Answers to 9 Questions About the Devil and His Demons: Part 4

God wants you to live in victory and not as a victim of Satan and evil. For this to happen, you need to get to know your enemy so that you can defend yourself accordingly.

Question 6: What are Satan’s schemes against us?

Regarding spiritual warfare as it is experienced on the personal level which we examined in a previous blog, 2 Corinthians 2:11 (NIV) says, “Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” Therefore, in addition to understanding his day-to-day tactics, understanding several overarching schemes employed by Satan and his servants helps us in anticipating his work and living in victory rather than as victims.

Scheme 1: The World

The world is our external enemy that tempts us to sin against God. What is meant by the term world in its negative sense? The world is an organized system in opposition and rebellion against God. In 1 John 2:16, the world is defined in three ways.

(1) The world is the domain of the desires or lust of the flesh, which is the sinful longings for physical pleasures that tempt us, everything from gluttony to drunkenness, sexual sin, and chemical highs.

(2) The world is the place devoted to the desires or lust of the eyes, where the sinful longings for coveted possessions are manifested in everything from advertising and marketing to pornography.

(3) The world is where pride in possessions is commended, and haughty selfish ambition is considered a virtue rather than a vice.

In response to the world, the Bible commands a threefold response.

(1) We are not to love the world (1 Jn. 2:15). Because the world is our mission field, rather than our home, and the source of our temptation to sin, we must continually guard ourselves from falling in love with the world and the passions and pleasures it offers, not unlike the forbidden fruit that tempted our first parents.

(2) We are not to let the world shape our values (Rom. 12:2). Because the world is where the devil and demons converge with our sinful desires, if we allow the world to shape our value system and define who we are, why we exist, what we believe, and how we behave, then we will be converted to the world rather than seeking the conversion of the world to the Kingdom of God.

(3) Because Jesus died to the world, we are commanded to live as crucified to the world (Gal. 6:14). This means that we are either alive to the sin of the world and dead to God or dead to the temptation of the world and alive to God. By being dead to the world we can live in true freedom from it and thereby enter into it as a missionary, as Jesus did, seeking to see people saved from the world by the good news of Jesus Christ.

Importantly, while the world is a source of sinful temptation, it does not abdicate us from our moral responsibility. Therefore, no matter what our enemy hangs on our proverbial hook to bait us, we always remember that we do not have to take the bait. To do that, we must understand what the Bible calls “the flesh”.

Scheme 2: The Flesh

The flesh is our internal enemy and a seed of corruption that lingers in us until we exit this life and enter heaven if we are a Christian. In brief, the flesh is our fallen internal resistance to obey God and put self-interests above God’s interests (Mark 7:21–23; Gal. 5:19–21; Col. 3:5–8; James 1:14–15).

In the Bible, flesh sometimes means a physical body, as when Jesus the Word became flesh (John 1:14). But the Bible does not locate our sin in our physicality as ancient and contemporary Gnostics do. The sinful deeds of the flesh come from every part of our person (Gal. 5:19–21). In the Bible, Paul uses flesh to refer to our innate propensity to sin against God; he says that the flesh is the seat of our sinful passions (Rom. 7:18, 25; Gal. 5:16, 19; Eph. 2:3), the realm of sinners (Rom. 7:5; 8:8–9), and the source of our evil desires (Col. 3:5).

The Bible commands Christians to respond to the flesh in three ways.

(1) We are to recognize that we are no longer under the flesh’s bondage (Romans 6). Jesus’ death for our sin and his resurrection for our salvation give us a new nature and a new power from God the Holy Spirit that enables us to say no to our flesh and yes to God.

(2) We are to walk in conscious submission to God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16). Because the Holy Spirit is more powerful than our sinful desires, he alone can get us out of unholy sin and into holy worship. We do this by having God and godliness meet the longings and desires that otherwise drag us away from God.

(3) We are to put to death, or what the Puritan John Owen called “mortify,” sinful desires (Rom. 8:13–16). The opposite of mortifying sin includes excusing sin, tolerating sin, or merely wounding sin by attempting to manage it. Mortification is Holy Spirit-enabled conviction followed by repentance of sin, faith in God, worship of God, and perseverance in holiness so that sin remains dead and joy remains alive. Since sin wants to kill us, the only way to deal with it it by killing it before it kills us.

Scheme 3: The Demonic

The Bible speaks of Satan’s work in what can commonly be understood as the ordinary demonic and the extraordinary demonic.

(1) Ordinary demonic work entices us to sexual sin (1 Cor. 7:5), marriage between Christians and non-Christians (2 Cor. 6:15), false religion with false teaching about a false Jesus (1 Cor. 10:14–22; 1 Tim. 4:1–2; 2 Cor. 11:1–4), unforgiving bitterness (Eph. 4:17–32), foolishness and drunkenness (Eph. 5:8–21), idle gossiping and busybodying (1 Tim. 5:11–15), lying (John 8:44), idolatry (1 John 5:18–21), attacking our identity through false and condemning thoughts (1 Chron. 21:1; Matt. 4:8–10; Luke 4:5–8), demonic dreams and night terrors (Job 4:13–16; Ps. 9:5).

(2) Extraordinary demonic work includes torment (Acts 5:16), physical injury (Matt. 9:32–33; 12:22–23; Acts 8:4–8), counterfeit miracles (Acts 8:9–23; 16:16; 2 Thess. 2:9–10), accusation (Rev. 12:10), death (Prov. 8:36; John 8:44), and interaction with demons (1 John 4:1–6).

This category of conduct is often referred to as “evil” by people who do not even believe in God. Something in our conscience made by God simply recognizes when something so brutal and awful has happened that we need another category to explain it. As a pastor, I hear the kind of stories that can only be described as demonic.

As an example, a young woman once came forward to talk after I preached a sermon. She’d never known her biological father, and her mother forbid her to meet him. Upon turning 18, she got together with her dad for the first time. I asked her how it went.

“He raped me,” she said.

As I heard those words, I started to bawl so uncontrollably I couldn’t breathe. I had a hard time pulling it together, so I just hugged her and choked out a prayer. Over the next weeks and months, people came around this young woman, helping her get to know her real heavenly Father, and heal from her demonic earthly dad. Evil and the demonic are real and empowering real people to do real damage.

Portions of this blog post were adapted from Who Do You Think You Are? (2013, Thomas Nelson), by Mark Driscoll, Death By Love (2008, Crossway), by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, and Doctrine (2010, Crossway), by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears.