9 Powers of Satan That Are Not Ultimate
Powers of Satan That Are Not Final or Decisive
My approach here is not to minimize the power and pervasive activity of Satan. Just the opposite. My strategy is to take seriously Satan’s power in different spheres and show how this power is not final and not decisive.1 In other words, while God has his reasons for why he permits Satan to exist and to pursue his evil path, he never has given, and never will give, to Satan any freedom that God himself does not restrain and decisively direct for his wise, just, and good purposes. Below are nine exposures of Satan’s ultimate powerlessness under God’s providence.
1. Providence over Satan’s Delegated World Rule
Satan is sometimes called in the Bible “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), or “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), or “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2), or a “cosmic [power] over this present darkness” (Eph. 6:12). This means that we should take him seriously when we’re told in Luke 4:5–7:
The devil took [Jesus] 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.”
Of course, that is strictly true: if the sovereign of the universe bows in worshipful submission to anyone, he elevates that one as the sovereign of the universe. But Satan’s claim that he can give the authority and glory of world kingdoms to whomever he wills is actually only a half-truth. No doubt he does play havoc in the world by maneuvering a Stalin or a Hitler or an Idi Amin or a Bloody Mary or a Genghis Khan or a Saddam Hussein into murderous power. But he does this only at God’s permission and within God’s appointed limits.
Providence
John Piper
John Piper brings a lifetime of theology, Bible meditation, and pastoral ministry to bear on the doctrine of God’s providence, showing how God’s all-pervasive governing of all things glorifies Christ, and is spectacularly good news for those who trust him.
This is made clear over and over again in the Bible. For example, Daniel 2:21: “[God] removes kings and sets up kings,” which means he could today remove any tyrant anywhere, any time he chooses. And he could have done so at any time in history. And Romans 13:1: “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” And when the kings are in their God-appointed place, with or without Satan’s agency, they are in the sway of God’s sovereign will, as Proverbs 21:1 says: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”
Therefore, the satanic power behind the nations, which God grants in some measure, is governed by God. Satan and his rulers do not move without his permission, and they do not move outside God’s decisive providence.
2. Providence over Demons and Evil Spirits
Satan has thousands of cohorts in supernatural evil. They are called “demons” (James 2:19) or “evil spirits” (Luke 7:21) or “unclean spirits” (Matt. 10:1) or “the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). We get a tiny glimpse into demonic warfare in Daniel 10, where the angel who is sent in response to Daniel’s prayer says, “The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me” (Dan. 10:13). So apparently the demon, or evil spirit, over Persia fought against the angel who was sent to help Daniel, and a greater angel, Michael, came to his aid. But the Bible leaves us with no doubt as to who is in charge in all these skirmishes. Martin Luther got it right:
And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell him.2
We see glimpses of those “little words” at work, for example, when Jesus comes up against thousands of demons in Matthew 8:29–32. They were oppressing a man and making him insane. Jesus spoke to them one little word: “Go.” And they came out of the man. There is no question who is sovereign in this battle. Though demons disobey God’s written commandments in Scripture, they do not disobey when he addresses them directly with the decisive command of his power. “He commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). God’s providence holds sway over Satan’s angels. This is as true today as it was when Jesus walked the earth.
3. Providence over Satan’s Hand in Persecution
The apostle Peter describes the suffering of Christians this way: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Pet. 5:8–9). So the sufferings of persecution are like the jaws of a satanic lion trying to consume and destroy the faith of believers in Christ.
But do these Christians suffer in Satan’s jaws of persecution apart from God’s governing providence? When Satan crushes Christians in the jaws of their own private Calvary, does God not govern those jaws for the good of his precious child? Listen to Peter’s answer in 1 Peter 3:17: “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.” Or again: “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pet. 4:19). In other words, if God wills that we suffer for doing good, we will suffer. And if he does not will that we suffer for doing good, we will not. The lion does not have the last say. Providence does.
The night Jesus was arrested, satanic power was in full force for persecution (Luke 22:3; 22:31). Until the God-appointed hour came, “no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come” (John 7:30; cf. John 8:20). God’s providence governs Satan’s hand in persecution.
