In the previous article, we considered the meaning of Providence, leaning on the historical confessions of faith. Pastor and author John Piper beautifully sums up the historical definitions of Providence by describing Providence as ‘God’s wise and purposeful sovereignty’¹. In other words, nothing happens outside of God’s sovereign will – including even calamities and apparent misfortunes that befall God’s people or our world in general.

I am afraid that the views of many professing Christians, particularly in our part of the world, on this point are sadly defective and unsound. A Sister desires marriage but is approaching her forties with no sign of a suitor, she or others close to her are quick to believe that an ancestral curse or witchcraft is to blame for her singleness. A brother is jobless for a season or struggling to make ends meet; the blame quickly goes to Satanic forces working against him. A married couple remains childless for any length of time or experience miscarriage, Satan must be at work against them. Death, sickness, the list goes on, and we are quick to attribute them to the power of Satan.

Now, if Satan can prevent a believer from getting married, kill or maim, or afflict a believer with cancer without God’s permission, then who is truly almighty? God or Satan?

I cannot serve a God who, for a split second, does not hold decisive sway over the lives of His children. Such a God is no god at all. Sadly, such is the low view most professing Christians have of God. They attribute sovereignty to Satan and are quick to point fingers at him for any seemingly unpleasant situation in their lives. In this article, I aim to show from the Scriptures that God, not Satan, is the one who holds decisive sway over our lives.

Opposing wills

Satan and his demons have a will which is opposed to God’s. We see this from Scriptures such as 1 John 3:8, where we read that ‘the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil’, or 2 Corinthians 4:4, where Satan ‘blinds the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’. If Satan’s works were aligned with God’s will, Jesus wouldn’t destroy them. And we know that God’s will is that all men be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), so Satan’s work in blinding people from seeing and savouring the gospel goes against God’s will.

As Piper noted in his book, ‘Providence’, “At one level, [Satan] is as stupid and senseless as is imaginable in that he continues in his headlong, suicidal opposition to omnipotence. But on another level, he is shrewd beyond all human powers to resist. In nonmodern cultures, his shrewdness plays in people’s awareness of his reality and he controls them with fear. In modern culture, he holds people sway incognito, happy with their disbelief of his reality, as he leads them by the illusion that their deification of self is an experience of autonomy, when in fact, they are in perfect sync with his desires.”²

In other words, in modern societies, there are people who don’t believe in Satan yet serve him all day! C. S. Lewis pithily put it this way:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight”³

I fear that in our part of the world, we so often fall into the latter error. We are unduly obsessed with Satan’s activities to the point we fear him more than God.

Satan’s sway over the world

In the previous article, we established that Satan has no authority outside of God’s Providence. In other words, what limited authority he has, has been permitted by God, and he does not hold the decisive, final sway. That is not to say Satan is powerless – far from it. For example, as we noted earlier, the Bible categorically states that Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers and so prevents them from seeing and savouring the gospel. Ephesians 2:1-3 teaches that before coming to saving faith in Jesus, we followed ‘the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience and carried out the desires of the body and the mind, like the rest of mankind.’

So, those who are outside Christ are in the devil’s domain (1 John 5:19). But what about God’s children?

Providence over suffering

Just before John talks about the unsaved being subject to the power of the evil one, he stresses that Jesus protects believers, and the evil one does not touch them (1 John 5:18).

Peter, writing to suffering Christians, says this:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. ⁹ Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. (1 Peter 5:8-9)

So, Satan has a hand in believers’ suffering because, as Peter says, we resist him when we stand fast in our suffering. But the question is, in John Piper’s words, ‘When Satan crushes Christians in the jaws of their own private Calvary, does not God govern those jaws for the good of his precious child?’⁴

The Bible’s answer is an emphatic yes! Peter goes on to say, “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (1 Pet. 3:17), and “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pet. 4:19). Meaning, God sometimes wills/permits that His people suffer, and He uses Satan to do it. “If God wills that we suffer for doing good [as we live for him], we will suffer. And if he does not will that we suffer for doing good, we will not. The lion does not have the last say, Providence does.”⁵

The example of Jesus

Let’s consider the example of our Lord’s suffering. We note from biblical passages such as Luke 22:3 and John 13:27 that on the night Jesus was arrested, Satanic power was in full force to have him killed. But Scripture reveals that Satan could not work through Judas and those who wanted to kill him till God’s appointed time.

Listen to Jesus’ words before his arrest:

“Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:52-53)

In other words, despite Satan’s involvement, no one could have arrested Jesus until precisely at the hour the Father allowed or had planned that He should be arrested, and no sooner or later. All of this was to fulfil what Jesus had said earlier, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18).

Providence over Satan’s power to kill

The Bible describes Satan as a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). Jesus, speaking about the last days, told the church in Smyrna that the devil was about to throw some of them into prison and have some killed:

“Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful to death,and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10).

So, we conclude that Satan does/can indeed take the lives of faithful believers. But who has the ultimate power over life or death? Deuteronomy 32:39 says God, not Satan, does: ‘“‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.’ (Deut. 32:39). And, as we learnt from James, “If the Lord wills, we will live” (James 4:15), and if he wills, we will die. God, not Satan, makes the final call. Our lives are ultimately in God’s hands, not Satan’s. God’s Providence overrules Satan’s power to kill.

Practical implications

We conclude with article 28 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which asks, “What does it benefit us to know that God has created all things and still upholds them by his providence?”

The answer reads,“We can be patient when things go against us,⁵ thankful when things go well,⁶ and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing in creation will separate us from his love.⁷ For all creatures are so completely in God’s hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.⁸”

Of what comfort is the notion that Satan can, for a split second, harm God’s children outside His control? Such a notion is God-dishonouring and utterly unscriptural. Instead, we derive much comfort in the knowledge that we are, at all times, kept by the Providence of our loving Father, by whose plan all things work together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose.

Notes

1 John Piper, Are God’s Providence and God’s Sovereignty the Same? Desiring God, 18 October 2019.

2 C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1941, p.3

3 John Piper, Providence, pg. 256.

4 Ibid, pg. 263

5 Ibid

6 Job 1:21, 22; Ps 39:10; Jas 1:3.
7 Deut 8:10; 1 Thess 5:18.
8 Ps 55:22; Rom 5:3-5; 8:38, 39.
9 Job 1:12; 2:6; Prov 21:1; Acts 17:24-28.