiliation in our stead." That's the way we should behave toward our brothers and sisters—not guarding our own status or stature, but giving it away for the benefit of others.
Paul goes on to say, "Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (2:9-11). This is where we see this business of the name that is attributed to Christ by God. The name that is given to Him, the name that is above every name, isn't the name Jesus. It is the title reserved for God in the Old Testament, the title Adonai, which is Kyrios in the New Testament. That's why the very first confession of faith of the early Christian community was simply "Jesus is Lord," reflecting the truth that God Himself has given His title to His Son.
Now that's the broader context of the elevated name. However, the immediate context of Hebrews speaks of the concept of sonship. The author uses the rhetorical question quite effectively when he says, "For to which of the angels did He ever say: 'You are my Son, today I have begotten You'? And again: 'I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son'?" (v. 5). In other words, God doesn't call angels "sons." Angels are servants, not sons.
In church history, these passages in Hebrews and others fueled one of the worst heresies with which the church ever had to wrestle, the Arian heresy in the fourth century, which provoked the Council of Nicea. The church was divided between the Arians, who were Unitarians, and the orthodox Christians, who were Trinitarians. Arias had an adoptionist view of Christ; he focused on the fact that Scripture calls Jesus "the only begotten Son of the Father and "the firstborn over all creation" (Col. 1:15). His point was that the word translated as "to beget" means "to be, to become, or to happen," and it is commonly used to refer to someone who has a beginning in time. So, if one is begotten, that means there was a time when he was not. Arias was saying that since the Bible says Jesus is the only begotten or
the firstborn, He's obviously a creature. He may be the highest creature. He may be the first creature that God made before He made everything else. He may even be the Creator of the universe; perhaps God first made this Logos, this creature, and then gave Him the power to create the rest of the world. This is the view of Mormons and of Jehovah's Witnesses, for example. Jesus is highly exalted, but He remains a creature.
To these assertions of Arias and his followers, Athanasius and the others at the Council of Nicea said, "No." In the Nicene Creed, there is a statement that is very significant. The creed says that Christ was "begotten, not made." That is, in biblical categories, in New Testament categories, the concept of sonship is not related to biology. It's related to intimacy between the father and the son, the one who receives the blessing, the one who is the heir. That is indicated in several ways, the first of which is by Christ's being called the "only begotten." When begottenness is attributed to Jesus in the pages of the New Testament, His begottenness is singular. It is utterly unique; there are no duplicates of it anywhere in the world. So, when the Bible speaks of Christ being begotten, it speaks of begottenness in a specific sense that should lead us away from assumptions of biological generation.
In any case, the following verse says, "But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says, 'Let all the angels of God worship Him'" (v. 6). Again, if the firstborn of all creation is a creature, nothing could be more blasphemous than for the author of Hebrews to say, in quoting the Psalms, that all the angels should worship Him, because God prohibits the worship of creatures. But if God commands the worship of His firstborn, He is saying that the firstborn is divine and not a creature. We know that the angels are subordinate to Christ, because God commands the angels to worship Him.
The author of Hebrews continues:
And of the angels He says: "Who makes His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire."
But to the Son He says: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is
the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore
God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions." And:
"You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work
of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain; and they will all grow old like a garment;
like a cloak You will fold them up, and they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your
years will not fail." But to which of the angels has He ever said: "Sit at My right hand, till I
make Your enemies Your footstool"? (vv. 7-13)
This passage refers to the "session" of Christ, His sitting on the right hand of God in the seat of cosmic authority. The risen and ascended Christ is given nothing less than cosmic authority as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. No angel is ever elevated to the right hand of God. In fact, no creature can ever be elevated to the right hand of God, nor would God give to any creature all authority in heaven and on earth, which authority He bestows upon His Son. This text emphasizes, as strongly as it can, the difference between angels and Jesus, the superiority of Christ over the angels.
The first chapter of Hebrews closes with these words: "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?" (v. 14). Here we get a summary of the nature and the function of angels. They don't rule the cosmos, but the good angels are ministering spirits, sent forth by God. They're not sent to minister to everyone. They're sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation, to believers. Whether we have single guardian angels or the heavenly host, such as surrounded Elisha, is a matter of continual debate. But we do have a great help.
Recently, I read a sermon by Martin Luther that I'd never read before. Luther was acutely conscious of the angelic world because of the demonic attacks he had to endure throughout his life. In the sermon, he said that if it weren't for the good angels, the angels of light who uphold the Christian church, the church would be completely destroyed by the wickedness of Satan and his minions. And so, let us remember that God has sent His good angels into the world as ministering spirits. Luther was right—our struggle is against the world, the flesh, and the Devil, and angels are there to help us as we struggle with those foes.
