How Much Authority Does Satan Have?

John Piper

Audio Transcript

What legitimate authority does Satan have over this world? It’s a very important question, and it arrives today from a listener named Aaron in Texas. “Hello, Pastor John! In Matthew 4:9 and in Luke 4:6, what authority is Satan talking about? Is he lying that he has authority to give? Or does he truly have authority over the earth? If so, what is it, and how does this relate to God’s complete sovereignty over all things?”

Who Owns the World?

Here’s what the devil actually said to Jesus at the temptation in the wilderness that creates the question we were just asked: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’” (Matthew 4:8–9).

“God considered it wise, as part of his curse on the world after the fall, to give Satan a huge power in this world.”

And here’s Luke 4:5–7: “And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’”

My first answer is that if Jesus had worshiped Satan, of course Jesus would have abdicated his divine authority. He would have ceased to be God. If he were worshiping the devil, he wouldn’t be God. The devil would be God. Satan would then give him the whole world and still control the world because Jesus would not be God. He’d be Satan’s lackey. All of this, of course, did not and could not happen. Satan, as usual, was a fool to suggest it. He’s an idiot. He’s always saying stupid, half-true things.

All Power by Permission

But notice the words of Luke 4:6. Satan is not the ultimate authority in the world because, in Luke 4:6, he admits this: “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me.” By whom? God. In his sovereignty, God considered it wise, as part of his curse on the world after the fall of Adam and Eve, to give Satan a huge power in this world.

But he doesn’t have ultimate power. We’re not dualists. We don’t think there’s God and Satan duking it out for power in the universe. God is God, not Satan. Satan’s not God. All Satan’s power is by permission. He has no autonomy to do anything God does not permit for infinitely wise purposes.

We see Satan given permission to afflict Job, right? This is the same kind of paradigm. The Lord said to Satan in Job 1:12, “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.” All his acts of opposition to God and God’s people are part of God’s plan as he gives Satan permission to exercise tremendous power in this world.

Real but Defeated

Nevertheless, Satan’s sway in this world is terrible and vast. Here’s what we read.

“All Satan’s power is by permission. He has no autonomy to do anything God does not permit for infinitely wise purposes.”

The whole world lies in the power of the evil one. (1 John 5:19)

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:1–2)

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers. (2 Corinthians 4:4)

Jesus says in his last night,

I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. (John 14:30)

The note that is struck in the New Testament is that in Christ’s death and resurrection, the decisive blow against Satan has been struck. As Satan comes against Jesus in his final hours, Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). In John 16:11, he says, “The ruler of this world is judged.”

Here’s Luke 22:53. Jesus says — I love this phrase; he’s just so sovereign — “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” Jesus basically says, “You know, you get an hour. You get one hour. I know when it starts. I know what it ends. That’s your hour. It’s all by sovereign permission that you can do your dastardly deed in Judas and in me tomorrow morning.”

Power of the Cross

The most important passage on Satan’s defeat in the cross of Christ is Colossians 2:13–15. It goes like this: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” That’s a sweet sentence. The entire record of your life that you regret — canceled. Here comes the decisive second verse: “This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

“Satan’s one damning weapon against God’s elect is taken out of his hand. There is no unforgiven sin anymore.”

So, in dying for your sins, in nailing your record of debt to the cross, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. He disarmed them by nailing our record of debt to the cross, because Satan’s power is that he’s a great accuser.

If he has nothing in his court folder as he stands before the bar to accuse us, what’s he going to do? He becomes powerless in this courtroom because our record of debts has been canceled. His one damning weapon against God’s elect is taken out of his hand. There is no unforgiven sin anymore. We’re forgiven. So what’s he going to condemn? Nothing.

God Is Greater

Now in every battle with the devil, we can have total confidence of final victory. This is why Romans 8:38–89 says what it says: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers [satanic power included], nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” He has been decisively defeated.

A friend told me once about the time when he was converted in college, along with several other athletes. He’s a big, hulking, football-player type. He was converted by an old, elderly woman — a little petite woman. She hosted discipleship groups at her house for these football players twice the size of her. She insisted as her discipleship method that every one of them after their conversion say one hundred times a week, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). I thought, “Wow, that’s a wise way to start a Christian life because that’s really true.”

