The Enemy of Our Souls

Satan bears many names and titles: adversary, accuser, and destroyer. But why is he against us as our enemy? Today, Sinclair Ferguson addresses the hatred that drives the devil and his schemes.

This week we’ve been thinking a little about the description of the fall in Genesis 3. It’s surely one of the most important chapters in the Bible and it’s foundational to everything that follows. But here’s a question: Why did Satan do this? Why did he entrap Adam and Eve?

Earlier in the week, I suggested the reason he enticed Eve first was because she was the very best gift the Lord had given to Adam. It was a really hateful way of dragging Adam from his love and loyalty to God. But what the serpent was doing as an instrument of Satan didn’t stop at Adam, or for that matter, at Adam and Eve’s family. Why this destructive hatred for them and, therefore, for the whole human race? Well, it wasn’t just about them or about us, was it? No, ultimately, Satan’s hatred was hatred directed against God.

The Apostle Paul speaks about a mystery in connection with Satan’s work—the mystery of iniquity. And it’s true we have questions about Satan that Scripture doesn’t directly answer, but there are some important things that we do know.

First, we know that he was created by God because He’s the creator of all things in the heavens and also in the earth. God created a heavenly family of creatures—angels, archangels, cherubim, and seraphim—as well as an earthly family of human beings. Actually, the angels are sometimes referred to as God’s sons, His family. And clearly, they’re wonderful, glorious, varied creatures with a nature and powers that seem to be different from ours.

But then, secondly, we also know that Satan rebelled against God. He was not always Satan, the adversary, or Apollyon, the destroyer. The Apostle John tells us that he did not remain in the truth and that his lies in the garden of Eden were an expression of a perversion that had taken place in his character.

The third thing we know is that as a rebel against God, Satan never wants to be alone—no rebel against God ever does. And so, it seems he incited other angelic creatures to join him. The Lord Jesus speaks about those who will share the final judgment of, quote, “the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). And you remember how the Apostle John caught a glimpse of the rebellion in his vision in Revelation 12.

But then, fourthly, we know that Satan is the devil. That word conveys the idea of throwing something against someone else. That’s why he’s called the “accuser of the brethren” in Revelation 12. Remember the dramatic description in Zechariah 3 of how he threw accusations at Joshua, the high priest?

So, how does all this shed light on why Satan should, through the serpent, attack Adam and Eve? Well, I said that he attacked Adam through God’s best gift to him, his wife. That actually reflects his nature. We might say that in this, he was ultimately attacking God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit through the very best gift they had given to themselves, namely ourselves. For after God had made all other things visible and invisible, the divine Trinity held counsel and said: “Now, let us make the best of all for ourselves. Let us make man as our image and likeness to know us, love us, trust us, have fellowship with us, and let us make man as male and female.”

We can almost think of it this way, and this is just an illustration—a poor one, but a real one. A man and a woman in love with each other get married. But then what? Yes, they instinctively want to have a child in their image and likeness, and what joy that gives them. And we all understand that whether we’re married and have children or not, a child of love brings joy unless it reveals our own unhappy, sinful, and perhaps jealous hearts. But why is that? Well, it’s because despite our fallen condition, we’ve been made as the image of God. And that’s what Satan hated: God’s joy in His children, Adam and Eve, and the joy He would have in their children too. He hated that, and he hates it still. And we need to see, not least if we are married, we need to see that and to learn to recognize and to hate his strategies.