Characters of CreationSample

The serpent’s appeals, so crafty and surgical, are repeated by the enemy every day since that fateful day in the garden. Like Eve, we hear the murmurs, the lies, the subtle voice of the enemy. And the myth, this side of Eden, is that to sin, to yield to the voice of Satan, to indulge our desires, is the essence of being human.

And yet we must not only see ourselves as Genesis 3 people, fallen, but as Genesis 1 people as well. In attempting to be like God, to sin, is to be less than human. Eve should have resisted the serpent. But in her indulgence she didn’t become like God, but she became like an animal. There is a reason that evil is depicted in the book of Revelation as a dragon. Temptation preys on animal instincts. It tells us we are nothing more than our desires.

But what can we do in the face of temptation? How can we resist the advances of the enemy? Corrupted by the fall, we can’t help but sin. And there is a way in which religion has us back in the garden fixing the mess we made with our own effort, but we know that on our best days we say yes to sin. “Not today, Satan” is a myth.

Except there is one, Jesus, that seed of the women, who took on human flesh and was “tempted in every way . . . yet without sin”. He walked through a desert of temptation, assaulted with the same lies as Eve and yet emerged sinless, the perfect God-man. But what Jesus has for us is not just a good example of how to resist the devil, but one who not only said no to Satan, but went to the cross and in His agony, cried “It is finished,” defeating the enemy powers. Paul writes in Colossians 2:15 that Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.”

So while we can’t go back to Eden, we also don’t walk through the desert of temptation alone. Jesus went before us, resisted Satan’s overtures, and went to the cross, then rose again, defeating sin, death, and the grave. Satan still roams the earth seeking to devour, Satan is temporarily the prince and power of the air and the ruler of this world, but he is on a leash. And while we shouldn’t underestimate him, we should also not live in fear. Those who are in Christ can take comfort in the words the aging apostle John wrote to a church beleaguered by persecution and despair: “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world”.

We fight sin; we resist temptation; we throw back the lies of the enemy with God’s full armor. We will not win every battle. We will make Eve’s choice every day and multiple times a day, but on this side of Calvary, we don’t have to sit in our sin, but can draw upon God’s rich provision of mercy and find forgiveness and freedom. And the devil, whose name means “accuser,” cannot make a claim on our soul, cannot pin guilt on us, because Christ has taken our guilt and shame.

Satan is powerful. He’s a lion who roars. And yet we should not ascribe God-like characteristics to him. He’s not all-powerful, not all-knowing. He cannot read our thoughts and does not know the future. He captains a horde of demons, but they are on the losing side. And in the power of the Spirit of God, the devil can be resisted.