The devil is defeated
Satan still acts in our world, but he has no power against Jesus.
The good news revealed
The message of the book of Revelation is that Jesus Christ has defeated Satan and will one day destroy him completely. It is in the light of this certainty that we are to confront the devil's continuing malicious activity, whether physical (through persecution of Christians), intellectual (through deception/lies), or moral (through corruption).
How, then, can we Christians enter into Christ’s victory and prevail over the devil’s power? How can we hope to throw the enemy back, not only in our own lives but in the world he has usurped?
Resist the devil
First, we are told to resist Satan:
“Resist him, standing firm in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8-9).
“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7).
We are not to be afraid of him. Much of his show of power is a bluff, since he was overthrown at the cross, and we need the courage to call his bluff. Dressed in the full armour of God, we can take our stand against him (Ephesians 6:10-17).
We are not told to flee from him, but on the contrary to resist him so that he flees from us. Our own feeble strength, however, is not sufficiently powerful to dismiss him. We cannot say in our own name, as Jesus could, “Be gone Satan”, but we can do it in the name of Jesus. We have to claim the victory of the cross. It works. Satan knows his conqueror. He flees before Jesus.
Proclaim Jesus Christ
Secondly, we are told to proclaim Jesus Christ. The preaching of the cross is still the power of God. It is by proclaiming Christ crucified and risen that we shall turn people “from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18), and so the kingdom of Satan will retreat before the advancing kingdom of God. No other message has the same inherent force. No other name is defended and honoured by the Holy Spirit in the same way.
Both in our own lives, then, and in the church’s mission it is only the cross of Christ by which Satan has been defeated, which can prevail against him. It is still true today that “they overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11).
Uncompromising witness to Christ is essential. But indispensable to both is the content of our faith and message, namely the final, decisive victory of Jesus, the Lamb of God, over all powers of darkness, which he won when he shed his blood on the cross.
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