The short answer
Possibly in part, though the New Testament names a different cause. Colossians 2 says God forgave all our trespasses, blotted out the record that was against us, and stripped the principalities and powers. Chris White argues that the devil’s power of death rested on the true charge our sins supplied, so when the sins were carried away and forgiven, his hold was gone. The book adds, as a further proposal, that using that power on a sinless man may also have cost him his standing.
The Idea Behind the Question
The question usually comes with an explanation already attached. The devil, it runs, had a kind of right over sinful people. Death was his to bring on those who had sinned. Jesus had no sin, so when the devil stirred up Judas, the priests, and Pilate to kill him, he used his power on someone it did not reach. By overstepping, he lost the authority he had held.
The explanation draws on real passages. Jesus said at the supper that “the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30). Hebrews says that Jesus “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Paul says that the rulers of this age would not have crucified the Lord of glory if they had understood what they were doing (1 Corinthians 2:8). The devil had nothing in Jesus, and he pressed for his death anyway.
An Old Answer in the Church
This answer goes back to the early church. Early writers agreed that Christ won a victory over death and the devil, and they explained the victory in several ways. Some spoke of Christ’s life as a ransom paid to the devil. Gregory of Nyssa pictured Christ’s divinity hidden in his human flesh like a hook in bait, swallowed by a hungry fish. Gregory of Nazianzus rejected the thought that the blood was paid to the devil at all.
Augustine gave the account closest to this page’s question. He taught that the devil was overcome by Christ’s justice: he found nothing in Christ that deserved death, killed him anyway, and so lost his hold on those he had held. Thomas Aquinas repeated the idea in the thirteenth century, quoting Augustine, and kept deliverance from the devil alongside the satisfaction view he took from Anselm.
The idea has strengths. It takes the devil seriously as an enemy with real power, where much later teaching left him out of the account. It fits John 14:30. And it sees something true about the cross: the death of the one man who did not deserve to die was an act of injustice on the devil’s part. How Atonement Works agrees with much of this and builds on the older victory tradition. The question it presses is how the victory was won. The early writers, as the book puts it, used pictures and did not agree on the mechanism. You can read more on the ransom picture in Was Jesus a ransom paid to the devil?
What the New Testament Says Took His Power
Two passages say most directly how the devil lost his power. Hebrews says that Christ took flesh and blood “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Colossians says what happened to the powers, and it puts forgiveness first:
And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
Colossians 2:13–15
Paul says three things in order. God forgave all our trespasses. He blotted out the handwriting that was against us and nailed it to the cross. And he stripped the principalities and powers and led them in triumph. The word “blotting out” is the word the Greek Old Testament uses for God’s own forgiving: “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake” (Isaiah 43:25). The record against us was erased.
Other passages join forgiveness and release from Satan’s power in the same way. Jesus sent Paul to the Gentiles “to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:18). Paul tells the Colossians that the Father “hath delivered us from the power of darkness” into the kingdom of his Son, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14). Revelation says the brethren overcame the accuser “by the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:11).
How Forgiveness Disarmed the Accuser
The book’s explanation starts with what the devil’s power was. Scripture calls him the tempter and the accuser. Zechariah saw Satan standing at the high priest’s right hand to accuse him, and Revelation calls the devil “the accuser of our brethren” (Revelation 12:10). Chris White draws these texts together into a synthesis: the devil tempts so that he can accuse, and he accuses so that the sentence of death can be pressed. His accusation has force because the sins are real. Paul says, “The sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15:56).
If the devil’s power rested on sin, then taking the sin away took the power. The sins of Christ’s people were laid on him: “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6), and he “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The book reads this in the light of the live goat on the Day of Atonement, which carried Israel’s confessed sins out of the camp. Christ carried our sins out of the gate and down to the dead, and God forgave them. With the record blotted out, the accuser had no case.
Zechariah’s vision shows the same answer to the same kind of charge. The LORD answered the charge against Joshua by removing what it rested on. He said, “Take away the filthy garments from him,” and “I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee” (Zechariah 3:4). The charge ended because the iniquity was removed. More on this mechanism is in How did Jesus defeat the devil by dying?
