How Satan Works. Atonement Theories. Who's Your Father. Jason Willis

For Sunday School Today, we will be talking a little bit about Satan. This topic has been something that I've been looking into for about the past six months or so, and it all began for me on the topic of atonement. So, for the majority of my life, the only one idea of the atonement even existed.

I know it's a controversial topic, but I had only ever heard one view, and that was the penal substitution view, which basically, in basic terms, says that Jesus died in order to save us from the wrath of God.

And then, about two years ago, I learned that another view even existed, and this view is called the ransom theory. I personally believe that I believe there are genuine born-again Christians that exist on both sides of the fence. It's not something that we should be divisive over, in my opinion. For the vast majority of my life, I believed in the penal substitution view.

I've changed my views a little bit. I'm not 100% on one side of the fence or another at the moment, 95-5 or so, but my views have shifted.

But I was just as much a Christian then when I had one belief as I am now that I have a little bit different belief. So, I'm not overly zealous to convince others that they need to particularly change their view.

But, as we love to say around here, ideas have consequences. There are some popular arguments out there against Christianity that have emerged over the past five years, and these actually may be these may go back all the way to the beginning of time, for all I know, but the first time I heard about it was about five years ago, and then more recently, I'm seeing it pop up on the internet all over the place. It's kind of a go-to gotcha card from the secular world.

And this argument attacks Christianity. It strikes at the core of the penal substitution. And when I heard it for the first time, I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. The argument is spoken in a sarcastic tone, usually, and it goes something like this: "So, let me get this straight. You worship a God who sacrificed himself to himself in some blood magic loophole to get you off the hook for breaking a whole bunch of rules that he is in charge of."

And so that was hard for me to hear the first time I heard it. "You know, so you worship a God who sacrificed himself to himself as some blood magic loophole to let you off the hook for breaking a whole bunch of rules, and all these rules that you've broken, he's in charge of."

And I remember the first time I heard it, I was thinking, "Oh, he sacrificed himself to himself to help me get off some problems that I have, and he's in charge of the rules." And so I was like, "Yeah, I mean, I'm not so much the blood magic loophole. I mean, that's some pretty supercharged language, but the rest of it kind of seems to size up with what it is that I believe." And now these arguments didn't cause me to lose my faith or abandon my faith, but the debate that I was watching, I could see the enemy winning in the minds of the audience. I could see how a logical man, one who may not have particularly deep spiritual roots, could easily be swayed by this argument.

And so I'm not dogmatic that others need to have the same view of the atonement that I do, but I still see the value in understanding what I believe and being able to articulate it because arguments like this are becoming more prevalent in the world that we live in.

How many of you have heard this message that David put up on? It's on YouTube. It's the early Christians believe what the early Christians believe about the atonement. According to David, the early Christians believe in the ransom theory. And this theory says that through sin, we have been sold into bondage to Satan, and that the blood of Jesus was shed as a payment to Satan as a ransom to purchase us out of bondage and purchase us out of sin.

And there are many mentions of this ransom in Scripture, Revelation 5. "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people from God for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.'" Mark 10 says, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and he gave his life as a ransom for many." Timothy 2 says, "For there is one God and one mediator also between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time." Now, it's important to know that even though one of the particular theories has ransom in the how we call it, the title, the ransom exists in both theories.

I mean, it's a scriptural something scripturally that can be removed. The difference is that the penal substitution theory, the ransom is paid by God in the form of Jesus to God, but in the ransom theory, it's being by God in the form of Jesus to Satan. So I'd just like to pause for just a moment, and I just want to reiterate something. Even though it's something that I just kind of said, I want to reiterate this because I'm not claiming that one of these views is right and one of these views is wrong. I don't want to lose any of you up here because you're feeling this is not something that I've heard of and feel like you're going to a mode of trying to have any sort of defense.

It is okay if we don't see eye to eye on this topic. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm just discussing ideas, and ideas have consequences. It's, you know, if this, then this. If that, then that. For example, in regards to this argument that I brought up that is becoming more prevalent in society, if I believe in the penal substitution and this argument is presented to me, then I must offer a defense.

But if I do not believe in the penal substitution and the argument is then presented to me, then the argument is just a straw man. You know, so you believe in a God who sacrificed himself to himself? Well, no, I don't believe that. So that's, you know, I understand that's out there, but that's not my particular belief wholly.