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-much-authority-does-satan-have-in-the-world

Sleep With Your Boots On

Article by Jared Wilson

Do you know that the devil is fully aware of your weaknesses? He knows your particular blind spots, your vulnerabilities. He knows which sins you struggle with the most. He knows what things irritate you, frustrate you, and distract you. He knows exactly what desire or longing is specific to your personality and wiring. And he is every day working the angles to exploit them and bring you down. Satan has a file on you, and he is working it every minute of every day to make sure you fall.

Do you ever think about it that way? The enemy is often more conscious of our weaknesses than we are. And he will do whatever it takes to get us to neglect our faith and forget the grace of God. If he can get us to stumble or use us to get others to stumble, he will not let up until he’s done it. All because he hates Jesus and wants to see Jesus’ glory obscured or diminished in the world.

It is for this reason that Paul’s words are so strong on the subject of the spiritual war. This is not something we can afford to be nonchalant about. The apostle Peter warns us: “Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). This is how Paul informs our preparation:

Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. (Ephesians 6:10-12)

The first rule of warfare is practical awareness of the enemy. You can’t fight well if 1) you don’t know who you’re fighting, and 2) you don’t know where they are. Knowing your enemy’s character (what they’re willing to do) and their position (where they may be attacking you from) is a key component to successful warfare. Paul is telling us two things here that are of utmost importance. He’s telling us that our enemy is the Devil, not our fellow man. This is important because we often mistake the unbelieving world as our battle targets. But Paul says we don’t war against “flesh and blood.” Because sin is in all of us, even those justified by the blood of Christ cannot justly carry out the fight against other sinners. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Unbelievers, by definition, are unenlightened to the things of the Spirit. They are not the enemy.

But we also need to remember the enemy’s position. He attacks us from the spiritual realm. Very often, Christians try fighting the devil’s wiles in the devil’s ways. We assume legalistic behavior will solve our sin problems, for instance. But the devil is totally fine with all of us becoming more religious, so long as we don’t actually love Jesus. No, we cannot wage a spiritual war with human strength. We have to be “strengthened by the Lord,” operating under “His vast strength.” We can’t do it in our own power.

When the enemy attacks our hearts, we don’t want our self-righteousness standing guard, but the breastplate of actual righteousness, Christ’s righteousness. When the enemy whispers his accusations into our ears with his forked tongue, we don’t want some trite, social media-quality daily affirmations sitting there; those would protect us about as much as cotton-ball earmuffs. But the helmet of salvation is another story. If my mind is ready with the great salvation of the gospel encasing it like a force-field of grace, I am really prepared.

Which is why we must wear this armor constantly. We should never take it off. We should wear it to bed as pajamas. We should make sure we’ve got it on first thing in the morning by turning to the gospel as immediately as possible. This is wartime. Don’t take the armor off. You don’t try putting on your seatbelt when you see the Mack truck bearing down on you at 60 mph; you put it on before you pull out of the garage. Likewise, don’t wait for the enemy to show himself before you start suiting up. You don’t know when the attacks will come; best to sleep with your boots on and your sword by your hand.

Posted at: https://ftc.co/resource-library/blog-entries/sleep-with-your-boots-on

Seven Ways God Reigns Over Evil

Sermon Excerpt by John Piper

What does the Bible present to us, through the whole range of redemptive history — from beginning to end — as the way God relates to Satan’s will? I don’t want to speculate. I want Bible verses. I want Bible statements about how God relates to Satan, and then maybe seeing enough ways that God relates to Satan, I could project back and say, Well, if he relates to him that way here, he related to him that way there.

That’s my approach, and you can assess whether you think that’s wise. What I want to do is just give you seven glimpses of how God relates to Satan in the Bible.

1. Satan is just God’s lackey.

Satan is called “the ruler of this world” in John 12:31. However, other texts say things like this:

“The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” (Daniel 4:17)

The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
   he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
   the plans of his heart to all generations. (Psalm 33:10–11)

From which I infer: Yes, Satan is the god of this world and the ruler of this age, but not ultimately. He is a lackey with a leash underneath this great God who decides who kings are and when they’re done.

2. Unclean spirits obey Jesus.

Although unclean spirits are everywhere in the world, doing deceptive and murderous things, Jesus Christ is described as having all authority in heaven and on earth. And then you get an amazing statement like this, clearly spoken as the truth about Jesus in Mark 1:27:

“He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

You should think a long time about that. When Jesus speaks with absolute authority, the Devil does what he is told. Period. Right? That’s what it says. There aren’t seasons when Jesus is not authoritative and seasons when he is authoritative. If it says in the Bible, “Jesus commands the unclean spirits, and they obey,” they obey whenever he speaks that way.

