Perhaps you remember the scene in the first The Godfather film where Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), during the baptism of his child, is asked by the priest “Do you renounce the Devil and all his works?” He answers “I do” while his men are shown assassinating his enemies, one by one. Michael Corleone literally paid lip service to the existence of the Devil. I wonder if most of us do the same. While not formally denying his existence, we do not take the Devil and his works too seriously. I know I have not for most of my Christian life anyway.
That has changed and let me give two reasons why.
First, belief in the Devil and the power of his evil works makes sense of our world. The longer I live the stronger my conviction that taking the Devil and his works seriously is not a retreat from reality – it is indispensable in helping us understand the world as it really is.
We are all familiar of the horrors that haunt our supposedly enlightened era. Two global wars, the Holocaust, and two atomic bombs dropped on civilian populations were catastrophic lowlights of the 20th century but to these infamous events we could add an inexhaustible catalogue of what can only be called evil.
For example, our human capacity for unending merciless violence is being ‘enhanced’ by ‘The Masters of War’ – the global arms trade which profits in death. It facilitates ruthless men (and it nearly always is men) to prosecute wars today in Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, Myanmar, or Ukraine or in innumerable other conflicts over the years. We seem brilliant at inventing more and more ingenious ways to kill each other. Drone warfare and the looming threat of AI killing machines are taking us into Terminator territory.
The theologian Phillip Ziegler describes it well: “Ours is a world in which barbarity keeps ready company with civility, sadism and technological acuity happily clasp hands, and nihilistic stupidity repeatedly masquerades as wisdom” (God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil, p.16).
But the more important reason I believe in the Devil is because Jesus and the writers of the New Testament do. The gospel is the liberating good news of Jesus the Messiah who overthrows the power of Sin, Death, and the Devil in and through his death and resurrection. The Gospels are full of Jesus’ confrontation with the Devil and his servants. He is called various names – the Devil, Satan, Beelzeboul, evil one, prince of demons, tempter, the enemy, the ruler of this world. He tempts Jesus and is opposed to the coming of the kingdom of God – nowhere more clearly seen than in Jesus’ exorcisms of evil spirits. He ‘enters Judas’ (Lk 22:3) and seeks to undermine the disciples, famously in Jesus’ rebuke to Peter ‘Get behind me Satan!” (Mk 8:33).
Paul is no different. He teaches his churches to understand that ‘behind the scenes’ malign spiritual forces perpetrate chaos in the world. These include Satan (also called the tempter, the Devil, god of this world and ruler of the power of the air). Alongside him are an array of heavenly powers hostile to God: ‘rulers and authorities;’ ‘powers;’ ‘death;’ ‘dominions;’ ‘spiritual forces’ and ‘elemental spirits. Believers live in this ‘present evil age’ which is passing away (Gal 1:4). The Spirit is ushering in God’s new creation in the midst of the old. Believers are to walk by the Spirit and not the old age of the flesh.
But here is the crucial point. While the Devil and all his works are real, Christians are to have no fear of evil. While all of us were, as Fleming Rutledge puts it, “active, conscripted agents of Sin” (The Crucifixion, p. 179), we have been set free in Christ (Gal 5:1). Paul encourages the Colossians that the the rulers and authorities have already been disarmed, shamed, and vanquished by the cross (Col 2:14-15). In Romans nothing – including death, angels, demons, rulers or powers – has the capacity to separate believers from the love of God in Christ the Lord (Rom 8:38-39). God will judge and defeat Satan and all forces allied with him (Rom 16:20). In 1 Corinthians, when ‘the end’ comes Christ will destroy every rule and authority and power. Ultimately, God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28). The whole book of Revelation is about God’s ultimate victory over the powers of evil.
In the meantime, believers are to resist the Devil and pray ‘deliver us from evil’. We are not to do this with the weapons of the evil one – power, violence, hatred, division, coercion, lies, manipulation and so on. This is a tragic mistake Christians have made at various points in church history and are currently making in the USA. God’s kingdom cannot be advanced by ungodly means. No, disciples of a crucified Messiah are to fight with the weapons of his kingdom – love, forgiveness, truth, kindness, justice, peace, joy, service and humility.
Patrick Mitchel is Senior Lecturer in Theology at the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin, an elder in Maynooth Community Church and author of The Message of Love (IVP, 2019).
Please note that the statements and views expressed in this article of those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Contemporary Christianity.
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