PART FOUR
Satan
15 The Adversary
I always feel a little bit of trepidation and apprehension when writing on the subject of Satan, that most evil of all creatures, indeed the one who is the quintessence of wickedness. I remember that when C. S. Lewis penned his famous Screwtape Letters, he testified afterward that he had to suffer through a period of depression while he was writing that book, for he had an acute sense that he was being oppressed by the subject about whom he was writing, namely Satan himself. Whenever I begin to talk about Satan, Lewis' testimony always provokes in me a little fear and trembling. It's one thing to consider Satan in the abstract or look at him from a strictly doctrinal position, but when we come face-to-face with the biblical teaching of Satan, who is the saints' archenemy, there is reason to proceed with great caution.
Once, when I was teaching in a college classroom, I asked the students in the class how many of them believed in the existence of God. I had thirty students in the class, and thirty students raised their hands. Then I said, "OK, how many of you believe in the existence of Satan?" Three of the students raised their hands. I was taken aback by that, and I said, "Why is it that you believe in God and not in Satan?" Their responses showed that they had put Satan in the category of witches, goblins, and things that go "bump" in the night; in other words, they had relegated Satan to the realm of superstition. I said, "If we define God as a spirit being who has the capacity to influence human beings for good, and you all affirm that, what's the problem with speaking of a spirit being who has the capacity to influence people for evil? Both are invisible, but at the same time, we have manifest evidence in history of the outbreak of unspeakable evil."
When I pressed the students about their association of Satan with superstition, one of the students said, "You surely don't believe in a little guy in a red suit who carries a pitchfork and has cloven hooves and horns, do you?" I replied that I don't believe that Satan wears a red suit and so on. That portrait of Satan dates from the Middle Ages, a time when Christian
people were acutely conscious of the reality of the spirit world and particularly of the reality of Satan. They took steps to defend themselves from the wiles of Satan, and in trying to identify his weak points, they came to the conclusion that his greatest point of vulnerability was his pride. So they attacked him at that point by making silly caricatures of him in order to poke fun at him. No one in the church at that time believed that Satan actually wore a red suit, carried a pitchfork, and had hooves and horns.
What, then, do the Scriptures tell us about Satan? The name Satan means "adversary," and I think that's an appropriate name for him because that's what he is. He's not simply an archfiend, given to wickedness; he is the enemy of everything that is good. He is the adversary of all who put their trust in Christ; and, of course, his most despised enemy is Christ Himself. At the time of the fall, when God responded to the sin of Adam and Eve by placing curses on them, He also placed His curse on the Serpent who seduced Adam and Eve. God said that from thenceforth he would crawl on his belly and eat the dust. Then He gave the prophecy that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the Serpent, while at the same time the Serpent would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. We call that the protevangelium, or the first gospel promise. This was the promise of future redemption, when the Serpent's head would be crushed. But from that moment, through the rest of redemptive history, Satan manifests himself as an adversary of the people of God.
In church history, there have been two serious distortions about the person and work of Satan. The first common distortion is to minimize his reality, or to even deny that he exists, and to fail to take him seriously as a real spiritual adversary. The second distortion is to attribute to him greater power and significance than he actually enjoys. So often the church has been influenced by dualistic perspectives that see the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, as equal and opposite powers, vying for supremacy. But the biblical view knows nothing of such a dualism, because the contest between God and Satan is no contest at all. Satan is a creature, a created being. He is always and everywhere under the sovereign power and authority of the Creator. He is in no way an equal to God Himself. As a creature, he possesses none of the incommunicable attributes of God.
When we speak of the attributes of God in theology proper, we make a distinction between communicable and incommunicable attributes. Communicable attributes are those attributes that God possesses and can
communicate to us creatures to some lesser degree. For example, God, as a good being, communicates the possibility of goodness to His creatures, and we can manifest goodness—though not the perfection of goodness that is found in God. Incommunicable attributes are those attributes God possesses that not only are not transferred to the creature but cannot be transferred to the creature. One of the things that God manifestly cannot do is create another God, because as soon as God created His second god, the second god would not be eternal. He would be a creature, by definition. He would have a beginning in time from the moment the original Creator made him.