3. God determines our suffering.

Satan is described as a roaring lion, prowling and seeking to devour people. And Peter says in 1 Peter 5:9,

Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

In other words, the jaws of the lion are suffering. Resist. He’s prowling around like a lion, seeking to devour people. Resist him, firm in your faith, because you know that the same experience of suffering is being experienced by your brethren around the world. Therefore, the suffering of Christians is the jaws of the lion coming down on them. Satan is real. Don’t mess with him. But then you read these words in the same book (1 Peter 3:17):

It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.

If God should will, the jaws will close and not before. God will decide whether they get out — not the devil, ultimately.

4. Only God gives and takes life.

Satan is a murderer from beginning to end. He’s a murderer. Has the Devil, since his fall, taken out of the hand of the Almighty the gift of life and death? He has not. Deuteronomy 32:39:

“See now that I, even I, am he,
   and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
   I wound and I heal;
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”

Do you remember James 4:13–15?

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

And if he doesn’t will, I won’t. If I make it home tonight, God got me home. If I have a heart attack on the way home, God took me home. So yes, Satan is a murderer, but he does not have ultimate say on whom he murders — God does.

5. Satan cannot harm anyone without God’s permission.

When Satan wants to destroy a saint, he must get permission before he touches him. So he comes to God and says, “Job only worships you because he’s rich. If I take his camels, donkeys, servants, he’ll curse you” (see Job 1:9–11). And God gives him permission, but he puts a limit. “Don’t you touch his body” (see Job 1:12). So he kills them all. Job falls on his face: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away” (Job 1:21). Satan has to get permission to go after his body, and he gets it. But God says, “Don’t you kill him” (see Job 2:6). Isn’t that remarkable? So Satan does harm to us, but not without God’s say.

6. Jesus is sovereign over Satan’s schemes.

Satan is a great tempter in your life. He’ll tempt you before you go to bed tonight. He wants you to sin more than he wants anything. He wants to get you sinning and sinning and sinning so you make shipwreck of your life. He was behind the three denials of Peter. The Bible says this clearly. However, somebody else was also there behind them. Let me read you these amazing words from Luke 22:31. Jesus says,

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.”

It’s like Satan coming to God in the case of Job. He came to God in the case of Peter. What that means is he wants to take Peter and, through some kind of fear or sin, squish him through the grate so that Peter comes out here, and faith stays there. Then you have a faithless Peter, with faith sifted out. That’s what was going on that night. Satan wanted to make him really afraid — take all faith out of his life. That’s what Satan designed to do. Jesus continues in Luke 22:32,

“But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

He did not say, “If you turn again, I hope you’ll be a strengthener.” He was sovereign over Satan’s designs right there. “I’m praying for you, Peter. I have interceded with the almighty God, and we have decided: you will deny me three times. You will cry, and when you cry, you will repent. And when you repent, you will become a rock. And on this rock, I will build my church.”

7. Satan can blind, but God causes us to see again.

Second Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” Satan is a great blinder. Some of you in this room right now are spiritually blind, meaning that you’re listening to me, and this message right now means nothing to you. You just want to get out of here because Satan has blinded your mind. You have no spiritual taste buds. Truth, like what I’m speaking here, doesn’t do anything. It might make you mad, but it doesn’t awaken worship or passion or zeal or love or resolve to obey. That’s a spiritual work of God, and Satan is a great blinder.

The question is, Is he ultimately powerful in his blinding, or does God have final say whether light breaks into your life? Two verses later, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6:

God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

When God resolves to make lights go on in your heart, no devil can stop him.

So those are seven glimpses. I could multiply them over and over again. So here I am, back at my question about the origin of Satan’s sinfulness. Is God helpless before the will of his own angels? Is there power outside God himself that limits his rule over them? My conclusion is that, from cover to cover, the Bible presents God as governing Satan in all he does — no exceptions.

And therefore, I would never, ever biblically infer back into eternity and say, Satan got the upper hand or God was helpless. God couldn’t exert enough influence to win this guy’s allegiance. He could get yours, but he couldn’t get Satan’s? No, God holds sway over the wills of his angels. He commands evil spirits, and they obey him. Therefore, if they disobey, he ordained that they disobey — he permitted them to disobey. If God permits Satan’s fall, it isn’t because he’s helpless; it’s because he’s got a purpose for it.