Lesson 20 - SATAN, THE DEFEATED |
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Jesus vanquished Satan, not for Himself, but for man. His victory over Satan was purely a substitutionary act. So Christ's victory is our victory, for all that He did in substitution, He did for us.
The Supreme Court of the Universe looks upon the substitutionary work of Jesus as though it were actually ours. God did not need it, Jesus did not need it, the angels did not need it, but humanity needed the victory that He wrought. God sees Jesus as our perfect Redeemer and us as perfectly redeemed ones. He sees us entering into the fruits of the victory of Jesus, absolute conquerors over all the forces of darkness.
Hebrews 2:14, "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also in like manner partook of the same that through death he might bring to naught him that had the authority of death, that is, the devil."
Way translates it: "He did this that he might be able to die, and by his death might annihilate the power of him who swayed the scepter of death's terror, that is, the devil; and so might transfer into a new existence those who through the haunting dread of death were all their lifetime bowed beneath a yoke of veritable slavery."
Colossians 2:15, "He stripped away from himself all trammels of principalities and powers; he paraded them unsparingly; he hailed them in his triumph."
These two scriptures describe the victory of the Master before His resurrection.
Galatians 2:20 describes our place, "I have been crucified with Christ." It is not the same as the old version reads, for in the mind of Justice every one of us was nailed to that cross in Christ. Then when He died, we died with Him. His death was a substitutionary death. It was our death.
Sin slew Him—our sin slew Him. I suppose, if the truth were known, we slew Him.
Then Jesus, taking us and our sins with Him, went to the place where we should have gone alone and there suffered until every claim of Justice was fully met.
You remember 1st Timothy 3:16, which tells us that "He was justified in spirit." He had been condemned in spirit. He had suffered in our stead in spirit. It means that He was actually begotten of God just as Acts 13:33 declares, "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee."
Peter tells us in 1st Peter 3:18 that He was made alive in spirit; that is, He received the Life of God.
He had died spiritually. He had partaken of Satan's nature that we had. He became utterly one with us in His death, and now He is justified. He has met the claims of Justice. He has met every claim that Justice held against us.
But that is not all. "For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus."
When Jesus was recreated, called the Son of God, then, in the mind of Justice, our New Creation became a reality.
Notice what happened. He was justified in spirit. He was made alive in spirit; and in that justification, we see Romans 4:25, "Who was delivered up on account of our trespasses and was raised when we were justified."
Then He was recreated, became the firstborn out of death—the Head of the New Creation—and we are His workmanship, created that morning down in that dread place—made New Creations in Jesus Christ.
Then our Master, Head, and Lord did the amazing thing found first in Hebrews and then in Colossians. He met the adversary who had reigned over the human race for more than four thousand years. He stripped him of his authority there in hell: He entered the home of the strong man and conquered him, defeated him, broke his dominion over the human race. What an hour it must have been! What a thing it must have been when Jesus actually paralyzed the death-dealing power of Satan!
Revelation 1:18 became a fact: "I am he that was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of Hades."
Do you remember that Jesus said in Luke 12, "Fear him that hath the authority of death, and after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell"?
When the believer knows that Satan has been conquered and that he is a conquered force today, he will begin to rise up and take his place in Christ.
Hebrews 9:12, "Nor yet with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, he entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption."
There could be no Eternal Redemption without an eternally defeated Satan to the New Creation. You see, Jesus conquered the devil, actually defeated him on his own ground, and took from him the authority that Adam had given to him in the garden.
That passage in Revelation 1:18 is a graphic picture of Jesus paralyzing the death-dealing power of Satan.
Rotherham's translation of Hebrews 2:14 is: "He paralyzed the death-dealing authority of the devil."
That left Satan, as far as the believer is concerned, a paralytic; and that is absolutely true when you walk in Love as He tells us.
I John 2:6, 10, "He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself so to walk even as he walked... He that loveth his brother abideth in the light and there is no occasion of stumbling in him."
So long as I walk in love, Satan is a defeated being as far as I am concerned. When I step out of love, I step over into no man's land, where Satan has access to me. When I walk in the light as He is in the light, Satan has no dominion over me.
You understand that in Him is no darkness, and that if I walk in darkness I am playing into the devil's hands. (1st John 1:5, 6.)
Satan can't put diseases upon you any more than he could put them upon Jesus. As long as you take advantage of your place in Christ at the first intimation of Satan's touch, you have the authority to command his power to be broken over you. Satan is a defeated foe.
Colossians 1:13, 14, "Who delivered us out of the power of darkness (or Satan), and translated us into the kingdom of the son of his love."
Satan has no authority over the New Creation in the kingdom of the Son of God's Love. Jesus is Lord and Head of that New Creation. Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches. Do you think that Jesus would have the devil ruling one of the branches and curtailing the fruit-bearing ability of that branch? I can't accept that, for Satan has no legal right to rule over a branch of that Vine.
"In whom we have our redemption." From what were you redeemed? Why, from Satan, of course! Was that just a temporary affair? No, it is an eternal Redemption that lasts forever. We read in Ephesians 1:7, "In whom we have our redemption through his blood, the remission of our trespasses."
And what kind of redemption is it? It is "according to the riches of his grace which abounds toward us in all wisdom and prudence."
It is a God-sized Redemption. It is a God-arranged Redemption, and it is a Redemption of God's own possession. You are His possession. You are His sons and His daughters.
Satan has no right to reign over you any more than he has a right to reign over Jesus.