And the way that David presents it is that Satan was willing to let humanity go to let humanity be free from his power in exchange for the Son of God. But this view of the atonement ends with a twist in that Satan does not understand that the taking of a life of a sinless man would not be a lawful death, for the wages of sin is death, but where there is no sin, there is no grounds for death. With Christ being sinless, death would not be able to hold him, and death certainly was not able to hold him.

Maybe there it was a mere oversight on Satan's part. Maybe he just didn't think it all the way through. Who knows? Or maybe Satan wrongfully assumed that Jesus had at least somehow in some minor way sinned. Maybe he thought Jesus was just like every other human. He somehow slipped up. We really can't probably will never know these things. Either way the story goes, Christ dies. He descends into Hades. He preaches to those who were there, and then he raises from the dead, having overcome death and sin as a man. And that's important. He overcame it as a man. Christ became the firstborn of a redeemed humanity, and now he extends the offer of eternal life to anyone who is willing to be buried with Christ in baptism, die to their sin, and be born again.

And regardless of what view you take, Jesus has achieved complete and total victory in this whole situation. 1 Corinthians death, oh, where is your sting? Oh, Hades, where is your victory? In Philippians, it says, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. For me to live is my king and my kingdom, and I have a purpose, but to die, oh, that's where the real gain is." You know, death, what Jesus did was total victory and has taken the sting out of death.

But in pondering all of these things, one particular part of the ransom theory has really caused my brain to glitch. It's a part of it that's really hard for me to wrap my head around. I mean, Scripture clearly expresses that a ransom was paid, and if the ransom theory is true, then this means that in some fashion or another, God made a deal with the devil.

A ransom can only exist if there are some sort of agreed-upon terms. You can't have a ransom if you don't have a deal. And in my mind, for whatever reason, it struggles to grasp this part of it. And so I decided that maybe if I could better grasp all of this atonement idea, if I had a better understanding of Satan's power and his position. So that is what has led up to me in the first place seeking to try to understand Satan in a deeper way.

And so for the rest of Sunday School, let's look together at what the Scripture says about Satan and also take a look at what the early church has to say about him, how did they speak about him, what did they think about him. And the best place to begin all of this is in the beginning, but even before the Garden of Eden. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. Revelation 13, "All the inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast, all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world." Other translations say the Lamb was slain before the creation of the world.

Follow me here. So 1 John says, "Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifest that he might destroy the works of the devil. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifest so that he might destroy the works of the devil." Why did the Son of God even become incarnate? Why did he even manifest in this world to destroy the works of the devil? And I believe that he's talking about the works of the devil in the world, but also the works of the devil in us.

And I was thinking, wow, this is a huge statement. The devil has played such a role in history, in the history of existence, that God became incarnate for the very purpose to destroy his works. The Lamb was slain before the creation of the world. The Lamb is the Son of God. The Son of God was manifest to destroy the devil's works. So what does this tell us? This tells us that God, in advance, before the creation of the world, already knew in his foreknowledge that Satan was going to take mankind captive.

It didn't sneak up on him. The Lamb was slain before it all began. And this makes me think of another popular Christian argument against Christianity. If God knew that Satan was going to deceive man and God knew that man was going to follow Satan, then why did God create anything in the first place?

Some people put it like this: if God knew that we would use our free will to reject him, then why did he give us free will, knowing in advance that the punishment was going to be eternal torture in hell?

Now, I know that some of you probably squeamed, got a little squeamish when you heard that eternal torture. I don't have that view, but I'm just being honest with the way the secular world would present the argument.

And myself, I don't give these arguments too much credence. I think that if people would think it through, that they would find that they are themselves pretty much the same. It's unfathomable. Unfathomable. That's a hard word for me. It's unfathomable to them when God does it, but they'll turn around and do it themselves. They'll sit there and make babies all day long, knowing completely well that those children may turn out to be devils, little devils. They know that they're going to have children, and these children are going to have free will, and they know that if these children grow up and they rape and pillage and murder, and then they fall into the hands of the government or they fall into the hands of their victims, then they're going to be tortured and murdered or, at best, put locked up in a tiny cell for the rest of their life.

But that doesn't stop them from having children with free will, but it's unfathomable when God does it.

The fact that human beings have the capacity of becoming horrific and disgusting creatures rarely, if not never, hinders someone from having a child. A creature of the free will, the free will argument also doesn't hold much water with me. A creature with no free will is, in some ways, a wild beast. There are all sorts of wild beasts out there that operate solely on instinct. There is no free will in them. They experience something. They have thoughts. They have feelings, and they combine all of this together, and they have instinct, not will. They act on their instinct, and they always do what their instinct tells them to do.

