If Satan Was Defeated, Why Is He Still Active?

The New Testament Says Both Things

Christians who read the New Testament closely run into what looks like a contradiction. Hebrews says that the Son of God took on flesh and blood “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). John says the Son of God was manifested “that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Paul says that God “spoiled principalities and powers” and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15).

Yet the same apostles, writing after the resurrection, treat the devil as active. Paul calls him “the god of this world” who “hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Corinthians 4:4). John says that the whole world lies in the evil one (1 John 5:19). James tells believers to resist him (James 4:7). And Peter gives the warning that most people remember:

Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

1 Peter 5:8

The apostles wrote both kinds of statement, sometimes in the same letter. The question is what the cross took from the devil and what it left him.

What “Destroy” Means in Hebrews 2:14

Part of the answer lies in the word itself. The Greek verb translated “destroy” in Hebrews 2:14 means to render something inoperative, to put it out of action. It does not mean to annihilate. Paul uses the same verb when he says that “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26), and when he says that Christ “hath abolished death” (2 Timothy 1:10).

Death has been abolished, and people still die. In the same way, the devil has been destroyed, and Peter can still warn that he prowls like a lion. Hebrews is describing a power taken away. It names which power: “the power of death.”

John’s statement works the same way. The verb in 1 John 3:8 means to loose or undo. The devil’s works are undone, and the one who did them is still there. The risen Christ says that he “was dead” and now holds “the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18). Something passed from the devil to Christ, and the devil remains.

The Usual Answer: Already, but Not Yet

Many Christians answer this question with a pattern found throughout the New Testament. The decisive victory was won at the cross and the empty tomb, and the final defeat comes when Christ returns. Satan is a defeated enemy who has not yet been removed. Revelation describes that removal at the end, when the devil is thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). Many teachers compare the present age to the time between a war’s deciding battle and the end of the fighting.

That pattern is sound, and the book agrees with it. Paul uses it for death itself, which is already abolished and will be destroyed last. What the pattern leaves open is the exact thing that changed at the cross. If the devil is still tempting, still blinding unbelievers, still to be resisted, what did he lose?

Christians who hold to penal substitution often answer that his power was the guilt of sinners under God’s law. When Christ bore the penalty, the accusation lost its ground. How Atonement Works shares much of that answer: the devil’s accusation rests on real sin, and the removal of sin takes its ground away. The book differs on what removes it, and it reads the Day of Atonement, with its two goats, as the pattern for how the sins were taken.

What the Devil’s Power Was

Scripture gives the devil two titles that explain his work. He is the tempter. Matthew calls him that when he comes to Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:3), and Paul uses the same title when he worries about the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 3:5). He is also the accuser. In Zechariah’s vision, Joshua the high priest stands before the angel of the LORD in filthy garments, “and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him” (Zechariah 3:1). Revelation calls him “the accuser of our brethren,” who “accused them before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10).

Scripture also says that sin brings death. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). “The sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15:56).

Chris White joins these texts into one account, and he presents it as his synthesis of what the passages say. The devil tempts people into sin, and then he accuses them of it. His accusation has force because it is true. Where there is a true charge of sin, the sentence of death stands behind it. So his power of death was a hold on people through their own sins, pressed by accusation and permitted by God for as long as the charge stands. The page What Does It Mean That the Devil Had the Power of Death? sets out this account in more detail, and Why Does Satan Want People to Sin? explains why temptation serves the accuser.

If that is what his power was, the devil’s continued activity makes sense. A power that rests on sin is broken where the sin is taken away. It continues where the sin remains.

What Was Taken From Him

Paul describes the moment the devil lost his case:

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

Forgiveness comes first in Paul’s sentence. The record that stood against us was blotted out, and then the powers were stripped and led in triumph, as a Roman general led his captives through the city. The book reads the handwriting as the record of our sins, the charge-sheet an accuser needs. With the record gone, he has nothing to bring.

Zechariah’s vision gave the same answer centuries earlier. The LORD did not argue that Joshua’s garments were clean. He said, “Take away the filthy garments from him,” and to Joshua, “I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee” (Zechariah 3:4). Revelation 12 tells it as a war in heaven. The accuser is thrown down, and the brethren he had accused “overcame him by the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:11). Revelation also says that, once thrown down, he went off to make war on those who keep God’s commandments (Revelation 12:17). Revelation 12 shows both his defeat as accuser and his continued hostility.