But sometimes, in our preoccupation with Satan, we are quick to assign to him attributes that belong only to God. For instance, Martin Luther warned his people about the stark reality of Satan, and he said, "Satan is as close as your own clothes." I disagree with Luther on that point. I think that when Luther was speaking of the nearness and the proximity of Satan to people, he was speaking more out of his own experience than out of his exegesis, because certainly Luther understood that Satan, as a creature, does not have the power of omnipresence or of ubiquity; that Satan, as a creature, cannot be in more than one place at the same time. So, he can't be as close to you as your clothes and at the same time be as close to another believer as his clothes, because he can't be in those two places at the same time.
But, of course, when you have someone pop up on the screen of church history who is as critical to the advancement of the kingdom as Luther was, he very likely lived every day of his life with Satan close by, chasing him. Luther sometimes experienced what he called the anfechtung, the unbridled, relentless assault and attack that the prince of darkness brought against him. We can understand why Luther would have been in Satan's crosshairs—if the Devil could get Luther to fall, the Reformation might well fail.
But I think we can take some solace in the thought that it's unlikely we'll ever meet with Satan in our lifetimes. He has bigger fish to fry. He's not going to chase after the little guys. But nevertheless, he has a host of minions, his demons, to do his work for him, and so they may surround us as close as our clothes, and satanic emissaries may besiege us, and we have to be alert to that. But it's unlikely that you and I will encounter the Prince of Darkness himself. I say that because he is not omnipresent. That is an attribute that belongs only to God.
Also, he's not omniscient. Satan does not know everything. Satan is a creature, and he is defined by the limits of creatureliness. Remember, we
are lower than the angels, so angels have more power than we have, presumably more knowledge than we have, and so on, but they're still far below the level of God Himself. So let's not be guilty of attributing to Satan divine characteristics. In that case, we overestimate him.
What is he actually like? The Scriptures tell us a lot about his character and his being. When he is first introduced in the earliest pages of the Bible, he is said to be more "crafty" or "subtle" than all the other beasts of the field. When he approaches Adam and Eve in their Edenic paradise, Satan comes to seduce them, and he comes with great guile. He comes to Eve with a question: "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1b).
In one sense, this question is absurd. God had not said they could not eat of every tree in the garden; in fact, God had said to His creatures, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (Gen. 2:16b-17a). There was one exception to their freedom to eat. But Satan comes and asks, "Did He say you can't eat from all of them?" What's so subtle about that? One of Jean-Paul Sartre's arguments against the existence of God was based on the assumption of human freedom. He said that if man is truly free, God cannot exist, because as long as there's a God dictating the rules, however slight they may be, if God is sovereign, then man cannot be autonomous. To be autonomous means to be a law unto oneself, answerable to no one. The biblical view is that God is free, and He creates His creatures and gives them freedom, but their freedom is limited by God's decrees. Sartre was saying that unless you're totally free, you're not really free. Unless you're autonomous, you're not free at all. This very sophisticated philosopher in the twentieth century gave basically the same argument that the Serpent gave in the garden, because the subtlety of the suggestion was this: "Well, Eve, if God puts a restriction on this tree over here, He might just as well have said you can't eat from any of the trees in the garden."
Then Satan moves from subtlety to a direct assault. After Eve says, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die'" (vv. 2-3), Satan says, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (v. 4). The plum that was set before our original parents was not only idolatry but deification.
Satan is characteristically described in the Scriptures as a liar, and we are told that he is the father of lies (John 8:44). His entrance into redemptive history is heralded by the great lie that he spoke to Adam and Eve, which was the promise of autonomy: "If you really want to be free, if you eat of that fruit, you will be asserting your independence. You will be throwing off the yoke of this restrictive God, and you will be as God. You will be divine. You will no longer be subordinate to Him." All this was a lie, and yet every time we sin, we believe this lie, because every time we sin, we set up our own desires over the desires of God. We deny God's right to reign over us. In the slightest sin, we commit cosmic treason, because we try to overthrow the reign of God over our lives. We will not have God reign over us, and we succumb to this lie that we were given at the beginning.
So, Satan is clever and crafty. Not only that, but the Scriptures portray Satan as incredibly strong. He's no match for God. He is not omnipotent. But he is potent, and he is more potent than we are. When our Lord said that Simon Peter was going to betray Him and deny Him three times, Peter protested and said he would never do it. Jesus said: "Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat" (Luke 22:31). Jesus was saying to Peter, "You think you're strong, but you're a piece of cake, you're duck soup to the Prince of Darkness." Satan is so much stronger than Peter was, and he is described in the New Testament as a roaring lion who goes about seeking someone he may devour (1 Pet. 5:8).
