Satan was the reason for redemption. There could be no redemption without defeating Satan. Satan’s eternal defeat was a part of the redemptive plan.
Hebrews 9:11 But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. 12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
His redemptive work can be thought of only in terms of that Scripture. Satan is eternally defeated.
But I want you to study with me now His threefold ministry—His victory over Satan in His earth walk, His victory over Satan in His substitutionary sacrifice, and His victory of Satan in the new creation.
JESUS’S VICTORY IN HIS EARTH WALK
John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”
This was God’s invasion of the sense realm. Here natural man lived. It could not work without an incarnation. An angel’s visit would not help. God had to come Himself.
His first combat with Satan with which we are familiar is recorded in Matthew 4:1–11 and in Luke 4:1–13. In both of these records we have Satan attempting to overcome the incarnate One as he had overcome Adan in the garden. He tempted Jesus through the senses the same as he tempted Adam, but Jesus met him with the Word and conquered him when He came down out of the mount.
Matthew 4:23 Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness among the people. And the report of him went forth into all Syria: and they brought unto him all that were sick, holden with divers’ diseases and torments, possessed with demons, and epileptic, and palsied; and he healed them.
• From that day until Jesus gave Himself up to the high priest as our substitute, He met Satan under every possible form of disease that he could bring to man, and in every place, He conquered him. He conquered him as a new creation does today.
Matthew 14:13 When Jesus heard it, He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself. But when the multitudes heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities. 14 And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick. 15 When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.”
16 But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 And they said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.”
18 He said, “Bring them here to Me.” 19 Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. 20 So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. 21 Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
This is the story of feeding the multitude in the wilderness. Satan had brought want and hunger to humanity. Jesus answers that hunger in His love.
In the same chapter, from the third to thirty-third verses, there is a story of Jesus walking upon the sea. He was Master of every law of nature. He conquered the storm. He bade Peter come and walk with Him and become a master with Him of the laws of nature. Peter failed because he had not yet been born again.
John 11 gives us a picture of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This is not a resurrection of Lazarus. No one had been resurrected. Many had been raised from the dead.
You notice that the author clearly states that he had been in the grave four days already, and Martha said, “The body decayeth” (John 11:39).
Jesus proved that He was the master of the adversary who had the authority of death.
Hebrews 2:14: “That through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”
Perhaps the most striking sentence is in Luke 12:5: “But I will warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him who after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him.” Jesus is talking about the adversary whom He had conquered so many times.
In Luke 13:11–16, we have the story of the woman with the infirmity. Jesus said to the woman, “bowed together, and could in no wise lift herself up…Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands upon her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God” (verses 12–13).
And in the sixteenth verse Jesus said, “Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the sabbath?”
In every contact with the adversary, Jesus conquered him.
HIS SUBSTITUTIONARY SACRIFICE
Man is a spirit being. The real things about man are not his body. When Jesus said, “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36), He meant the liberation of the spirit of the man.
He did not have reference to physical slavery but to spiritual. Man’s deliverance is threefold. He delivers man spiritually from the hand of the enemy. He delivers him physically from disease, hunger, and want. He delivers him mentally from being ruled by the senses and brings his spirit, which has been a slave through all the ages, to dominate his thinking and his physical actions.
But let us look at the substitutionary sacrifice.
1 Corinthians 15:3–4: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures.”
God’s revelation to Paul of the substitutionary sacrifice of His Son is the most amazing document in any language.
2 Corinthians 5:21: “Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
Isaiah 53:4–6: Surely, he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
This is His substitutionary work in history, and it governs the three parts—His spirit, soul, and body. But the strange thing is that He began with His body and then He leads us through the rest of the chapter showing man’s threefold deliverance from the authority of the adversary.
Romans 3:21 is the Spirit’s revelation of man’s deliverance from the hand of the enemy through the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. It is climaxed with Romans 4:25–5:1: “Who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification. Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Study carefully Romans 3:21–26. Read how a righteousness from God has been brought to light.
Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Conybeare’s translation of Romans 3:21 is striking: But now, not by the law, but by another way God’s righteousness is brought to light, whereto, the Law and the prophets bear witness; God’s righteousness which comes by faith in Jesus Christ, for all, and upon all, who have faith.
You see, righteousness is the key to the substitutionary work of Christ. The object of Christ’s finished work was that He might make it possible for natural man to become a new creation and by that new creation become the righteousness of God in Christ.