The book adds the Day of Atonement to this picture. Its second goat carried Israel’s confessed sins out of the camp. Chris White proposes that Christ, bearing the sins of the world, carried them out of the gate to the cross and down among the dead, back to the devil who brought sin into the world. The full argument is on the pages How Does Forgiveness Defeat Satan? and How Did Jesus Defeat the Devil by Dying?

What was taken, then, was the accuser’s charge against those whose sins were carried away and forgiven. Jesus told Paul that he was sending him to turn the Gentiles “from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:18). In that verse, leaving Satan’s power and receiving forgiveness happen together.

What Remains: Temptation and Testing

The devil’s activity after the garden has always been permitted and limited. In Job he is given leave to act, and the leave has a boundary: “all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand” (Job 1:12). Jesus told Peter, “Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:31–32). The devil asked, and Jesus answered with prayer.

Scripture gives the reason for the permission again and again: testing. God tested Abraham (Genesis 22:1). Moses told Israel that the forty years in the wilderness were meant “to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2). Peter calls the trials of his readers “the trial of your faith” (1 Peter 1:7). James says that the one who endures “shall receive the crown of life” (James 1:12). The same James says that God tempts no one with evil (James 1:13). The book draws the distinction from these passages. God tests to prove what is in a person. The devil tempts to make a person fall. The same event can be both, as when the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness “to be tempted of the devil” (Matthew 4:1).

This is the part of the devil’s work that goes on. The cross took his charge against believers. It left him, for now, his permitted role as tempter, because the testing still counts. Believers are still tempted. They are not promised a life free of trouble or suffering. Peter wrote his warning about the roaring lion to Christians who were already suffering, and he followed it with a command and a comfort:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7

Peter says the same: resist him, standing firm in the faith, knowing that other believers in the world face the same afflictions (1 Peter 5:9). The devil’s activity is real, and believers can stand against it.

This question is one step in a larger account. How Atonement Works traces the devil’s power of death from the garden to the cross, and shows how the Day of Atonement explains the way Christ took it from him.

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His Final End Is Still Ahead

The New Testament keeps the devil’s defeat and his destruction apart. In the book’s account, his power of death over those in Christ was broken once, at the cross and in Christ’s descent to the dead. His final end comes later. Revelation describes the devil who deceived the nations being thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10), and that scene is still in the future.

Death follows the same pattern. Paul says that “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Believers have “the firstfruits of the Spirit,” and yet they still groan, “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23).

That raises a related question: if the accuser’s claim on believers has been removed, why do believers still die? Chris White calls this the hardest question for his account and says he has not found a full answer to it. His best guess is that our bodies still die because we still sin, while the charge against us has been forgiven, and that death itself will be destroyed at the resurrection. Paul says something close to this in Romans 8:10–11: the body is dead because of sin, and the Spirit who raised Jesus will give life to our mortal bodies.

What This Means for Christians Today

Hebrews names the result of Christ’s victory. He came to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:15). The goal of the passage is freedom from fear.

A Christian can take the devil seriously without living in dread of him. Peter’s lion is real, and the verse just before it tells believers to cast all their care on God, because he cares for them (1 Peter 5:7). The devil can tempt. He can no longer bring a true charge against those whose sins have been carried away and forgiven. When a believer sins, the answer is the one Zechariah saw: the filthy garments taken away. John writes that “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

The book closes on this note. Those who remain in Christ are forgiven and cleansed, reconciled to God, and indwelt by his Spirit, and the accuser has no charge to bring against them. They still face temptation, and their bodies still die. They wait for their high priest to come out of the heavenly sanctuary, and when he appears, those who are his will be raised as he was raised (1 Corinthians 15:23). The risen Christ’s work in heaven is explained on the page The Resurrection and Forgiveness.

Where This Understanding Comes From

The early church gave the victory over death and the devil a central place, and its writers used many pictures for how it was won. Origen connected Paul’s words about the powers in Colossians 2 with the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. John Calvin tied Hebrews 2:15 to Christ’s conquest of the fear of death and read the principalities of Colossians 2:15 as devils disarmed, with nothing left to bring against believers. In recent scholarship, David M. Moffitt has shown how Hebrews 2:14–15 draws on Passover and Jewish traditions about the destroyer, and Katie Marcar has argued that Hebrews places the devil’s defeat among the dead, in Christ’s descent. Jacob Milgrom’s work on Leviticus underlies the book’s reading of the Day of Atonement. How Atonement Works builds on these writers, credits them, and offers its own proposal for how forgiveness disarmed the accuser.