In Scripture, the lion is always the image of strength. The positive application is to the Lion of Judah, to the King who has un-opposable strength. The negative application is to Satan, a roaring lion for whom we are no match. However, as I said, Satan does not have the divine attribute of omnipotence. His power is limited, and we have an admonition in Scripture that suggests that as powerful as this lion is, his power and craft are resistible. We are told to resist him, and we are promised that if we do resist him, he will flee from us (James 4:7). So I have this image in my head of this gigantic, sinuous, muscular lion on the prowl. He approaches us and growls, and he bares his teeth. But if we resist him, his tail goes between his legs and he takes off in cowardly retreat.
At the same time, we are told that the Christian possesses a power that is not inherent to our humanity, but a power that is stronger than Satan, and it is the power of the Holy Spirit. We are told, "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4b). So, when we are covered with
the whole armor of God and have the indwelling Holy Spirit, we have the power to resist Satan and to overcome him.
I love to sing Luther's great hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," which is based on Psalm 46. This song gives much attention to God as our fortress, reminding us that He is our great strength and our defense against Satan, against a world that is filled with devils that threaten to undo us. But God has given us the power of His Word, the power of the truth, the power of the Spirit, through which we can overcome these forces of hell. After Luther died, when his followers would grow discouraged, his chief disciple, Philip Melanchthon, would say, "Let's sing the forty-sixth. Let's sing 'A Mighty Fortress.'" Thus they gained new strength to resist the Devil.
16 The Angel of "Light"
One of the things that's most often overlooked about the nature of Satan is his metamorphic character. When we speak of metamorphosis, we speak of that which changes in its outward appearance. For instance, the crawling caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis to become a beautiful butterfly. What I mean in describing Satan as metamorphic is his capacity, as we say in theology, to manifest himself subspecies boni, which literally means "under the auspices of the good"—that far from being the ludicrous character in a red suit and carrying a pitchfork that we talked about in the last chapter, he rather has the capacity to manifest himself, as Scripture says, as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). He doesn't come against us baring fangs, with a hideous visage; rather, he approaches us disguised in beauty, looking attractive. That's part of the allure of his seductive techniques. If Satan were to manifest himself in a human person, it would not be some horrible, famous, miserably wicked person like Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler. Rather, he would come on the stage of history looking like a saint. Satan would try to appear as someone laudable, someone who manifests some kind of righteousness, but of course he would do it in a hypocritical manner because he is a liar.
Satan is called in Scripture "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31), for that is his domain. His two main activities in the world are temptation and accusation, and it's very important to understand both of these. The one with which we're most familiar is his function as the tempter. We've already seen how, in paradise, he seduced Adam and Eve by tempting them to sin. We also know that his full powers and expertise were unleashed against Jesus in His hellish experience of temptation in the Judean wilderness. I shudder to think of what our Lord went through in that fortyday experience.
The differences between the environment in which Jesus was subjected to the power of Satan and that in which Adam and Eve were tempted are overwhelming. Adam and Eve were tempted in the midst of paradise, in a
luscious garden where food was available at every point. Jesus was subjected to the assault of Satan in the midst of the Judean wilderness, one of the most desolate places on earth. The only living things there are a few birds, rabbits, scorpions, and snakes. It's a horrible place. And yet, there was Jesus, for forty days, in this place of desolation, subjected to the unbridled attack of the adversary, of Satan. Adam and Eve faced their attack on full stomachs; Jesus was assaulted after forty days of fasting, when He had the natural, biological pangs of hunger. Also, the assault came against Adam and Eve while they had the mutual strength of human companionship and fellowship. Søren Kierkegaard said that there's no more devastating condition for a human being to be subjected to for any period of time than that of solitude. If we want to punish a prisoner who is already behind bars, we put him into solitary confinement. But Jesus was utterly alone during His period of forty days, when the temptation came.
Think of Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, who behaves one way when he's in the father's house and with the family, and doesn't manifest his radical degeneration until he goes into a foreign country where he's anonymous and there is no expectation of a certain manner of behavior. Our Lord was subjected to anonymity there in the desert, and Satan tried to exploit it, saying: "Just kneel down to me. Genuflect once. No one's going to know; no one's going to see it. If you do it, all the kingdoms of the world will be Yours." This is Satan's forte: to come to the people of God and try to seduce them to sin.