I wonder if you read carefully Hebrews 1:2-3, "God has at the end of these days spoken unto us through His Son, whom also He appointed heir of all things; through whom also he made the worlds; who being the effulgence of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had made a substitution for sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high."
He sat down because His work was finished. He conquered the adversary. He had a prize ring, and the great fight of the ages took place. He absolutely put Satan ‘hors de combat.' [outside the fight]
But perhaps the greatest thing ever spoken in connection with this was said in John 14:30, "The prince of this world cometh; and he hath nothing in me."
We would translate it today, "The prince of this world cometh to me, but he has nothing on me."
What does that mean? It means that Satan found nothing in Jesus that he owned or had any right to. Jesus was absolutely righteous. There was nothing in Jesus that Satan could place his hand upon and say, "That is Mine."
Now what about the New Creation? In 2nd Corinthians 5:17-21 we read, "Wherefore if any man is in Christ there is a New Creation; the old things have passed away: behold they are become new; and all these things are of God, who has reconciled us unto Himself... ."
Who is the Spirit speaking of here? Of the man who has had Satanic nature in him once, the man for whom Jesus died and suffered and conquered the devil.
His former state is described in John 8:44, "Ye are of your father, the devil; and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own being because he is a liar and the father thereof."
Jesus died and conquered Satan and wrought redemption for that demon-indwelt man, that man with the devil's nature in him.
1st John 3:10, "In this are the children of God manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother."
And in 1st John 5:19 we read, "We know that we are of God; and the whole world lieth in the evil one (or in the relationship of the evil one)."
Now come back with me to the scripture in Corinthians. I want you to accept all that God has wrought in Christ. It is a perfect Redemption that is waiting for humanity.
Not only is it a perfect redemption, but redemption of a perfect New Creation; and with that New Creation is a perfect righteousness. With that perfect righteousness is perfect fellowship, and with that perfect fellowship is absolute dominion over the adversary in the Name of Jesus Christ.
"Wherefore if any man is in Christ... ." Every man is in Christ who has acknowledged Him as Savior and Lord. That expression, "in Christ," is a legal phrase. It means that I have received the Nature and Life of God into my spirit and that I am now a branch of the Vine. It means that the old things of my past life have stopped being and that all things have become new; and all these things are of God Who has reconciled me to Himself. There could be no reconciliation without a New Creation.
God laid my diseases, my sins and myself on Jesus. He bore them away. Now I accept that; and when I do, I receive a new nature that drives the old nature out.
The world was justified, or granted, or reckoned justification, in the substitutionary work of Christ. That reckoned righteousness becomes real righteousness the moment we receive Eternal Life and become God's sons and daughters.
Now notice that "He has not reckoned unto the world their trespasses." Why? Because "He commits unto us the word of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. We are ambassadors on behalf of Christ."
We are going to the world and saying, "God laid your diseases and sins and yourself upon Jesus; and 'Him who knew no sin, he made to become sin' to the end that by your confessing Him as your Savior you might become the righteousness of God in Him, you have accepted, you have become the righteousness of God. You are alive in Christ."
Way says, "Jesus knew no sin; yet God has made Him to be the world's sin for our sakes that we whose sin He had thus assumed might become by our union with Him the very righteousness of God (in Christ)."
Now then, Satan can come to you as he came to Jesus; and you can say, "Satan has come to me, but he has nothing in me. He has nothing on me."
You are a New Creation. If all you ever had was forgiveness of sins, Satan could claim you for his own. He could say, "You are mine." But now he has been defeated. He looks upon you as a New Creation, a branch of the Vine, Jesus, Who conquered him.
The only thing he can do now is to hinder that branch from bearing fruit.
Matthew 5:10, "Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Men won't persecute you for your righteousness; that will be Satan. He will bring scandal upon your life. He will make you look unrighteous. When he cannot make you to be unrighteous, he will scandalize you.
But you remember Isaiah 54:17, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn."
You will find that the people through whom Satan persecutes you for righteousness' sake will" suffer. You will outlive them. It will be a bitter thing to you to see them go down one after another, but they cannot touch you. They may rob you of your reputation, but they cannot touch your spirit. You stand invincible. You are the righteousness of God in Christ.
Satan will tempt you; but remember Ephesians 6:10, "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might (or be made powerful in the Lord)."
Who can make you powerful? Why, the Lord, Himself. You are a partaker of His Divine Nature. He is your sufficiency; He is your ability; He is the strength of your life. Now you are made in the strength of His might, and you have on the Armor of God. You are able to stand against all the cunning artifices of the devil.
You don't need Sense Knowledge wisdom. Jesus is made unto you wisdom. You have the ability to conquer, and you are a master. The sword of your recreated spirit is the Word of God, and you can conquer demons in the Name of Jesus. You can deliver men and women out of his hand.
You can heal the sick. You can strengthen the weak. You can meet every need. You are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
QUESTIONS
- When Jesus vanquished Satan, what kind of an act was it, and for whom?
- What two scriptures describe the victory of the Master before His resurrection?
- Explain Revelation 1:18. How should we walk to show men that Satan is defeated?
4. a. From whom were we redeemed?
b. Has Satan any right to reign over us?
5. When did Jesus sit down at the right hand of the Majesty on High?
6. a. Who is spoken of in 2nd Corinthians 5:17-21?
b. In John 8:44?
7. a. What kind of redemption have we?
b. What kind of righteousness and fellowship has been given to us?
8. Who died and conquered Satan that man might be redeemed?
9. Who could make claim on us if we had been given only forgiveness of sins?
10. What stand can we take in regard to weakness and sickness after Christ has redeemed us?
med us?