Righteousness means the ability to stand in God’s presence as though sin had never been—stand there without any sense of inferiority or condemnation. That means now—not after death.
Colossians 2:15 with Revelation 1:18 gives us a picture of the combat that Jesus had with the adversary after He had satisfied the claims of justice and had been made alive in spirit.
Colossians 2:15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
Revelation 1:18 I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
1 Peter 3:18: “Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”
You see, Jesus had been made sin. Two things had to take place in Him after the claims of justice had been satisfied.
He must first be justified in spirit. 1 Timothy 3:16: “Who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit.”
Then He must be made alive, as we have just read in Peter. Then after He was justified and made alive, the Father spoke to Him. Acts 13:33 God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm: you are my son, today I have begotton you.
34 And that He raised Him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, He has spoken thus: I will give you the sure mercies of David.
That God hath fulfilled the same unto our children, in that he raised up Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he hath spoken on this wise, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.
That was done in Hades where Christ was suffering as our substitute.
The next step in the drama is when He meets Satan in the combat and conquers him.
Colossians 2:14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
The bond, with its requirements, which was in force against us and was hostile to us, He cancelled, and cleared it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross. And the hostile princes and rulers He shook off from Himself, and boldly displayed them as His conquests, when by the Cross He triumphed over them.
You can see that in the great combat where Jesus meets the entire Satanic force and overwhelms them, strips them of the authority, He takes from Satan the authority that he has had ever since the fall of man.
We get another graphic picture of that in Revelation 1:17–18: “I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”
This could only come after He had conquered the adversary and taken the keys of death and of Hell—of Hades—from the enemy.
Hebrews 9:26: “But now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Hebrews 10:12: “But he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.”
He had carried His blood into the heavenly Holy of holies, the supreme court of the universe had accepted it, and then He who had been made sin, who had been made righteous, sits in God’s presence without the smell of that awful sin of the world that had been laid upon Him.
HIS VICTORY OVER SATAN IN THE NEW CREATION
Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.”
When Jesus was recreated down in that dark region as the head of the church, we, in the mind of justice, were recreated, too, when Jesus conquered the adversary, when He put Satan to naught, it is as though we alone had done it. When He arose from the dead, it was our resurrection. And as He appeared among men, it was a type of our resurrection life that we live today.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
The new creation is absolutely a master over the adversary. The prince of this world came to Jesus but could find nothing in Him. And the prince of the world, Satan, can come to the new creation and can find nothing in him.
If he could find anything in him, he would have dominion over him; but there isn’t for he has the nature and life of God.
1 John 4:4: “Ye are of God, my little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.”
The One who raised Jesus from the dead is in you—the new creation. You have the life and nature of God, and the One that is in you is greater than any force or power outside of you.
1 John 5:4: “For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.”
Your faith that brought you into the family of God has made you Satan’s master, for “who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:5).
Do you believe that? You see, Satan was conquered by you and Jesus before Jesus arose from the dead because you are identified with Him and now are a master.
“I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). The ability of God is in your hands.
Psalm 27:1: “Jehovah is the strength of my life.”
Philippians 4:19: “And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
The new creation is a master. Why? Because Jesus said, in essence, “In My name you shall cast out demons.”
Mark 16:17 And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues;
He has given to the believer the use of His name and all authority has been given to Jesus. Now that “all authority” belongs to the church. Now we are masters.
2 Peter 2:24 seals the issue. The believer’s healing is guaranteed because it is a part of the redemptive work of Christ.
James gives us a picture of the babe in Christ who needs the elder to pray for him and he does. But the full-grown believer knows he is perfectly healed by the finished work of Christ.
Philippians 4:19 shows us how God supplies our financial needs.
And Matthew 6:31–34 gives us Jesus’s revelation of the Father’s attitude toward His children.
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?
- In what three ways did Jesus defeat Satan?
- What did Jesus use to combat Satan in His temptation?
- What are three instances of Jesus defeating Satan during his earth ministry?
- What is man’s threefold deliverance through Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice?
- How was this threefold deliverance consummated?
- Explain Hebrews 10:12.
- How is the new creation identified with Christ’s victory over Satan?
- Why cannot Satan lay anything to the charge of the new creation?
- Explain what Jesus meant when He said, “In My name.”
- Explain the place of healing in our victory over Satan.