No army general worth his salt enters a battle without a plan. He knows his strengths, his weaknesses, his tactics, his contingencies. Most of all, for his plan to be successful, he’s got to know his enemy. If he doesn’t, even his best intentions won’t keep him from being quickly destroyed.
When it comes to battling temptation in our lives, many of us assume that good intentions are sufficient. We really do want to overcome temptation. But then Satan comes after us, and before we know it, we’re back to our old, sinful habits. We may be surprised at how little resistance we offered. We’re left feeling defeated.
As long as we’re awaiting the resurrection, we’re going to have temptations. And we’re going to stumble—sometimes quite often. But we don’t have to throw our hands up and simply give in. If we know a little about Satan’s tactics, we can have much more confidence when he attacks.
1. Satan puts question marks in your life where God has put periods.
When Satan tempted Jesus, he began by saying, “If you are the Son of God…” (Matt 4:3). Wait—“If?” Just a few verses earlier, when Jesus was baptized, God the Father had declared from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17). Satan, you see, rarely starts with lies; he starts with dangerous questions. “If this is really true…”
Satan’s go-to tactic in our lives is to break the hold of the Word of God over us. So he takes what God has declared and casts doubt on it. He puts question marks in your life where God has put periods.
Often he’ll move from questioning God’s truth to outright denying it. But many times the question is enough. And before we know it, we’re convinced that God is holding out on us. We follow in Adam and Eve’s footsteps, listening to the voice of the serpent: “Did God really say all that? Are you sure he has your best interests at heart?”
Of course, the last thing Satan wants is for us to actually think about God’s Word. The point of the question isn’t to open up a conversation, but to distract us. C. S. Lewis depicts this well in The Screwtape Letters. The older demon, Screwtape, is writing to a younger demon-in-training, describing a critical temptation he was involved in. His victim was reading a book that got him thinking about God. “Before I knew where I was,” Screwtape says, “I saw my twenty years’ work beginning to totter.” So what did he do? He didn’t launch into an attack on God’s existence. He didn’t bring up lustful temptations. He simply reminded his victim that it was almost lunch time. And by the time this poor sap was on his way out the door, he had completely forgotten about God.
Satan doesn’t want to go to battle about God’s Word. He wants to distract us from it.
2. We overcome Satan’s temptations by knowing the promises of God assured to us in the gospel.
If Satan’s main aim is to distract us from God’s Word, it makes sense that the primary way we overcome Satan’s temptations is by diving deeper into God’s Word. That’s true. But it may not be true in the way you think.
Many people interpret the big point of Jesus’ temptation like this: the way you overcome Satan is by knowing more Scripture than he does. Growing up, I envisioned this like some kind of Harry Potter duel. Satan throws a temptation, and you ward it off by going, “Oh no you don’t! First Peter 3:8!” Bam! Then Satan comes back with another one, and you say, “Ah, but I know the genealogy between Eliud and Jehoiachin!” And Satan says, “Whoa, I can’t touch that.”
Here’s the problem with that: Satan always knows more verses than you. He’s had centuries of practice. And reciting the one verse you happen to know (I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!) isn’t going to automatically send him running away in fear.
There is something specific about God’s Word that Jesus recalls, something that undergirds every verse he quotes, something so powerful that not even Satan can refute it—his identity in the Father’s eyes. Remember? Satan said, “If you are the Son of God.” Everything Jesus quotes ultimately goes back to the security he possesses in who he is before God.
People think Satan’s main work is weird stuff—making people foam at the mouth or levitate above their beds. And while he does some of that, that’s not what he goes after with Jesus. Satan tried to make Jesus question God’s presence and God’s plan. He knew that if he could get Jesus to doubt God’s goodness toward him, the rest would fall into place.
That’s our main temptation, the root of all temptations—to establish our identity on something other than God’s declaration over us in Christ. We don’t battle Satan by anything we do, but by what Jesus has already done. He overcame Satan’s lies when we couldn’t. We overcome Satan by trusting in Christ’s finished work, uniting ourselves to Christ, and allowing his Spirit to overcome temptation through us.
Satan wants you to base your identity on how you live. He wants to distract you from the gospel message that Jesus has substituted himself for you and done everything necessary to save you. We defeat Satan by clinging to that gospel, by measuring God’s compassion by the cross and his power by the resurrection. When we do that, we can confidently say, with Martin Luther, “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him! One little word [the word of the gospel!] shall fell him.”
For more, be sure to listen to the entire message here.
