Bashing Beelzebub

There is a movement in the modern church that encourages people to gird themselves up to step out and take on Satan and his hordes, and to claim victory over him in their surroundings. Neighbourhoods, workplaces, schools and even whole cities are targetted for cleansing through a direct confrontation with their controlling demons and a defeat of them through the power of the Holy Spirit within each believer.

Demons are addressed, commanded, rebuked, ridiculed and vanquished through faith in the victory of Jesus Christ. It all sounds so wonderfully empowering that many are being drawn into it. But it is an occasion of stumbling for unwary Christians who think they are being “spiritual” when, in fact, they are being unscriptural.

The fact that this sort of behaviour nowhere exists in scripture and was never commanded or encouraged either by Christ or His Apostles does not seem to phase those who have decided that they have the “power”. They cite the sending out of the 70 with authority over evil spirits, or the exorcisms performed in the Acts of the Apostles through Peter, Paul and others.

What they do not see in all of this is that such exorcisms are not primarily acts of power for the defeat of Satan, but acts of compassion for the relief of the suffering. Do these modern day disciples really think that God chose to defeat Satan by an overt show of power? Then what was the cross all about? If Christ had wanted to, He could have but spoken a single word and the Father would have sent an army of angels to help Him, and Satan could still have been bound and cast into hell for eternity. He chose not to.

What God chose to do was to send His only Son to suffer the onslaught of evil and to defeat it by not resisting it. He did battle. He did fight. But He worked only according to the precepts of His own nature, out of love for who would believe on His Name. The form of fight He fought was not to overtly smash Satan through omnipotent power, but to defeat the devil using Satan’s very own evil against him for good. This is the wonder of Christ. It is the power of the gospel. It is the Way of the saints. It is also the foolishness and the offense of the gospel to those who are perishing.

Now if God spared not His own Son, but subjected Him to every form of temptation and suffering, do these modern crusaders believe that they can escape and arrive by a different route? If Christ refused to smash Satan with a word, but preferred the way of the cross then why should His followers think that their way ought to be any different?

It seems that they believe that Christ’s victory, finally won over Satan upon the cross for each one of His saints, is taken to be something handed to them as a fait accompli for their release from, and their personal lordship over, the forces of evil. They think that, with enough faith, we shall not have to suffer as Christ suffered, nor walk where He walked on account of His finished work. What a travesty of the gospel that is!

It is true that the power of Satan over we fallen beings has been broken by Christ. We are no longer under condemnation, but have moved from death to life. The deceiver and liar has been exposed for what he is, and the very nature of the invisible God has been shown in human form.

But we, the beloved of God, have been chosen and called for what? To apply that victory in a way by which it was never won? God forbid! Christ came so that we would be empowered through faith to walk the same path that He did. We are not called to chase Satan all over hell’s half-acre, carrying the big stick of the power and authority of God. We are chosen as the instruments that He empowers, through the indwelling Spirit, to walk by faith in the nature of the victory that He has already won.

Consequently, our lives are to be lived out in holiness, replete with good deeds, in the midst of an evil world, trusting in God to uphold, deliver and protect us because Christ came to show us the utter trustworhtiness of His character and His ways. As we do this, Satan will roar and threaten us. God will allow him, for our good and for His Own glory, to touch our lives with tribulation and suffering. But, because of Christ and the faith in Him that we have been given, Satan is only a dog on a leash or a lion on a chain.

This is the victory that has overcome the world, even your faith. Faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Like our Master, we are citizens of heaven living on earth. Before His redemptive work we could never have lived as such. But Christ in us, the hope of glory, through the faith imparted to us will share His crucifixion and sufferings with us as we walk in the world. He will work out in us, as we abide in Him, the victory that He won. And He will do it in the same manner and character that He did it in His own humanity.

The devil’s defeat is demonstrated every time a saint denies himself and does a good deed, speaks a word of comfort or acknowledgment, helps a neighbour, forgives an enemy or loves the unlovely. These are the very things that the devil is desperate to prevent happening because they are the manifestation of the victorious life of Christ in His saints.