Sin itself has such great attraction for us. If we know anything about the things of God, we know that sin can never make anyone happy, yet we're driven to seek our own happiness. Jonathan Edwards once said that the action of the will, the action of volition, is the mind choosing what seems to be good for us at the moment. So when we do something, we choose to do it, not because we think it has any moral righteousness to it, but because we think that it will be good for us. We get confused between happiness and pleasure. Sin brings pleasure, but never happiness. We haven't learned that yet; we won't learn it until we find our only happiness in God and in the things of God, when we enter into the heavenly state. In the meantime, we're subject to these seductive advances by Satan, who makes sin look good to us, with the promise of pleasure.
Satan tempted Adam and Eve; he tempted Jesus; he tempted Peter. He seems to go after all of the people of God in the pages of Scripture. By
contrast, we are told, God never, ever tempts us (James 1:13). This is a great difference between Satan and God. However, Scripture tells us that God sometimes will put us in the place of testing. He tested Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac. It was the Holy Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. Yet God never tries to encourage us to sin. This is where the story of Job is so instructive for us.
In the first chapter of Job, we read this description of him: "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil" (v. 1). What a tremendous description of integrity. He had seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels. This may have made him the richest man in the world. "His sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them" (v. 4). The family was wonderful. "So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, 'It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.' Thus Job did regularly" (v. 5). He was the paradigm of virtue as a father in Scripture.
And then what happened? What caused Job's world to cave in and disintegrate?
There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and
Satan also came among them. And the LORD said to Satan, "From where do you come?" So
Satan answered the LORD and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking
back and forth on it." Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered My servant Job,
that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and
shuns evil?" So Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for nothing? Have
You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every
side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face!"
(vv. 6-11)
This is the challenge that Satan brings to God. He's already accusing Job of hypocrisy. He's saying: "I've been all over the earth, and everyone down
there is in my pocket. I'm the prince of that world. They're all following me." So God says: "What about Job? Have you seen My servant Job, who is upright and blameless?" "Ha!" Satan says. "Of course! I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. You've put a hedge around him; You've given him more wealth than anyone else in the world. Does Job serve You for nothing? Of course not. But let me at him and I'll show You that Job is a fair-weather follower. When I'm finished with him, he'll curse You to Your face." So God says: "I'll take the hedge away, and we'll see what happens." That leads to this incredible story in the Old Testament of the persistent misery that Satan wrought in the life of this godly man.
This should teach us something about the activity of Satan. Satan can introduce great harm to our lives—bodily afflictions, loss of possessions, all kinds of misery. But this is where we're most tempted to separate Satan from God and to blame all of our calamities, all of our misfortunes, on Satan, as if he has a power all his own to wreak havoc in our lives. We need to see that everything that Satan does is always under the sovereign authority of God. Satan can't move a finger without divine permission.
Jesus understood this. Also, He understood the situation in which Job was placed, the situation Adam and Eve faced in the garden, and certainly He never forgot the situation He endured in the isolation of the Judean wilderness. Thus, when He taught His disciples to pray, He said, "In this manner, therefore, pray" (Matt. 6:9), after which He taught them the Lord's Prayer, which includes this line: "And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" (v. 13a). There are two things about this portion of the Lord's Prayer I want to mention. The first is that it's stated in a grammatical form called parallelism, where the second line means the same thing as the first line, only in different words. Second, for the life of me, I can't understand why most English Bibles for years and centuries have translated that phrase as "deliver us from evil," where evil is spoken of in the abstract. The Greek word so often translated as "evil" here in the Lord's Prayer is poneros, which is more accurately translated as "evil one," as the New King James Version does. "Poneros" is a title for Satan.
So what is Jesus saying? Is He saying we should pray that God would put a hedge around us and not put us into the place where we are exposed to the assaults of Satan? That should be our prayer, knowing that we are vulnerable all the time to the enemy. We say: "God, protect us. Be our citadel. Be our mighty fortress. Protect us from the attacks of Satan." We
see what happened with Job. The hedge came down and, literally, all hell broke loose in his life. His suffering was so severe and so intense that his best friends, who previously had assumed that he was a man of great integrity, came to him while he was sitting on the dung heap with his sores, saying: "Job, you must have done something really bad to be in this kind of condition, because you're the most miserable man in the world. You must have the most miserable record of sin in all the world." Even his closest companion, his wife, couldn't stand to see her husband suffer, and she said, "Give up, Job. Curse God, and die. You are going to get relief only if you will curse God." Job was saying, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," but she was saying: "Stop that. You can't take any more. Curse Him and die."
