(BtL) The Satan
Used with permission from Jamin Bradley's book, The Rush and the Rest.
The New Testament seems to designate Satan as the leader of darkness, yet we’ve heard little of him in our discussions of evil and corruption so far. Part of the reason for this is that much of our focus in the previous chapter was on the Old Testament; and Satan, as he’s found there, is a bit confusing to define. Walton explains.
In the Old Testament the Hebrew word śāṭān finds usage both as a verb and a noun. As a verb it means “to oppose as an adversary,” “to challenge,” or “to accuse” (Ps 38:20; 71:13; 109:4, 20, 29; Zech 3:1). As a noun it can be applied to a human being, thus designating him an adversary (1 Sam 29:4; 2 Sam 19:23; 1 Kings 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25; Ps 109:6). Finally, in the category of most interest to this study, the noun is applied to celestial beings (14x in Job 1– 2; 3x in Zech 3: 1-2; Num 22: 22, 32; 1 Chron 21: 1).1
To further illustrate the confusion, we should note that in Numbers 22:22, the Angel of the Lord is identified as a “satan”—that is, an adversary. We of course know that the Angel of the Lord is not Satan—but that in this particular story he was doing adversarial work against those who wanted to damage Israel. So again, the usage of the term satan in the Old Testament can be a bit confusing. Because of this, we cannot even know for certain that the satan in the book of Job that comes before God and his divine council is Satan as we think of him today.
So then how does this name get associated with the ultimate leader of evil in the New Testament? It has to do with the Serpent’s actions back in the Garden of Eden. As Heiser points out,
The function of the office of the satan [to be an “adversary,” “prosecutor,” or “challenger”] is why later Jewish writings began to adopt it as a proper name for the serpent figure from Genesis 3 who brought ruin to Eden. That figure opposed God’s choices for his human imagers. The dark figure of Genesis 3 was eventually thought of as the “mother of all adversaries,” and so the label satan got stuck to him. He deserves it.2
But just because we don’t see Satan mentioned by name as a character in the Old Testament doesn’t mean that he’s not present there; for some scholars believe that Ezekiel 28 gives us quite a bit of information.
An Anointed Cherub
As the word of the Lord comes to Ezekiel, he is compelled to call out the king of Tyre on his arrogance and pride. He has been acting as though he is a god—even proclaiming to his people that he is a god! He’s puffed up with wisdom that has made him great wealth and God is now about to humble him.
But what’s interesting is that after God has told Ezekiel to deliver this prophetic word, He seems to pause and then pass along another word to the king of Tyre. This time, however, God is not speaking directly of the king, but of someone else who was once like him. Like a good preacher, God is establishing his point by likening the king’s situation to someone else’s.
Now traditionally, many scholars have believed that Ezekiel tells the king of Tyre the story of Adam and his fall from the Garden of Eden—but as we will see, Ezekiel’s story doesn’t line up quite right for that. In fact, several of the church fathers and some scholars today believe that the story told here lines up well with Satan. Keep this in mind as you read forward.
You were the signet of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering,
sardius, topaz, and diamond,
beryl, onyx, and jasper,
sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;
and crafted in gold were your settings
and your engravings.
On the day that you were created
they were prepared.
You were an anointed guardian cherub.
I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created,
till unrighteousness was found in you.
In the abundance of your trade
you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
from the midst of the stones of fire.
Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground;
I exposed you before kings,
to feast their eyes on you.
By the multitude of your iniquities,
in the unrighteousness of your trade
you profaned your sanctuaries;
so I brought fire out from your midst;
it consumed you,
and I turned you to ashes on the earth
in the sight of all who saw you.
