29 April 2023
Comments from readers indicate to me that at least some of you still suffer from a false image of Satan. The western pagan mythology of Loki is the model most people have for Satan. It's wrong. The biblical image is quite different.
But instead of rehashing the ancient Hebrew image of God's left-hand servant, I want to reinforce some basics. Satan is God's servant; he is no longer in rebellion. He wasn't in rebellion by the time Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden. What he did there was his new job, his punishment for rebellion. Further, he is confined to mortal human space; images of him reigning over some kind of underworld are not biblical. When it comes to that, our human existence on earth is the "underworld". Hell is standing in the Presence of God without the covering for sin He has offered.
We can't know the specifics; it's not that kind of knowledge. But we catch symbolic glimpses of an apparent Covenant of Creation, a sort of law binding Adam and Eve, and they were fully aware of it. They lived in eternal bodies, rather like those Christ had after His resurrection. Jesus could have manifested Himself in any shape He chose, but He chose to look like His human self. And for Adam and Eve, it's not as if they couldn't sin; they were able to choose the wrong things. The definition of sin is anything except what God says must be. They broke the covenant by which they lived in the Garden.
Viewing it through the symbolism of the early chapters in Genesis, we see that the nature of the Fall was choosing to operate contrary to God's will. It didn't matter what they actually did; eating from the Tree of Judgment was a symbol. They substituted their own judgment for God's. According to the covenant under which they lived, that meant being forced to endure a mortal existence. Being born in the flesh is a curse in itself. It obscures our eternal natures; the flesh looms large in our awareness.
Satan's mission in the Garden was to entice Adam and Eve out of their privileged boundaries. They fell for it, and were forced to live under Satan's dominion. The whole issue here is that Satan wants to keep us from that divine privilege and all the blessings that come with it. We are his by default; it requires divine intervention to depart from his clutches.
Don't focus on the types of deception so much as the motive. Satan will offer whatever deception it takes to keep us under his authority. The folly is believing his lies; what we do with it is of no real consequence. Thus, it doesn't matter what humans think, do or say. As long as they are under Satan's dominion, it's all sin. The actions are not what defines sin; sin is living outside the divine privilege. Those under Satan's dominion cannot do right.
Fear-inducing visions of the awful things Satan has the power to do are false. But as long as you live there, they are your reality. You can still die, and painfully so. This life is valuable in only one sense: it's our one chance to seize the promises of God. God Himself does not reveal the nature of how that divine privilege here connects with our eternal destiny, but it's not what most people think it is. He says to us repeatedly in the Bible: Stop worrying about Eternity. Just get it right while you are still here in this world.
To get it right means trusting His revelation, walking in His Covenant. It's not the performance, but the commitment of your heart. Your heart is the seat of faith, the will and commitment to find peace with God. The heart is designed to dominate the mind; both of those capabilities understand how it works. The heart knows how to dominate, and the mind knows how to submit. But the mind does not want that; it wants to rule. It is arrogant about its capabilities to figure out what ought to be good and evil. That's the whole foundation of sin, and it's what Satan wants us to do. It's the primary nature of all temptation.
There is a sort of "mind" that is not restricted to mortal flesh. It's probably better to think of it as your conscious awareness. That awareness is more of a manifestation than a thing itself. It's a manifestation of your eternal self. You can choose to restrict your conscious awareness to the fleshly mind, or you can learn to live in your heart. The latter is what the Bible recommends. There is no clinical language that can describe it. For most people it's enough to simply say that this is how it works. However, the ability to commit with the heart does not depend on an awakening of the eternal spirit within us. The fleshly nature itself is fully aware that it can submit in feudal vassalage to God, and doesn't want to do that.
The saints in the Old Testament didn't have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but they did have the capability to submit to the Covenant Lord from their hearts. That's how they were "saved" under the Covenant of Moses, and every preceding covenant before the Cross. It's still the core of the Covenant of Christ, but this latter covenant comes with more gifts. It is inherently personal in nature, not objective. It is you and God coming to His terms, with specifications of your unique identity written into your convictions. Those convictions are in your heart; you cannot discern them until you move your conscious awareness into your heart. You have to care about what God thinks is right for you.
That's the core of redemption: Decide that you care what God has decided.
Thus, those songs that talk about how Satan was surprised by the Resurrection are baloney. He didn't want Jesus to die for us. Satan tried to derail the Cross because he knew what it meant. He had held humans in thrall for thousands of years, and wanted to keep them away from the Covenant. Christ was going to release His Spirit upon humanity, and it weakened Satan's hand. Instead, the Devil tried hard to get Jesus to embrace the false worldly Messianic Expectations in Luke 4. Jesus was a spiritual-moral Messiah, restoring and then updating the Covenant of the Heart.
Satan is bound by that Covenant. If you walk in the Covenant boundaries, it highly limits what he owns of you. It's upon us to work out the redemption God has offered in His Covenant, to buy us back from enslavement to the Devil, so that we can walk in His household as divine children.
This document is public domain; spread the message.