How do we beat the devil? Here’s what works every time

This is adapted from a video, which you can watch here.

Not today, satan!

That’s a catchphrase among some Christians today. Declaring that is one way we resist the devil, they seem to think.

Probably the most well-known verse about resisting the devil is 1 Peter 5:8, which says:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith …

That raises a couple of big questions: How does the devil devour someone, and how do we resist him?

There are a lot of different ideas about spiritual warfare in the church today, and some of them involve speaking to the devil. I once saw a Facebook post that said, “I’m a warrior, not a wimp! Devil, you’re in for a fight!” A prominent preacher once said, “We command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now” (I’ll reveal who said that below). You may hear Christians say something like, “I bind you, satan!”

To a lot of Christians, that’s their idea of resisting the devil. But that happened very rarely in Scripture; just two human beings spoke directly to satan in the Bible. One of them was Jesus, and He’s God, so the only non-deity in the Bible to speak to the devil himself is Eve.

That didn’t go well for her.

She’s the first answer to the question of how the devil devours someone: he devoured Eve. Because of that exchange, she went from a perfect creation in perfect relationship with God to a lost sinner separated from God. That’s what the devil, in all his hatred and evil, sets out to do: keep people separated from God — or, if we’re already reconciled to God through Christ, make us think we’re separated.

What the devil targets

Let’s see what happened to Eve in Genesis 3:

1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

The first words the devil said to humanity was “Has God indeed said …?” His first ploy was to undermine the word of God, and he’s still doing that today. The most common attack on our faith, on Christianity, is to undermine the Bible.

Some in the world do it directly: It’s just a bunch of fairy tales. It’s full of errors and contradictions. It’s backward and bigoted.

But inside the walls of the church, it’s more subtle: Well, that’s just your interpretation. What does it mean to you? There’s new revelation today. Or, it’s just generally downplayed; I’ve been in services where they actually said, “You won’t need your Bible today”!

The two common attacks on the Bible are 1. It’s not true, or 2. It’s not enough. This is why our weapon against the devil is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17), and we’ve got to grip that sword tight. Yes, God indeed said!

When a lot of Christians think of the devil attacking us, they’ll often say he goes after our marriages, our finances, our family, or our health. Every bad thing that happens is “an attack of the devil.” He certainly can assault those things, but again, his priority is our relationship with God.

We see this in his offensive against Job. It was a physical and material attack — Job lost everything, his family, his wealth, his health — but in the enemy’s plan, that was all a means to an end. What satan really wanted was to turn Job against God: “But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” (Job 1:11).  

And that was the serpent’s plan against Eve: Get her to doubt. Get her to disobey.

The serpent speaks life

Here’s Eve’s response:

2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Notice that Eve gets the commandment wrong; God did not say, “nor shall you touch it.” Eve is already going off the rails in that she’s adding to God’s word. If we’re going to wield the sword of the Spirit, we have to make sure it’s the right sword. We have to know the word accurately.

By adding to God’s command, Eve played right into the serpent’s hands. The enemy wants us to see God’s instructions — which He gives in love and tender care — as restrictive, putting us in bondage like slaves.

The seeds of doubt were sown, and the serpent watered them:

4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

In much of today’s evangelical church, we’re often encouraged to always be positive and make people feel good. One popular phrase I hear is “speak life.” It usually means, say positive things to boost people’s self-esteem. Well, the devil here is literally speaking life to Eve: “You will not surely die.” Don’t speak negative things, Eve! Be positive!

And the serpent is all about Eve’s self-esteem; we see that in verse 5, and that’s where we really get into the heart of the devil’s temptation. “You will be like God” is what this is all about.

The real satanism

The enemy’s ambition has always been to claim the thorne of God. We see this in Isaiah 14, a passage that’s literally directed to the king of Babylon, but Jesus quoted it in reference to satan (Luke 10:18). The king of Babylon, called Lucifer, was a type of satan; he represented satan and embodied his pride:

13 “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.”

The prime temptation of satan is to get us to repeat that cry of rebellion: “I will be like the Most High.”

You may think the devil’s top priority is for us to worship him. There are some today who literally worship the devil, or at least they think they do. We call that satanism.

But what satan really wants is for us to worship ourselves. He wants us to exalt self, like he did, like the king of Babylon.  

Just like the attack on the word of God, this ploy of the devil is rampant today. In the world, it’s everywhere; some of the mantras of today’s society are “believe in yourself” and “follow your heart.” It’s all about you — your desires, your feelings, your self-esteem. Do what’s best for you and what makes you happy.

And just like the undermining of the word of God, it’s inside the church, too. Many churches prioritize your desires, your feelings, and your self-esteem. This is what the “prosperity gospel” and the Word of Faith movement are all about.

One teaching among some in those circles is that we are like God. This has been called the “little gods” doctrine; the idea is that we have the same authority and power that God does. It’s the exaltation of self, just like Lucifer. It’s the voice of the devil: “You will be like God.”

This is another gospel. It’s the religion of the devil himself; this is the real satanism, because they echo what he said.

Lust and pride

One preacher in the Word of Faith movement is Paula White. She’s the one who talked about the “satanic pregnancies” mentioned earlier. White once said, “Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from satan.” That would be comical if it wasn’t so blasphemous, because denying self is an explicit teaching of Jesus (Matthew 16:24). She also gets satan completely backward — the serpent didn’t want Eve to deny herself; he wanted Eve to please and satisfy herself.

And that’s exactly what she did:

6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

Look at the words in that verse: Good. Pleasant. Desirable. Eve saw that the tree was those things, and she wanted it. The devil offers to give us what we want, and tells us what we want to hear. The devil is a seducer.

If we want to resist him, to not be devoured as Eve was, there are certain sins to be aware of here. We see them in 1 John 2:

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world.

Lust is any strong, carnal desire of the flesh. You usually hear that word in a sexual context, but it can be for anything: money, power, comfort. Lust is not so much about the thing we lust for, but it’s about us and our desire. Eve lusted after that fruit.

Take that phrase — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — go back to Genesis 3, and superimpose it on verse 6:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food (the lust of the flesh), that it was pleasant to the eyes (the lust of the eyes) and a tree desirable to make one wise (the pride of life), she took of its fruit and ate.

Eve wanted exactly what the serpent offered — to be wise like God. This was the sin of pride, the mother of all sins. The devil succeeded in spreading his rebellion to Eve. That’s how he devoured her.

Here’s the answer

We have to understand how the devil wins to understand how we beat him. That brings us back to 1 Peter 5.

The devil devoured Eve with lust and pride. So, what’s the opposite of lust? Self-denial. What’s the opposite of pride? Humility:

5 Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” 6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, 7 casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

Peter starts this passage talking about humility, and that flows into the verse we started with:

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

If pride is how satan attacks us, then humility is how we resist him.

There’s a very similar passage in James 4:

4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? (goes right along with the verses we read in 1 John) Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Notice how James quotes the same proverb (3:34) that Peter does, and then links that to resisting the devil by submitting to God in verse 7. That’s because submission is humility and self-denial. When we resist the devil with that, he will flee. The devil has no idea what to do with humility.

If we refuse what he offers, if we deny ourselves, if we don’t listen to what the prosperity preachers say we should have, he loses. That’s how we beat the devil.

“You will be like God!” Not today, satan.