All who know you among the peoples
are appalled at you;
you have come to a dreadful end
and shall be no more forever. (Ezek 28:12-19)
While some of the statements throughout this story could be used in reference to Adam, I think it’s fair to say that not all of it can be. We don’t really remember Adam as someone who was “full of wisdom,” “perfect in beauty” or “filled with violence.” Adam also wasn't an “anointed guardian cherub,” since cherubim were, “Supernatural, composite creatures mentioned frequently in the Old Testament, often associated with Yahweh’s presence, and classified among the angels,” and “Commonly depicted with the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the face of a human.”3
With that being said, if we perceive this story to be about Satan, then we start to see some of his background and can adapt our theology accordingly. We come to realize that God didn’t make Satan so He could have some kind of powerful cosmic enemy to fight against or so humanity would have the option to follow someone other than God if they wanted. No; Satan and the gods were not designed to be corrupt, but became corrupt.
Once upon a time Satan was perfect, wise and beautiful. He lived in God’s presence and was anointed for his job. But then everything changed. His pride in his beauty corrupted his wisdom and he became unrighteous and profane. And so God sentenced him accordingly.4
O Day Star, son of Dawn
Strangely enough, this is not the only passage in our Bibles where a prophet calls out an authority by comparing him to a supernatural being; for Isaiah seems to break into story about someone else while giving a prophetic word to the king of Babylon. Because of this king’s wickedness, wrath, and unrelenting persecution, he will be brought down to Sheol. After making this statement, Isaiah ventures off to tell a story that also seems to be about Satan in order to illustrate his point.
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit. (Is 14:12-15)5
It’s obvious that the early church fathers thought this verse was about Satan, because “Day Star” translated into Latin is “Lucifer”—a common word used for Satan throughout history. Therefore, when the early church fathers referred to Satan as Lucifer, they were making a direct reference to Isaiah 14:12. Their connection between Satan and the Day Star perhaps came from Jesus’ statement that he “saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Lk 10:18).
With Satan in mind in this passage, we catch an even deeper glimpse of his arrogant pride. He attempts to ascend higher than any other star, which were thought to be gods in ancient times, as Heiser points out.
Ancient people thought the stars were living entities. Their reasoning was simple: Many stars moved. That was a sign of life to the ancient mind. Stars were the shining glory of living beings.
The stars also inhabited the divine realm—literally, in the sense that they existed off the earth. The ancients believed that divine beings lived far away from humans, in remote places where human habitation wasn’t possible. The most remote place of all was the sky, the heavens.
But you’ll note in Isaiah 14 that Satan wasn’t just prideful and arrogant enough to try to overthrow the other gods—he was prideful and arrogant enough to try and overthrow Yahweh and take rule of the “assembly”—that is, the divine council. How flawed must one be to think he can overthrow Yahweh? And so the Day Star is given a fitting sentence: The one who thought he could ascend to the highest heights has been cast to the deepest depths; he has been sentenced to Sheol where the dead go. And there in Sheol, he holds “the power of death” (Heb 2:14).
It makes sense that he holds this power since he is a supernatural being sentenced to the realm of the dead—not to mention the fact that it was this ancient serpent that led Adam and Eve into the curse of death in the first place. Should they have refrained from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would have continued to have access to the tree of life. But now that they’ve bought into Satan’s deception they no longer have access to the tree of life and are therefore subject to the same Sheol that Satan is a part of.
Of course, by taking on the cross, Jesus liberated us from Sheol, Satan, and death itself by becoming what Boyd calls, “the Father’s proverbial Trojan horse.”