Now, I want you to imagine if we had the ability to have children and choose in advance if they're going to have free will or not. Are we going to have a child? Are we going to have an animal this time? Are we going to have a child? What if we had that ability? I think that most of us can see that the ones that we choose to have free will, the ones who can choose to love us or choose to reject us, would definitely be the more special creatures. And so it's not surprising to me that God created things like this. And we see in Scripture that there are at least two, two categories or classes of creatures that have free will, and they are man and angels, and there might be more, just two that we are definitely sure of.

And so now we've talked a little bit, or now we've talked about what took place before the beginning. The Lamb was slain. Now let's look at the beginning where God made the heavens and earth. He makes two major places, heavens, and then he makes the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. We're so familiar with that. And the heavens seem to be a spiritual place, non-physical. I'm not 100% sure about that, but that's what I think that I read.

And then the earth is a physical place where humans and matter and stuff exist. And the angels, there are places in heaven, and we see the angels somehow have the ability to translate into both. It doesn't seem that humans are able to translate into heaven, but we are somehow spiritual beings. There is a connection of spirit and matter there somehow.

And now let's look at the creation of man. And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish and over the sea and over the fowl in the air and over the cattle and over all of the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." And so God created man in his own image, in his image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female, created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it." I love that command. Subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

So here we have God doing something amazing. He takes two of these, one of these two very special creatures that have free will, and he makes one of them humans in his own image. That's one thing he does. And then he gives them dominion over the entire physical world. And then evil happens in Satan. And we don't know the timeframe. We don't know at what point. Was it before the creation? Who knows exactly when it happened, but we know that evil happened. And I always heard growing up that the fall of Satan was due to his pride.

But as looking into this, the early church seems to believe that it seems more to stem from his envy, both envy from God. He envied the Son, and he also envies the image of man. Lactantius said this: "God made another being in whom the disposition of the divine origin did not remain." So he created angels, and the divine divinity did not remain in this new creation.

Therefore, he was infected with his own envy. There it is, as with poison. So he passed from good to evil through his own will, which had been given to him by God unfeathered. He acquired for himself a contrary name. For this, it appears that the source of all evils is envy, for he envied his predecessor, the Son.

This person who from God became evil by his own act is called by the Greeks Diablos or slanderer. We call him the accuser, for he reports to God the faults for which he himself entices us. Tertullian says this: "He deceived man because he had envied man." So whatever the maybe envy wasn't the root cause, who knows? But envy was definitely up there with some of the chief sin that would cause Satan to cross over and to be an evil being. At least that's what it looks like.

And I once listened to a sermon by a man, this gentleman named Don. This has been a couple of years, and I'm not 100% sure if you go looking for this sermon, I'm not 100% sure this is the one. It's like a series of like 40, and each one's like two and a half hours long, but I picked one because I think that's what my mind says he was wearing on that video. But in this video, he talks about his theory of why Satan envied man so much. And he describes it this way. He says that God gave man unconditional dominion over half of creation.

We have heaven and we have earth, and God gave dominion over all of the earth to man, and it was unconditional. He said, "You exist. You are in my image. Have dominion. Subdue this. There are no conditions." It was unconditional dominion.

And his theory was that Satan wanted to sit on the throne in heaven and the heavenly realms, but that wasn't enough. He wanted that unconditional dominion that humanity had over the earth. He was envious over man, over the power that God had just given us over so much of God's creation.

Then by deceiving Adam, Adam handed dominion of the earth over to Satan. So Satan ended up getting what he wanted, thus making him the prince of the power of the air. And so we see this new positioning of Satan.

He couldn't take the throne of heaven, so he took by deceit the thrones of the earth. And then he proceeded to turn humanity against God to make them God's enemy by enticing them to sin. And then after all of this, he has the audacity. After leading man into sin, he has the audacity to race up to God and say, "Look what your image is doing, the accuser of the brethren."

