God’s Devil - Part 15: The Struggle of Life Against Satan
Christian warfare is a war of moral and spiritual struggle.
The incarnate Word and the rebel angel confronted each other in the greatest battle of the spirit ever known. We must not forget that Jesus, after His baptism by John, did not decide to take a walk in the wilderness. Mark 1:12 teaches us that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. The victory over Satan in that moment was that of love over hatred, truth over lies, and good over evil. Christ is the great fighter of the spirit domain. He did not struggle against the flesh as all humans do who are all weakened by original sin. He did however, continually struggle against our other two enemies, the world and the devil. Matthew 12:29 teaches us that He entered the house of the powerful and binds him, in order to take back what was His.
The stakes in this struggle are monumental. The final pages of scripture demonstrate the final outcome of this immense war, which shows the triumph of Christ and His enemies descent into the eternal lake of fire.
Why is man ever at the center of a war so severe that it covers all of human history? The answer is found in the first pages of Genesis when in the sixth day, God created Adam from the dust in His own likeness and image and instilled in him His own divine breath, making him a living soul. There is something of divine value in man, his soul. This value is not lost on the devil. One soul would have been treasure enough for Jesus to go to His cross. Nothing is more important to God because God loves man as a son. Every man's soul is dear to the Lord.
Satan is jealous of this fact. He wanted to be as God and therefore he competes for each soul. His primary purpose is to capture the souls of the lost and to diminish the souls of the saved. The first enemy of man is his partially corrupted nature. Flesh without discipline is a most devious enemy and is an ally to the devil. A second enemy is the world around us, which is not evil itself by creation but has become sin polluted by our history since the fall and acts as a playground for Satan. We should be careful not to attribute to Satan more power than he actually possesses but by the sin of our first parents, Satan has come to seek to dominate all mankind. He blows on the fire of our weak flesh and acts within the seductive temptation of the world to seduce and snare us. When we willingly choose sin we become subject to his short leash.
Spiritual warfare lasts until our final breath. Satan seduces us with the false ideas that death is near and we should seek pleasure in him which comes without joy. Our defense is in the whole armor of God given for this exact reason and it allows us to remain secure our final goal of eternal paradise. Once saved we are His now and forever.