In the modern world few people hold to a belief in the devil as a supernatural being, although most churches do maintain it as a doctrine. The subject of the devil and Satan is important, because the Bible has much to say on it. But is it really the creature of popular thought—the immortal spirit-being, whose delight is to seduce the human race and preside over the suffering of the fallen in another sphere?
In order to arrive at the truth of this matter it will be necessary for us to look into some of the passages of the Bible in which the words ‘devil’ and ‘Satan’ appear, and to judge their meaning from the context.
The Devil in the Old Testament
The word ‘devil’ is nowhere found in the Old Testament. The obvious reason for this is not that evil was non-existent in those far-off days, but because people understood that God is omnipotent and good, and that sin is simply the result of the indulgence of their own passions. For example, ‘Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged’ (Isaiah 1:4).
The Devil in the New Testament
The New Testament introduces the Greek word ‘diabolos’, which is translated into English as ‘devil’. Its literal meaning is false accuser, or slanderer. The word refers to the baser part of our nature, which dishonours God by refusing to accept His Word. It is primarily a disposition of mind and not a person.
It may be asked, why then does the Bible present the devil as though it is an actual being? For example, ‘Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil’ (Luke 4:1–2). The answer to the question is that the fairest reading of the narrative of Christ’s wilderness temptation is that it was an inward struggle; a subtle yet powerful assertion of the natural sensual propensities of the mind against the nobler effort to obey God’s will.
Understanding the word ‘diabolos’ as expressing an evil state of mind, the forcible correctness of the statement in 1 John 3:8 becomes apparent: ‘Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.’ Ever since Adam and Eve’s first sin, sinful impulses have been indulged.
In several instances the word ‘diabolos’ is used in reference to an ordinary person or persons who have slandered God or opposed His revealed Truth, and in whom the evil state of mind rules. The word in this connection is applicable to either one person or to a multitude. Referring to Judas Iscariot, Christ once said, ‘Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil’ (John 6:70). Similarly, ‘Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour’ (1 Peter 5:8) is an obvious reference to the enemies and slanderers of God who so bitterly persecuted the early Christians and who, in the words of Revelation 2:10, threw some of them into prison. The word is in this case applied collectively to all those who were responsible for the death or imprisonment of the disciples of Christ.
The Cause of Temptation
Such is the Bible evidence on the use of the word ‘diabolos’. Perhaps no clearer statement on the first cause of temptation could be made than that given by the Apostle James. ‘Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death’ (James 1:14–15). There can be no doubt that James believed that whatever was wrong, did not come from a supernatural source but that it was the result of allowing the evil state of mind to predominate, and so to result in sin and death.
The Lord Jesus himself identified the source of defilement—it is internal, not external:
What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person”
(Mark 7:20–23).
Lucifer
It is generally thought that the devil’s name is Lucifer. This is because of a single occurrence of this name in the Bible, in Isaiah 14:12: ’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!’
That name ‘Day Star’ is the Hebrew word ‘Lucifer’, and that is how it appears in some Bible versions. A reading of the chapter reveals that it is a poetic description of the king of Babylon, and not any supernatural being.
Satan in the Old Testament
The word ‘satan’ is found many times in the Old Testament. It is a Hebrew word, and it means ‘adversary’. Usually it is translated, and its meaning is plain. For example, ‘He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary to us’ (1 Samuel 29:4); ‘The Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite. He was of the royal house in Edom’ (1 Kings 11:14); ‘God’s anger was kindled because he went, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as his adversary’ (Numbers 22:22).
There are occasions when the Hebrew text intends the word as a proper name, and translators leave the word as a proper name, ‘Satan’. Most are in the book of Job, where Satan is an individual who wreaks tragedy on the man Job. The fact that Satan converses with God (chapter 1) and uses God’s power to do his work (42:11) indicates that whoever he was, he was not the supernatural fiend of popular thought.
Another passage in which Satan appears is 1 Chronicles 21:1: ‘Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel’. Again, whoever Satan was, he was doing God’s work, as is shown in the parallel account: ‘The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah”’ (2 Samuel 24:1).
Satan in the New Testament
It now remains to discover whether the use of the word ‘satan’ in the New Testament is consistent with that in the Old, or whether the application of the word to an invisible, antagonistic and super-human personality is warranted. An interesting example of the use of the word is given in Matthew 16:23, where Christ rebukes Peter with the words ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me.’ Why did Christ call Peter ‘Satan’? It was because Peter was opposing a fixed determination of the Lord to suffer, and as such, was an adversary to him and a potential cause of stumbling.
When we recognise the connection between Satan and adversity, much misunderstanding will disappear. We have for example in the Lord Jesus’ message to the angel of the church in Smyrna, ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan’ (Revelation 2:9). Here ‘Satan’ refers to an assembly of men who were adverse to the disciples and to the progress of the church.
These observations on the subject would be incomplete without reference to the Bible’s reference to the end of Satan. This is the account in the Bible’s last book of the events at the return of Jesus Christ to earth:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while (Revelation 20:1–3).
Revelation is a book of symbols, and this is evidently a pictorial representation of sin being restrained for a thousand years—that is, for the Millennium, the first phase of God’s Kingdom. As has already been shown, sin can be called both the devil (the carnal rebellious mind), and also Satan because it is directly antagonistic or adverse to the righteousness of God.
The forces of sin are thus sometimes called the devil, and again sometimes spoken of directly. For example, the Apostle Paul speaks of sin entering the world by one man, and death by sin: ‘Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…’ (Romans 5:12). The writer to the Hebrews describes this same conquest of evil as the conquest of the devil: ‘Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil’ (Hebrews 2:14).
This victory of Jesus was a victory, not over a person, but over the power of evil and its consequences, death. Ultimately all that is antagonistic to God and opposed to His righteousness, the devil and Satan, will be destroyed: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil’ (1 John 3:8).
We have attempted to deal fairly with the principal Bible passages which are commonly quoted as favouring the idea of the personal devil, and our conclusion is that the idea is wrong. Indeed, to entertain it would render many passages of the Bible absurd. To suppose that there is a supernatural being who challenges and frustrates God would be to question God’s omnipotence. And we cannot blame anyone or anything else for the things we do wrong. The Bible makes it clear that these come ‘out of the heart’ (Mark 7:20).
R T W Smalley