4. Providence over Satan’s Life-Taking Power
The Bible does not take lightly or minimize the power of Satan to kill people, including Christians. Jesus said in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning.” Jesus tells us, in fact, that Satan does indeed take the lives of faithful Christians. “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10).
Is God not the Lord of life and death? He is. No one lives and no one dies but by God’s sovereign decree. “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” (Deut. 32:39). There is no god, no demon, no Satan that can snatch to death any person that God has decided will live (1 Sam. 2:6).
If the Lord wills, we will live. And if he doesn’t, we will die. God, not Satan, makes the final call. When Job lost his ten children, he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Our lives are in God’s hands ultimately, not Satan’s. God’s providence rules over Satan’s life-taking power.
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5. Providence over Satan’s Sickness-Causing Power
The Bible is vivid with the truth that Satan can cause disease. Acts 10:38 says that Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” The devil had oppressed people with sickness. In Luke 13 Jesus finds a woman who had been bent over, unable to stand up for eighteen years. He heals her on the Sabbath, and in response to the criticism of the synagogue ruler he says, “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). There is no doubt that Satan causes much disease.
This is why Christ’s healings are a sign of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God and its final victory over all disease and all the works of Satan. It is right and good to pray for healing. God has purchased it in the death of his Son, with all the other blessings of grace, for all his children (Isa. 53:5; Rom. 8:32). But he has not promised that we get the whole inheritance in this life. And he decides how much, and when.
Beware lest anyone say that Satan is sovereign in our diseases. He is not. When Satan went to God a second time in the book of Job, God gave him permission this time to strike Job’s body. Then the author of the book says, “Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7). When Job’s wife despaired and said, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9), Job responded exactly as he did before. He looked past the finite cause of Satan to the ultimate cause of God and said, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).
Satan is real and full of hate, but he is not sovereign in sickness. God will not give him even that tribute. As he says to Moses at the burning bush, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Ex. 4:11; see also 2 Cor. 12:7–9).
6. Providence over Satan’s Use of Animals and Plants
The imagery of Satan as a “roaring lion” in 1 Peter 5:8 and as a “great dragon” in Revelation 12:9 and as the serpent of old in Genesis 3 makes us aware that in his destructive work, Satan can, and no doubt does, employ animals and plants—from the lion in the Colosseum, to the black fly that causes river blindness, to the birds that carry the avian flu virus, to the pit bull that attacks a child, to the bacteria in your belly that doctors Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered causes ulcers (winning for them the Nobel Prize in medicine). If Satan can kill and can cause disease, no doubt he has at his disposal many plants and animals—both large and microscopic—to make his weapons.
But he cannot make them do what God forbids them to do. From the giant Leviathan that God made to sport in the sea (Ps. 104:26) to the tiny gnats that he summoned over the land of Egypt (Ex. 8:16–17), God commands the world of animals and plants.
The most vivid demonstrations of God’s control over animals and plants are in the book of Jonah. “The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (Jonah 1:17). And the fish did exactly as he had been appointed. “And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10). “Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah” (Jonah 4:6). “But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered” (Jonah 4:7). Fish, plant, worm—all appointed, all obedient. Satan can have a hand here, but it is not a decisive hand. Satan is not sovereign over plants and animals. God’s providence holds final sway.
When God chooses to overcome our rebellion, bring us to repentance, and save us from Satan’s bondage, nothing can stop him.
7. Providence over Satan’s Temptations to Sin
Satan is called in the Bible “the tempter” (Matt. 4:3; 1 Thess. 3:5). This was the origin on earth of all the misery that we know. Satan tempted Eve to sin, and sin brought with it the curse of God on the natural order (Gen. 3:14–19; Rom. 5:12–14; Rom. 8:20–22). Ever since that time, Satan has been tempting all human beings to do what will dishonor God, hurt themselves, and damage others.
But the most famous temptations in the Bible do not portray Satan as sovereign in his tempting work. Take Satan’s temptation of Judas to betray Jesus. Luke 22:3–4 says that “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot. . . . He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them.” But Luke tells us that the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was the fulfillment of Scripture: “The Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas” (Acts 1:16). Therefore, Peter said that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). Satan had his role to play on this deadly and wonderful stage of history, but he was not in charge. He was not the director or the author of this soul-saving drama.