What the forces of evil apparently did not consider was that while the Son of God had entered a world that was indeed under their jurisdiction, Jesus had kept himself free of their oppressive authority by remaining sinless (John 14:30; cf. 8:34). Hence, while Jesus could be killed, for he was indeed human, he was the one human the lord of death (Heb 2:14) could not justly kill, and thus the one human who could not be held captive to death (Acts 2:24). Moreover, as the last Adam and the generator and new representative of humanity (Rom 5:15– 21; 1 Cor 15:22, 44–49; Eph 2: 14–18), Jesus’s unjust death served to cancel out all of humanity’s covenant breaking, which is why Paul proclaims that everything that stood against us, empowering Satan to lord over us, was nailed to the cross when Jesus died (Col 2:13–14). Because of this, humanity is now incorporated into Christ, which means we share in Christ’s perfect, right relationship with the Father in the power of the Spirit. Hence, Paul boldly declares that just as we all participated in the unfaithfulness of the first Adam, so too all humans now participate in the faithfulness of the second Adam (Rom 5:18; 1 Cor 15:22; 2 Cor 5:17).7
Eventually there will come a time where even death itself will be done away with altogether (1 Cor 15:26); it will be “rendered null and void. It is neutralized, depotentiated.”8 That moment is still yet to come, but just as Jesus broke death’s power on His own life, so will He break it on ours.
Ruler of This World
Of course we know that it’s not just Sheol and death that Satan has managed to get his hands on, for he portrays himself to Jesus as someone with much more authority.
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.” (Lk 4:5-7)
You’ll note in this story that Jesus does not correct or refute Satan’s claim—nor does the rest of the Bible. The gospel of John refers to him as the “ruler of this world” (Jn 12:31, 14:30, 16:11) and 1 John 5:19 says that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Likewise, Paul calls Satan “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2), implying that he had authority over the sphere between heaven and earth where Ancient Near Eastern people believed evil spirits dwelt.9
But Satan’s reign will come to an end; for he too dwells between the already and the not yet. And when the not yet finally comes, there will be an end to his reign as “death will be no more” (Rev 21:4) and Satan will have no power left to rule with. The corrupt gods will die like men and the new Heaven and the new Earth and the new Jerusalem and the new Eden will be established for God’s presence to come and reign forevermore. It is there that, as Jurgen Moltmann says,
the eternal kingdom and the eternal creation draw together to a single focus: the cosmic Shekinah of God. God desires to come to his `dwelling' in his creation, the home of his identity in the world, and in it to his `rest', his perfected, eternal joy.10
God is the creator and the rightful ruler of all creation and He patiently waits for more to come to salvation so that they may be liberated and partake of the abundant life that overcomes even death itself. Make no mistake, Satan and the kingdom of darkness will meet their end.
While there is much we do not understand about Satan and we only have pieces and conceptions of his story to work with, we are aware that he is a cosmic power in this present darkness and that he has a kingdom working with him that is not divided against itself (Mk 3:22-27). It is united in purpose and assault. Though at the same time, as Heiser points out, there’s a bit of ambiguity in this darkness.
It is clear that Satan is leader of at least some of the powers of darkness. As the original rebel, he likely ranked first (or worst) in terms of example in the minds of ancient readers…. The lack of a clearly delineated hierarchy leaves the possibility that there are competing agendas in the unseen world, even where there exists the common goal of opposition to Yahweh and his people.11
But hierarchical ambiguity aside, the truth remains: God wins and evil is done away with once and for all. But we don’t have to wait until the end times to see Satan’s kingdom break down, for the Holy Spirit has given us power to cast out demons and destroy the kingdom of darkness here and now in the already. But before we learn how to cast them out, it is helpful to understand what a demon is in the first place.
Footnotes
1 Walton, John H. Old Testament Theology for Christians. p. 197.
2 Heiser, The Unseen Realm, p. 57.
3 Knuth, Stacy, and Douglas Mangum. “Cherubim.” The Lexham Bible Dictionary.
4 For more insight, see, Heiser, The Unseen Realm, p. 75-77 or Boyd, God at War, p. 160-162.
5 For more insight, see, Heiser, The Unseen Realm, p. 84-86 or Boyd, God at War, p. 157-160.
6 Heiser, The Unseen Realm, p. 24.
7 Boyd, Gregory A. The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. Vol 2. pp. 1058-1059.
8 Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers. Kindle Locations 584.
9 Faithlife Study Bible, see note on Eph 2:2.
10 Moltmann. The Coming of God. Kindle Locations 107-108.
11 Heiser. The Unseen Realm. p. 331.