Why Satan Persists - Ask Pastor John

Video from Desiring God

Why Satan Persists - Ask Pastor John

Audio Transcript

"Today’s question incorporates a lot of Bible readings from the Navigators Bible Reading Plan that we are working our way through right now. Pastor John, over the next two weeks of our readings, we come across so much detail about Satan that it’s quite unreal — and concentrated in only ten readings, from November 19 to December 3. Here we encounter Satan’s initial fall in Jude 6, his devastating power over one family in Job 1–2, and his power over the whole world in John 12:31 and 1 John 5:19. We see him at work in his deception of the world in 2 John 7. We see that he throws believers into prison in Revelation 2:10 and enters Judas’s heart in John 13:27. The church is called to resist Satan’s hold over a whole city in Revelation 2:13. Satan is rebuked by Michael the archangel in Jude 9 and by Jesus himself in John 14:30. As you scan over this high concentration of references to Satan and his works that we encounter in our readings, what stands out to you in particular?

Satan Exists

Well, what stands out, Tony, is that Satan exists. A biblical worldview is a wildly supernatural worldview. He exists — period. That’s just shockingly real. He exists in spite of the fact (this is the second aspect of what stands out) that he is totally dependent on God for his existence. There’s nothing in Satan himself that has any claim on God, as if God had to let him exist with his terrible influence. He doesn’t, and he won’t.

“For those who have eyes to see, what looks like the power of Satan to afflict is regularly the defeat of Satan.”

Revelation 20:10 says, “The devil who had deceived them [the nations] was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” He is coming to an end. The existence and activity of Satan among God’s people will come to an end. God had authority to cast him out of heaven. Jesus has authority to command the unclean spirits to do whatever he wants them to do. God puts limits on Satan’s ability to do his damage, as with Job: “You can go this far and no farther” (see Job 1:12).

Satan is not free. He has no right to exist. It is God’s pure sovereign will that allows him to go on existing, and he will be put out of this world completely at God’s appointed time. That’s what stands out, and that’s what cries out for an explanation. Why, God, do you allow Satan to go on doing so much damage in this world when you are free to destroy him at any time?

I looked back through the archives, Tony, and realized we’ve touched on this several times for decades. This has been a big issue for me. We did an Ask Pastor John in 2008, before it existed. (We’ve got APJs before APJs. Before there was an APJ, I was trying to answer questions hit-and-miss. And then along came APJs.) So, in 2014 we wrestled with this question: Why does Satan go on existing?

But since those days, those several efforts to come to terms with this, I’ve written a big book on providence. In that book, published in 2020, I gave my best effort, my most mature effort, to explain the meaning of Satan’s ongoing existence. So, let me try to condense into just a few more minutes what I said in that book about this crucial, crucial question.

Satan’s Defeat

I argued that God is defeating Satan not all at once, which he could, but through four processes, all designed to reveal more of the greatness and beauty and worth of Christ. In other words, the progressive defeat is designed to show more of Christ. He’s defeating Satan (and I use these four s’s just for literary effect and memory) with showing, he’s defeating Satan with suffering, he’s defeating Satan with Satan himself, and he’s defeating Satan with savoring.

Let me just say a word about each of those.

1. Defeat in Displaying Christ

God is defeating Satan with showing. As Satan goes on existing, there are confrontations between him and Christ that show aspects of Christ’s glory that wouldn’t have been seen in other ways. When Christ heals the woman who’d been bent over for eighteen years by Satan, it says that Satan bent this woman over. She couldn’t stand up for eighteen years. And Luke tells us, when Jesus healed this woman, Jesus’s “adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him” (Luke 13:16–17). That’s a glimpse. I think that verse is a glimpse into how God uses Satan to reveal more of Christ’s glory.

“By dying for our sins, Christ stripped from Satan’s hand his only damning weapon.”

In chapter 18 of my book Providence, I describe ten ways that God is superior over Satan in the outworking of history. And I think every one of those ten ways could be unpacked as a way of God’s displaying more of his glory because of Satan’s ongoing existence than if he had simply snapped his finger and put Satan out of existence with a demonstration of his power all at once.

That’s number one, by showing. He is defeating Satan by showing more of Christ.

2. Defeat in Pain

He is defeating Satan with suffering. And by that, I mean Christ’s suffering — and then, as an echo of this way of defeating Satan, the suffering of Christ’s people. I know this is paradoxical because, in the suffering of Christ and the suffering of the church throughout the ages, it looks as though Satan is getting the upper hand. It always looks that way. And the Bible emphatically says that’s not what’s happening.

This is one of the most radical realities about Christianity. In Colossians 2:14–15, Paul says that Christ set aside the record of our sinful debts by nailing the record of my sins and your sins to the cross. Thus (this is crucial), “he disarmed” the authorities, Satan, the rulers, the powers, “and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” — which means, as I understand it, that by dying for our sins, Christ stripped from Satan’s hand his only damning weapon: his ability to accuse us of unforgiven sin. He can no longer do that because our sins are paid for by Jesus. This is the decisive defeat of the devil. Oh, how we can preach this with power to our people! It means that all of the damage that he can do toward Christ’s people now is temporary.

Since Christ covered all our sins, all the damage Satan can do is only temporary and cannot take away our victory in eternal happiness with God. That’s a great defeat, a glorious defeat. Then the book of Revelation teaches that even we, the people who enjoy this victory, the followers of Christ, triumph over the devil in the same way — namely, by suffering and, if necessary, dying. Here’s Revelation 12:11: “They have conquered [the devil] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

So, God’s path to ultimate victory over Satan in this world is profoundly different from the triumphalist notion that Christians will gain the victory by the weapons of this world, which is, I’m afraid, pretty rampant today.

3. Defeat in Himself

God is defeating Satan with Satan. When Satan put it in the heart of Judas to betray Jesus, he signed his own death warrant (John 13:2). God used Satan to defeat Satan because the death of Jesus defeats Satan.

We see the same thing in 2 Corinthians 12:7. God appoints Satan to afflict Paul with a thorn in the flesh. He calls it “a messenger of Satan.” Then God uses the thorn to sanctify Paul and deliver him from pride, the sin of pride. So, Satan becomes a means of Paul’s sanctification. (I love to think about this. This is glorious.)

So, for those who have eyes to see, what looks like the power of Satan to afflict is regularly the defeat of Satan as God turns the affliction for the strengthening and the purification and the endurance of his people.

4. Defeat in Delight

Finally, he is defeating Satan with savoring. This may be the most important. And what I mean is that, by showing Christ to be more soul-satisfying, God not only defeats the so-called power of Satan, but he defeats the so-called attractiveness of Satan and his ways.

The climax of Paul’s experience of the satanic thorn in the flesh is when he says, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). That word gladly is the key defeat of Satan. Satan’s effort to hurt Paul caused him to savor Christ more. So, Satan’s design backfired.

My conclusion is that, when God’s people face Satan’s temptations to prefer the world and to repudiate Christ, and instead of yielding to those satanic temptations they gladly boast in their weaknesses and losses because of the surpassing value, sweetness, savory beauty of Christ, Satan is defeated at that moment in a most wonderful and thoroughgoing way.

Tony, that’s what stands out to me from all those texts that you cited. Satan exists. He opposes Christ with pains and pleasures. And every day in this world, as Christians faithfully bear those pains and prefer Christ over those pleasures, Christ is being magnified, and Satan is being defeated." from the Transcript

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.

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