But Job doesn't listen to her counsel, and Satan is defeated. God is glorified and Job himself is vindicated, as all that he has lost is restored abundantly. What a fantastic story about the power of Satan and the vindication of God's people by the Lord.
Earlier I mentioned two main activities of Satan—tempting and accusing. Satan tried to tempt Job to repudiate God, and the power of the temptation was in the pain that he brought. But not only that, he came in his favorite mode of activity for the believer. Another title for Satan in the Bible is diabolos, which means "accuser," and Satan is seen as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10). The accusation he brings against Job is that the only reason Job is serving God at all is in response to the prosperity that God has given him. That's not true. It's a false charge, a false accusation.
We are all familiar with the way in which Satan tempts us, but his greater work, for the Christian, is accusation, to point his finger in your face about your guilt, to take you away from the cross, away from the gospel, and point out how bad you are. The thing that's so terrible about Satan functioning as a prosecuting attorney is that he doesn't have to make up false charges. He can point out the reality of our sins and try to take away our joy, our peace, our trust in the gospel. One of the difficult things in the Christian life is to discern between the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting us of sin and the work of Satan in accusing us of sin, because they both may be pointing at the same transgression. But I've noticed this difference: When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, as painful as it may be for a moment, there's always something sweet in it, because in conviction, the Spirit always gives us the promise of forgiveness and restoration. However,
when Satan accuses us, his purpose is to destroy us, to paralyze us, to cause us to abandon all hope. That's why Paul, when he talks about the grace of God that is so abundant and so magnificent, raises a defiant charge against Satan: "Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns?" (Rom. 8:33-34a). So when Satan comes with his accusations, we have to say: "Sticks and stones, Satan. Get out of here. We know we're guilty, but we have Christ. We have the gospel, and that is our shield against your accusations." I love the Heidelberg Catechism's statement that Christ is our only comfort in life and death. That's why we have to cling to Him and to the gospel, because Satan is going to accuse us every minute.
Finally, we read in the Scriptures that Satan has an army of assistants, the demons, and we see that their activity was heavily concentrated during Jesus' tenure on this earth. In fact, the very first beings to recognize the full identity of Jesus were demons. They called Him the Son of God and asked, "Have You come here to torment us before the time?" (Matt. 8:29). They understood that their days were limited. They knew there was a time when they would be finished, but they also knew that the time wasn't yet, and so they tried to negotiate with Jesus. Jesus released them from inhabiting the man they were tormenting, drove them into the pigs, and sent them to their destruction. People ask, "Why didn't He send them to hell?" It was simply because the time hadn't come yet. But He dealt with them.
These demons are in many places. In the Bible, we see them possessing people and oppressing people, causing bodily harm, property damage, and all kinds of things. The Christian is always faced with this question: Can I be demon-possessed? I don't believe so. I believe that people can be demon-possessed, but I don't think that this is possible for a Christian, because God the Holy Spirit resides in the regenerate person, and the Scriptures tell us, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor. 3:17). So, no demon can hold us hostage to the power of Satan. Demons can oppress us, they can harass us, they can tempt us, attack us and so on, but thanks be to God, He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).
About Ligonier Ministries
Ligonier Ministries, founded in 1971 by Dr. R. C. Sproul, is an international teaching ministry that strives to help people grow in their knowledge of God and His holiness. "We believe that when the Bible is taught clearly, God is seen in all of His majesty and holiness—hearts are conquered, minds are renewed, and communities are transformed," Dr. Sproul says. From its base near Orlando, Florida, Ligonier carries out its mission in various ways:
By producing and broadcasting solid, in-depth teaching resources. By publishing and promoting books true to the historic Christian faith. By publishing Tabletalk, a monthly theological/devotional magazine. By publishing The Reformation Study Bible. By training and equipping young adults, laypeople, and pastors through the Ligonier Academy of Biblical and Theological Studies. By producing and promoting conferences.
For more information, please visit www.ligonier.org
Christian Focus Publications
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Our mission statement – STAYING FAITHFUL In dependence upon God we seek to impact the world through literature faithful to His infallible Word, the Bible. Our aim is to ensure that the Lord Jesus Christ is presented as the only hope to obtain forgiveness of sin, live a useful life and look forward to heaven with Him.
REACHING OUT Christ's last command requires us to reach out to our world with His gospel. We seek to help fulfill that by publishing books that point people towards Jesus and help them develop a Christ-like maturity. We aim to equip all levels of readers for life, work, ministry and mission.
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