And the verse that talks about that is this in Revelation: "Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, 'Now salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come, for the accuser of the brethren who accused them before our God day and night has been cast down.'" So Satan's position number one is prince. There's some type of throne that exists. He definitely has some dominion over this place that we live. And Satan's second position is father. John 8, John's talking to the Pharisees. So John's talking to the Pharisees: "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of liars." Now notice in this verse that Satan is more than just the father of lies. John says to the people that he's talking to, the Pharisees, he says, "You are the children of the devil. The devil is your father." So when we as born-again Christians, when we cry out, "Abba, Father," we're crying out to Father God. But for those who are lost, who are not of God and are in the world, when they cry out, "Father," they just may very be crying out to Satan.

And there are other verses that refer to Satan in this position as father, 1 John: "By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." And then in Matthew, his disciples came to him saying, "Explain to us this parable of the tares of the field." And he answered them and said to them, "He who sows the good seed is the Son of man. The field is the world, and the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, the sons of God, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one." So here again, we have the sons of the wicked one being portrayed.

So Satan has been positioned so that he is the spiritual father of humans in their unredeemed state. It seems that humans must have a spiritual father, and if their spiritual father is not God, then by default, it becomes Satan, at least once someone reaches the age of accountability in my mind.

And this tells us a little bit about his position, but now let's take just a few moments and look at his power, most importantly, his incredible deceptive power. And he has oppressed the entire human race. He seduced a third of the angels who were subject to him, for he was still a ruler when he descended from his estate. He then approached Jesus to tempt him as a man, but he found that Jesus was not what he thought him to be, and he departed from him. So this fallen angel is so crafty in his deception that he not only seduced and oppressed the entire human race, he even seduced a third of the angels. Just think of the percentage of all the creatures with free will that Satan was able to deceive: nearly 100% of humans and 33% of all the angels.

Now this guy is cunning and baffling, but he is not sovereign. Satan is not. God is sovereign. He only has power that God allows him to have. Origen says this: "In the book of Job, which is older even than Moses himself, the devil is distinctly described as presenting himself before God and asking for the power against Job so that he might involve him in trials of the most painful kind." So that's an Old Testament example of Satan asking for power over somebody. And then here we have a New Testament example: "And the Lord said, 'Simon, Simon, indeed, Satan has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail.

And when you have returned to me, strengthen your brothers.'" And I imagine Peter saying, "What do you—wait a minute. What do you mean, 'When I return to you'? I'm not going anywhere." He goes on and says, "I'm ready to go to prison for you, Lord. I'm ready to die for you. What do you mean, 'When I return to you'?"

And then he says, "I tell you, Peter, the rooster shall not crow this day before you will deny me three times that you know me." And I think that Jesus was really loving on Peter in this passage. Just imagine Peter's anguish after he denies the Lord while he's on his way to his persecution. Like he's on his way out, and he denies him over and over and over. He must have been thinking, "Is this even forgivable? Did I just become another Judas?" But just moments before Jesus tells Peter, "Listen, you're going to deny me three times," he says, "Peter, Satan has asked for you just like Job, but I told him no." That was very loving of Jesus to let Peter know that Satan—that he had not been handed over to Satan.

I think it was great compassion. Hermes said this: "The devil cannot hold dominion over the servants of God who with all of their hearts place their hope in him. The devil can wrestle against them, but he cannot overthrow them." Now notice the qualification: "The devil cannot hold dominion over the servants of God." Well, that's great news. "Who with all of their hearts place their hope in him." There's conditions on that potentially.

Also notice that the devil is not powerless over God's servant. He can't not touch us. He has some power. He can wrestle against us. He just can't overthrow us. And now this doesn't mean that Satan does not sometimes win battles.

It just means that when we are tempted, and if we are indeed following Christ with our whole hearts, and we are tempted, and we are in the middle of a battle, and we are in this position where we cannot be overthrown, what it means is that when we lose the battle, we chose that we wanted evil. We did not get overthrown.

Of course, that condition of that is if we are actually placing our following Christ with our whole heart. Tertullian said, "The devil, it must be acknowledged, seems indeed to have power in this case, really over his own, over those who do not belong to God, but against those who belong to the household of God, he may not do anything through his own right." Again, saying that Satan has to go through God to have power over us, to our lives as genuine Christians.

The devil has—Cyprian says the devil has no power against man unless God allows it. For in the Gospel, according to John, it was written, "Jesus said, 'You could have no power against me unless it were given to you from above.'" And that's very interesting to me. I never thought about this conversation that Jesus is having with Pilate as something that maybe could be applied to Satan having power over us.

