Blog : Who Is this Enemy and How Can He Be Defeated?

10 posts
12/20/2007 10:01 am

Who Is this Enemy and How Can He Be Defeated?

Every time Satan appears in Scripture, an aura of power surrounds this fallen being. The Bible seems to indicate that God has never created any other being as powerful. Even Michael the archangel was apparently no match for Satan in one encounter (see Jude 9). Michael had to appeal to the Lord to rebuke Satan. Satan's awesome power is further seen in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' temptation. No one can read of the encounter in the wil¬derness without developing a sober respect for the power and position of this archenemy of God and His kingdom. Yet, there is an urgent necessity to realize Satan is not invincible. He is mere creature, no match for the Creator.

At times the battle may grow fierce, and we may feel Satan is winning. Daniel must have felt that way when he was praying for twenty-one days for an answer to his urgent prayer (Daniel 10). During that time he was in a state of mourning. As an expression of his deep faith toward God, he was practicing limited fast and other forms of self-denial. Only as Daniel con¬tinued to pray and fast after those days were the holy angel able to come (see Daniel 10:1-15). If Daniel had thought Satan was powerful enough to block his request, perhaps the angel would not have arrived.

Do we give up too soon and miss the answers to our prayers? Christ may someday answer that question, but the challenge of it should move us to pray with more faithful tenacity. Satan is not invincible, but we can be and should be. It is the Lord's will to provide us with all we need to do His will.

Deceitful Satan tries to convince us that he is too powerful for us. Once we accept that lie, we are locked into a cycle of defeat. We can't win be¬cause we know we can't. We may look for someone to help us who aren’t subject to Satan's “invincible” strength, but even our Christian friends also seem helpless until we renounce that lie.

Satan is not invincible. He is a defeated foe. Any victory he appears to have in our lives is temporary. “We are more than conquerors through him [Christ] who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
Satan wants us to worship him. He took Jesus to a high mountain and showed Him “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me’” (Matthew 4:8-9). If Satan dared tempt the sinless of God to worship him, he will also use his subtle tricks to receive worship from those who belong to Christ.
He will try to get you to exalt his power over you to the extent that you see yourself as his helpless ploy. At that point, to you he is indeed invin¬cible. When you fall into that trap, you are ascribing to Satan an honor that is a kind of worship-a worship composed of fear and subjection. When he defeats us, he is seeking to establish his right to rule. He wants believers to accept that he is stronger than they are and that he is “in charge,” accepting that fallacy is a defeat that does not belong in the Chris¬tian life.

The apostle Paul keeps emphasizing in Romans 5 and 6 that we must stand upon truth and not allow subjective experience to challenge the abso¬lute truth. Subjective experience is never a valid establisher of spiritual truth. The revealed Word of God establishes truth.

In Romans 6:5-10 Paul explains that each believer is united with Christ in His victory over sin and death and Satan. Sin and Satan cannot rule over a dead person. Sin cannot master and put into slavery a person who is now “alive unto God” because of our union with Christ in His resurrection. That is unchanging truth upon which we are meant to stand-regardless of experience.

Satan will bring all the harassment he can muster into your experience to make you think that this just doesn’t work for you. He keeps saying by your experience that sin is too strong and that he can and will reign in your life.

What is Paul's answer to such attack? “In the same way, count your¬selves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires” (Romans 6: 11¬12). Our responsibility is to affirm as fact that we are “dead” to the rule and reign of sin, of death, and of Satan in our lives.

We are “alive to God.” Our Lord is ruling. Our responsibility is to “not let sin reign.” Sin and Satan can reign only if we “let” him do so. We let him reign when we accept that “it doesn't work” or we neglect “assembling together.” The moment we allow Satan an invincible role in our lives be¬cause of our experience of defeat, we are letting him reign. Victory over Satan comes when we have certainty of our victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no point at which the believer needs to admit defeat at the hands of Satan. No matter how far Satan has come in deceiving and controlling us, we can have gold tried in the fires of refining; white, clean garments; and salve of healing to remove our spiritual blindness. Close, intimate fel¬lowship with Christ is there to be claimed. Satan is not invincible, but Christ is, and the believer is invincible in Him.

Dundeal
(William Watson) 67M