Ever wondered about the devil?

What do think of when you hear the words devil or satan? Many think of a fiery supernatural being - an evil spirit or rebellious angel that lurks in wait to entice people to sin. However, there are a few aspects of this view that just don’t make sense. We’re going to take at this topic from a wider perspective.

Much of the imagery of the devil is evoked by verses like these:

“Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  (1 Peter 5:8).

“Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” (Ephesians 6:16).

And of course, Jesus himself was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days by the devil. (Luke 4:1-13, Mark 1:13, Matthew 4:1-11).

But how much do these verses actually tell us about the devil or satan? Have you noticed, that whenever the devil or satan appears in the Bible, it is without any introduction or explanation? Prior to Jesus’ temptation at the beginning of the New Testament, the Hebrew word, ‘satan’ only occurs in nine Old Testament passages.

The most famous of these is in the book of Job (Job 1-3) where satan comes before God to question Job’s righteousness. However, there is no explanation as to who this satan (or adversary) is, or where he came from. He just appears – and interestingly disappears. At the end of the book, it is not the satan that is called into account, but Job’s three friends (Job 42:7-9). The word satan simply means adversary and is translated this way on almost every other occurrence (Num 22, 1 Sam 29:4, 2 Sam 19:22, 1 Kings 5:4, 1 Kings 11:14-25, Psalm 109:6). The remaining two occurrences of ‘satan’ refer to particular individuals who we can identify from the context (1 Chron 21:1 & Zechariah 3:1-2). Whoever the unnamed adversary of Job was, he did not have any power of his own (Job 1:21, 2:3,10) and the Old Testament offers no specific warnings against him.  

This is the first major issue with the concept of a personal devil – it is simply absent from the Old Testament. While many believe satan was behind the serpent in Genesis 3, and the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6, a plain reading of the text does not state this. This is also true for two Old Testament passages that are often thought to describe satan’s origins as an angel that sinned. Check it out for yourself – these passages are poetical descriptions of the downfall of the king of Babylon (Isaiah 14) and the city of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:12-17).

Rather, the Bible tells us that our hope is to be like the angels who cannot die and who always do God’s will (Hebrews 1:14, Psalm 103:20-21, Luke 20:35-36). If angels could sin, then what would our hope be?  To suggest that angels can rise up against God in his heavenly realm is contrary to the eternal hope of peace and joy the Bible gives us (Matt 6:10). Even more importantly, it would suggest that God is not all powerful. This is the biggest issue with belief in a literal devil.  If an angel, or any other being, could rise up and use God’s power against him, then God would not be in full control. God tells us that he is the only God and that there is no power besides him (Isaiah 43:10-12).

“I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God… from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:5-7)

In contrast to the surrounding beliefs of multiple gods, God makes it clear that both good and bad situations come from him, including illnesses (Exodus 4:11, Job 2:10, Lam 3:37-38). The idea of an evil spirit that has power to work against God does not fit with God’s declaration that there is no power besides himself.

However, when we come to the New Testament, there are frequent mentions of a devil and satan. Why?

It is because the concept of evil spirits had become increasingly part of Israel’s culture and language during the years in between the Old and New Testaments. In Babylon, the Jews lived amongst the Persian beliefs of dual gods for light and dark and their thinking and culture was also influenced by the Greeks and Romans who subsequently ruled over them.

This is why demons are attributed with causing sickness in the New Testament, but not in the Old Testament. The Pharisees even called the prince of the demons, Beelzebul, which was the Philistine god of healing that God rebuked his people for believing in (1 Kings 1:3, Matthew 12:24, Mark 3:22, Luke 11:15).

In Greek and Roman culture, the Greek word for devil, diabolos, was a word used to describe people who were false accusers or slanderers and sometimes the Bible translates the word this way too (1 Tim 3:11, 2 Tim 3:3, Titus 2:3).  

But many more times the New Testament borrows the Hebrew word, satan and uses it interchangeably with the word devil to describe various unnamed adversaries (Luke 4:2, Mark 1:13). The satan of Job appears to have become a character that epitomised opposition to God and, in the same way that we might call someone a ‘Scrooge’ or the ‘Grinch’, is used to refer to anyone or anything that opposed God.

Support for this comes from the fact that often we can identify who the adversary labelled as the devil or satan is from the context. For example, in 1 Peter 5:8 the devil that “prowls around like a roaring lion” refers to the rulers who persecuted the early Christians.  In other places the devil refers to those who opposed the new way of worship in Christ (the ‘Judaisers’) (Rev 2:9) or individuals like Peter (Mark 8:33). In these instances (and others), the devil is a known, human enemy.

However, there is one ultimate enemy of God which we all have to battle – and it is this enemy that the devil and satan ultimately represents.

God told Cain, “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7).

The great battle in the Bible is the choice within each one of us to do things our way, or God’s way. It is our own inner desires that God calls us to overcome (1 John 2:16).

“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 7:14-22).

There is simply no need for an external being to tempt us.

“Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:14-15)

It is our own hearts that deceive and tempt us to do evil (Isaiah 17:9). This invisible battle against temptation is described like a physical battle (Romans 7:18-19) with both our evil desires from within and those who choose to live by these desires sometimes being called satan or the devil (Ephesians 6:16, James 4:7). This makes sense of verses that would otherwise be confusing. For example, in Hebrews 2:14, Jesus is said to destroy the devil by his death. This passage makes more sense if the devil is understood to represent the desires within Jesus that he overcame in putting his faith in God, even to the point of death. This is a battle that Jesus fought every day in the same way that we are also tempted – from within (Hebrews 4:15).

Similarly, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness was a battle within himself. Each temptation reflected real scenarios Jesus later faced. Jesus was tempted to show the true extent of his power to those who doubted him, instead of waiting on God’s time. The New Testament writers portrayed Jesus’ inner struggle in this way to emphasise the real power of sin within us that God sent Jesus to saves us from (Matthew 1:21, Romans 6:23, 7:23-25).

To sum up, we have looked at the following reasons to consider the view that the devil and satan are terms that are used figuratively to refer to anyone or anything that opposes God:

• The devil is not explained or warned about in the Old Testament.

• Angels only do God’s will and cannot die

• There is only one God who alone is the source of all power.

• Both good and bad situations come from God.

• Beliefs in evil spirits came from surrounding cultures.

• The true source of evil comes from within, from our own desires.

• Both specific people, as well as inner temptations are called satan or the devil.

Understanding the devil to be a title, rather than a personal being does not mean downplaying the existence of evil and the deceitfulness of temptation. It means being aware of our own nature and that God alone is in complete control. We do not need to fear any other power.