So that's pretty much the bottom of what I have found in regards to his power and position. And so now I'd like to just talk a little bit about Satan's MO. How does he operate? And for those who are unfamiliar with the term, it means a person or group's habitual way of operating.

And so if he is going to be attacking us, it's good to know—if he's going to be wrestling with us, it's good to know and be able to spot the way, his habitual ways that he acts. First off, Hermes says, "The devil goes to all the servants of God to test them." So none of us get a free pass. We will all be tested.

This quote continues: "The ones who are full in the faith resist him strongly, so he, Satan, withdraws from them, having no way to enter into them. He goes then to an empty place where he finds the entrance into them, and he produces in them whatever he wishes, and they become his servants." So to those who are empty, he gets into them and he produces whatever he wants.

The apostle Peter, in his epistle, forewarned and teaches, saying, "Be sober and watch, for your adversary, the devil, goes about as a roaring lion seeking to who he can devour. He goes about each one of us. He is like an enemy beseeching those who are all shut up in a city." And this reminds me of Kevin's sermon a few weeks ago when he was talking about how our self-control is likened to a wall around us, the walls around a city. He examines the walls and tests to see if there are any parts of the walls that are less firm and less trustworthy, for perhaps he can make a breach and penetrate to the inside.

He presents to the eyes. So now he talks about how he, as he's going and trying to poke holes in our walls, this is how he does it. He presents to our eyes seductive forms and easy pleasures by the sight of which we might destroy our chastity. He tempts our ears with harmonious music so that we can hear of the sweet sound and may relax and weaken our Christian vigor. And he promises earthly honors so that we can be prayed or our heavy loved ones. He wrestles with all of us. He seduces our eyes. He seduces our ears, and he promises earthly honors. And then if you do not take the bait, he has a plan B. And when he cannot deceive us secretly, he threatens plainly and openly, brandishing the fear of fierce persecution to conquer God's servant.

He is always restless and always hostile. He is crafty and peace, and he is fierce in persecution. Lactantius, we're almost done. I think we have two more here. Satan lays plots against everyone. Those who know God, he attacks with wiles and craftiness so he can ensnare them with desire and lust.

Somehow that desire and lust just somehow comes back and bites us every time. Or if that strategy does not work, he attempts to overthrow them by force and violence. And Irenaeus said, "The devil was one of those angels who were placed over the spirits of the air. However, becoming envious of men, he was rendered an apostate from the divine law."

And this is my favorite part here. The word of God, however, the maker of all things, conquered him, conquered Satan by means of human nature. So showing him to be apostate, Christ has, on the contrary, put him, put Satan under the power of man. So the power has shifted through the death and resurrection of Christ.

And so in Christ, Satan has lost us. He has not lost all power. He still is the prince of this world. He is still the father of those who do not know God. But the Son of man has come into the world to destroy the works of the devil in the world and in us. But by all accounts, it appears that he will go down to the bitter end swinging, which is why we are commanded to endure to the end because we're always going to be—he's always going to be coming at us again, I believe, until the last day. So that's the end of the thoughts that I have about our adversary.

If anyone has any comments or questions, feel free. Is it time to actually move on? I don't know what time we usually are at this. Sure.

Dean Taylor, last week, tried to have this conversation with a group of people. The unfortunate part, this is an ongoing conversation.

And what you did today is you filled in the blanks where they dumped. And I asked Dean the same thing. Can you put it on a business card so I can take it to Philadelphia and tell somebody what this is? And he did. And I said, "Why'd you waste an hour talking about it?"

The thing is, I'm not trying to get the theoretical people. I'm not trying to get the whole world. I'm trying to get people in chambers. How do I dumb that down so people understand it? You did a good job. Thanks. Thank you. You're welcome. Because you made it palatable. You don't have to be a mental extensionist or a spiritual expansionist person to understand it. Yeah, I think that it's important, the idea of the atonement.

It has helped me view things in a different way, and it's helped me in a lot of ways. But I think that with different individuals, there's an appropriate time to even bring it up. It's not one of those things that sometimes they just turn people away from listening to anything you have to say if you're not careful about when it comes up. But when you realize something, some position or way that they're understanding something that seems to be destructive in some way to them, where you feel like, "Hey, if this person had a different view of this, that might help them," just be cautious about how I think when and where you bring those things up.

Yeah, I thought you had made a really good point on the whole free will thing with having children. That was a very good comeback for people that say, "Why would God even make children have free will? Why do you do that?" I don't know. Why do you do that?