Psalm 82 and the Forfeiture Proposal
Chris White does think the overreach may be part of the picture, and he grounds it in Psalm 82. There God stands in the divine council and judges the “gods” who rule unjustly:
How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? . . . But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
Psalm 82:2, 7
The psalm shows that an authority given by God can be lost through misuse. The devil’s power of death was a power over sinners. In bringing about the death of a man who had no sin, he used it on someone it did not reach, and it is possible that the misuse cost him his standing, as it cost the rulers of Psalm 82 theirs.
This is a further proposal in the book. No New Testament text states that the devil lost his power because he killed an innocent man, and Psalm 82 describes rulers who judged unjustly over a long time. In the book’s own words, “The forgiveness is the mechanism Scripture names, and the forfeiture is a further thought.”
The proposal has older company. A Jewish commentary among the Dead Sea Scrolls, known as 11QMelchizedek and written about a century before Christ, read Psalm 82’s rebuke of unjust judges as a word against Belial, its name for the adversary. The same scroll pictures captives held under Belial and released, on the Day of Atonement, with their iniquities forgiven.
The accuser’s defeat is one part of a larger account. How Atonement Works traces the whole Day of Atonement through the work of Christ: the blood, the high priest in heaven, the scapegoat that carried sins away, and the defeat of the devil.
Get the Paperback on AmazonWhy the Devil Pressed the Death Anyway
The overreach idea raises a further question. An adversary who had spent three years looking for a sin in Jesus would hardly kill him knowing it would cost him everything. Paul says the rulers acted in ignorance: “for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8).
Chris White proposes an answer in chapter 17. The devil failed to make Jesus sin in the wilderness and in the years after it. Then, in Gethsemane, our sins were laid on Jesus, and when Judas came with the soldiers the devil found sin on him for the first time. He took it to be Jesus’ own, and he pressed the death he thought he now had a right to. The sins he found were ours, being carried away. That is why Jesus could say that the prince of this world “hath nothing in me” and still be led to the cross.
On that account the mistake also made the killing an overreach. The book keeps the two in order: “The mistaken charge explains why the devil acted; the forgiveness explains why the act cost him his power.” The fuller case is set out in Why did Satan want Jesus crucified?
No Bargain and No Loophole
Talk of Satan’s “legal rights” can leave the impression that God was caught in a technicality and needed the devil to make a mistake. The book rejects that picture. The devil received nothing he had a right to. Nothing was paid to him, and the Father made no agreement with him. His hold on sinners was real, and its ground was the true charge sin supplies. He never owned anyone. Anselm made the same point in the eleventh century when he denied that the devil had rightful ownership of man.
God was in charge of the event from first to last. Peter preached that Jesus was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). Jesus said of his life, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18), and he told Pilate, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11).
The Jubilee law gives a picture of release without payment. An Israelite sold into service went free in the year of jubilee even if no one redeemed him, “For unto me the children of Israel are servants” (Leviticus 25:54–55). The holder received nothing, and his claim ended because a higher authority declared the year. Jesus read Isaiah’s Jubilee promise in Nazareth, “to preach deliverance to the captives,” and said it was fulfilled that day (Luke 4:18, 21).
Where This Understanding Comes From
The victory over the devil was a central theme for many early Christian writers, and Gustaf Aulén later called it the classic view, or Christus Victor. Augustine gave the account in which the devil loses his hold by killing the innocent Christ, and Aquinas carried it into the Middle Ages. Calvin read the principalities and powers of Colossians 2:15 as devils disarmed so that they could bring nothing against us. Samuel Renihan, writing on Christ’s descent, holds that Satan expected to keep Christ among the dead. Katie Marcar and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra have studied the Jewish background of release from the adversary on the Day of Atonement, including 11QMelchizedek. How Atonement Works builds on this work and credits it, and adds its own account of how forgiveness took the accuser’s ground away.