Even more famous than the temptation of Judas is the temptation of Peter. We usually think of Peter’s three disavowals as denials, not as temptations. But Jesus says something to Peter in Luke 22:31–32 that makes plain the tempter is at work here: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again [not if you turn, but when], strengthen your brothers.”
Both Judas’s and Peter’s temptations by the devil are examples of Satan’s deadly reality, but also of his limitations. God uses him to accomplish the purposes of his judgment toward Judas, and his preparation for ministry toward Peter. The providence of God governs even the primary bent of Satan—as a tempter to sin.
8. Providence over Satan’s Mind-Blinding Power
Satan’s final defeat is to be thrown into the lake of fire, where he will suffer forever. Revelation 20:10 says, “The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Satan’s aim is to take as many there with him as he can. To do that he must keep people blind to the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). No one who is justified by the blood of Christ goes to hell. “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:9). Only those who fail to embrace the wrath-absorbing substitutionary work of Christ will suffer the wrath of God.
Therefore, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “in their case the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” This blinding is the deadliest weapon in Satan’s arsenal. If he succeeds with a person, that person’s suffering will be endless.
But at this most critical point, Satan is not sovereign; God is. And, oh, how thankful we should be! Two verses later, in 2 Corinthians 4:6, Paul describes God’s blindness-removing power over against Satan’s blinding power. “For 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.” The comparison is between God’s creating light at the beginning of the world and God’s creating light in the darkened human heart. With total sovereignty, God said at the beginning of the world, and at the beginning of our new life in Christ, “Let there be light.” And there was light. Satan has the power to blind hearts to the gospel. But that power is limited, because God can overcome it for anyone he chooses.
9. Providence over Satan’s Spiritual Bondage
Satan enslaves people in two ways. One is by misery and suffering, making us think there is no good God worth trusting. The other is by pleasure and prosperity, making us think we have all we need so that God is irrelevant. His two great strategies of deceit are pain and pleasure. Pain luring us to say, “God is evil.” Pleasure luring us to say, “God is not needed.” When he succeeds in either deception, we are in bondage.
To be freed from this bondage, we must repent. We must confess that God is good and trustworthy, not evil and cruel. And we must confess that the pleasures of this world (both the sinful and the innocent) are not worth comparing to the value of knowing Christ (Matt. 10:37; Phil. 3:8). But Satan hates this repentance and does all he can to prevent it. This is how Satan holds a person in bondage.
But when God chooses to overcome our rebellion, bring us to repentance, and save us from Satan’s bondage, nothing can stop him. When God overcomes Satan’s bondage and our complicity, we repent and Satan’s power is broken (2 Tim. 2:24–26). It is so important that it is worth quoting again:
The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may . . . escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
Notice the key words: “God may perhaps grant them repentance.” Repentance is a gift. God grants it. To be sure, repentance is something we do. It is our act. But it is a miracle-act—a free gift from God. Satan is not sovereign over his captives. God is. When God grants repentance, we are set free from the snare of the devil. We had been “captured by him to do his will,” but we are not in bondage to him anymore.
Satan Subject to Providence
My conclusion from these nine spheres of Satan’s power is that, in all his acts, Satan is subject to God’s overruling and guiding providence. Since Satan is uniformly evil, we may use the words of Genesis 50:20 for every one of his acts in this world: “He meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” When Satan wills something, he always intends to diminish God’s glory and ultimately ruin God’s people. When God permits Satan to act with that design, God’s design in doing so is for his glory and the ultimate good of his people. We have shown before that all God’s wise permissions have good designs. They are planned permissions, and all God’s plans are good.
Notes:
- The substance of these aspects of God’s providence over Satan’s power were part of a message I gave at the 2005 Desiring God National Conference in Minneapolis. This message then was made part of the collection of messages from that conference. John Piper, “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God: Ten Aspects of God’s Sovereignty over Suffering and Satan’s Hand in It,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL, Crossway, 2006), 17–30.
- Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” 1529.
This article is adapted from Providence by John Piper.
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