The belief in the existence of supernatural evil is central to Christianity. Beyond believing in its existence, Christians also believe in evil’s ongoing activity. The Scottish-born and Presbyterian theologian John Murray says that there are “unseen spiritual powers” behind all that is broken in the world. He says, “The arch-foe of the kingdom of God is not the visible powers arrayed against it; for behind these visible agents and manifestations of evil is the ingenuity, craft, malicious design, instigation and relentless activity of the devil and his ministers.”
Murray says that our naturalistic presuppositions make us liable to deny this aspect of biblical revelation. He says, “To the extent that we do so, our thinking is not Christian.” Minimizing the reality and activity of supernatural evil forces arrayed against us is not biblical, nor wise.
What, then, are the Devil’s designs? Paul says he has them (2 Cor. 2:11), but what do they look like in our everyday lives?
First of all, they are not easy to see. By design, the devil’s design is sneaky. The apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 5:8, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Satan’s goal is to devour, or as Jesus says, “to steal and kill and destroy” (Jn. 10:10). But his design, or tactic, is to “prowl around like a lion.”
This means that his work isn’t always obvious. Like a lion, evil quietly hides, waiting for us to misstep. As in Job’s case, Satan may sometimes be allowed by God to attack a person’s life and family in an all-out frontal assault. But his work is often more quiet, more subtle, more hidden, more insidious.
The biblical word for this is “scheme” or “snare.” Ephesians 6:11, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” Paul says that an elder must be “well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil” (1 Tim. 3:7).
The devil’s designs are schemes and snares. He sets traps. Remember how he’s described in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” Satan has been studying humanity for millennia. He’s sneaky and shrewd. He hides just around the bend. And when the time is right, he pounces and devours.
Two of the ways Satan devours his prey, two of his favorite tactics, are accusation and deception. In Revelation 12:9-10, Satan is called the “Accuser” and “Deceiver.” He is both, all the time.
Satan wants to accuse you of sin. Sometimes he does so accurately, sometimes inaccurately. The accuracy of the claim is largely irrelevant. Why? Because no claim against you has the power to condemn you, because Jesus took all these claims on the cross (Col. 2:13-14). The judgment is in, we are innocent of all charges. Satan is not our judge. He is merely our accuser.
Why is accusation one of the Devil’s favorite schemes? Because he wants us to live and labor under the weight of shame. He wants to shame us by accusing us of things both true and untrue. He wants shame to paralyze us and keep us on the ground so that we’re unable or unwilling to serve the Lord and help others.
Shame is the ultimate downer. It leads us to think that giving up is really the best option. It makes us want to hide, to curl up in a ball and die, to not take risks for God, to not take risks for the sake of love. Shame devours our souls from the inside out. It is like a cancer that slowly spreads, often going unchecked, until it has consumed our souls and rendered us powerless.
The Lord knows our shame, our broken hearts, our despair, our pain, and he hears us and does not despise us for our bondage to shame (Psalm 69:19, 20, 29, 32-33). He wants our hearts to come back to life by realizing that, because of Jesus, our shame is covered and we are made new. It does not matter what you have done, in Christ, you are God’s child no matter what.
Let’s now consider Satan’s scheme of deception. Jesus says Satan “has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44). The Devil is a deceiver. He wants us to think that God’s Word is not certain, that his commands are not binding, that the consequences of sin are not that severe, and that God is holding out on us.
And he wants us to believe lies about ourselves. We talk to ourselves more than anyone else, and sometimes we lie to ourselves. But when we are talking to ourselves, we use the first person, “I think I’ll make spaghetti for dinner.” But have you ever heard things spoken to you in the second person? Something like, “You’re such an idiot. You should just be quiet and not embarrass yourself.” We generally do not speak to ourselves in the second person, so who is it that talks to us like this? The “father of lies.” Evil loves to tell us things that are not true to shame us. This is where deception and accusation, the Devil’s two favorite designs, meet to devour our souls.
What lies does evil routinely whisper in your ear? “You’re incompetent, you’re not working hard enough, you’re a fraud, you’re not pretty enough, you’re too tall, you’re too short, you’re too skinny, you’re overweight, you’re dumb, you’re too sensitive, you’re too emotional, you’re a bad mom, you’re a bad dad, you’ll never get over that addiction, your life is pointless, no one cares about you, no one will ever want to marry you, you can never be used by God again after that, you’re a failure.”
Until we become aware that these accusations are the voice of evil, we will feel like they arise from our own heart, not realizing that evil has a voice that speaks to us regularly. We will think that these are truths that our heart has always known, that these things are indisputably and irreversibly true about us.
Thankfully, the Devil’s designs of accusation and deception do not get the last word. Though his work rages on, as Martin Luther says, “lo, his doom is sure.” The destruction of the Devil and his designs was initiated when Jesus died and rose again. John Murray again:
“It is most significant that the work of Christ, which is so central in our Christian faith, is essentially a work of destruction that terminates upon the power and work of Satan…It is surely significant…that the first promise of redemptive grace, the first beam of redemptive light that fell upon our fallen first parents, was in terms of the destruction of the tempter.”
The Bible repeatedly says that Jesus died to defeat the devil. When describing one of the results of his death, Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (Jn. 12:31, cf. 16:11). Paul says that, by cancelling the record of our sin debt through his death, Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col. 2:15). Hebrews 2:14 says, “Through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” And the apostle John says, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn. 3:8).
Jesus’ death on the cross was a work of destruction and conquest! By dying, he defeated the Accuser by taking away his most potent munition: our unforgiven sin. Jesus destroyed the Evil One’s paralyzing power to shame us. Jesus conquered the Deceiver by unmasking his lies and bringing us into the truth and freedom of his grace.
The designs of the Devil are sneaky and create so much havoc in our lives. But he is a defeated enemy, for Christ our Warrior overcame him through his perfect life, death for our sins, and resurrection from the dead. These realities should create gratitude in our hearts for the freedom Christ won for us, and consistently lead us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, deliver us from evil” (Mt. 6:13).
Praying With and For You,
Pastor John