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.