If you’ll please turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 8, beginning at verse 31. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham. Yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father.’
They answered him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.’ And they said to him, ‘We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God, and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character. For he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Lord God, our father, we praise you and thank you for bringing us into your family and making us your children of Abraham. Help us and preserve us from those who oppose you, those who oppose your truth and prefer to live in the lies of the devil. We ask that you give us wisdom to discern the difference, the hope and help us to know so that we may flee the devil as well as our sin to live forever in and with you, your son Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.
So as the children of our fathers and mothers, we all tend to resemble our parents, the adults who have raised us. Sons generally echo their father while daughters echo their mother. And this seems to be because most people learn best through imitation, which explains why Paul said to imitate me as I imitate Christ. And so we often share similar mannerisms, expressions, attitudes, our likes and dislikes with our parents, and also often our activities and the ways we do things.
This principle appears throughout scripture to explain and encourage the Christ-likeness of Christians and to also explain the unregenerate reprobate person’s likeness to Adam and the world’s unholy prince and ruler. Now, Christians who are the offspring of Abraham are being made to be like Christ through our sanctification by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we do things like Christ. We do the same kind of things, doing them in the same kind of manner. And we do them for the same kind of reasons.
We do them because they are right, because they are good, and because they bring our Father in heaven glory and honor. Similarly, all the rest of the people in the world live and act like the devil by living in their persistent and unrepentant sinfulness. So continuing here within the context of Jesus teaching in Jerusalem, after he has defined and clearly described who really are the true offspring of Abraham—those people who are inheriting God’s covenant promises according to their faith in Christ—Jesus next more fully directed his attention towards those who were refusing to believe in him, but especially against the Jewish leadership, the Pharisees, scribes, and priests.
And while Jesus has already been dialoguing with them, now after just prophesying that soon they would lift up the son of man and that then they would know that he really is the Christ, he turned up the heat against them and their sinful self-righteousness. I mean, leading up to this, John has made it quite clear that Jesus’s audience was divided between those who believed in him and those who did not. And meanwhile, Jesus is publicly proclaiming that his teachings are the source of freedom-giving truth and something to be exclusively claimed by his disciples.
And his claim upon such truth followed his claim of divinity as the light of the world, as the Lord God. After declaring that unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins, that unless they have Jesus Christ as the Lord, they would die without any atonement. So, through all of this, Jesus has been teaching that he is God the Son, the faithful firstborn of God, and therefore the true and absolute heir of Abraham, teaching that the Lord God is his heavenly father and that he is also equally God and that therefore he alone possesses the right, the authority, and the power to share these covenant promises with whomever he chooses.
So then, after explaining how a person can know that they have been freed by their faith because they abide in his word and live obedient to God’s commandments in response to his grace, Jesus next explains how all the rest belong to the devil. But before we consider these offspring of the devil and their relationship with their infernal father, we need to first correct certain assumptions about the devil and his attendant demons that many people make.
Now, I caution, it is not good for us or anyone to dwell overly much on the devil and his evil machinations, but it is good for us each to remind one another of the devil’s limitations so as to encourage each other against granting him any more power, authority, importance, attention, or even relevance than he warrants.
So number one, the devil is real. He is not an abstract idea, nor is he just a metaphor for evil. He is not some mythological character born of superstitious imaginings, and he certainly does not wear red tights and carry a pitchfork. Scripture makes it clear that he is a real spiritual person, literal, actual, and active. It testifies that both first-century Jews and the early Christians believed and knew that he exists.
The devil is also called Satan, which is a Hebrew term meaning adversary or accuser. He is utterly evil and corrupt in his nature, meaning that he is depraved to the max in his wickedness and sin. He was the first rebel against divine sovereignty, gladly leading all who follow him into damnation. He is a problem that troubles humanity and the whole created order.
Number two, the devil is powerful, but he is not all-powerful. He is not omnipotent. God is. His knowledge and understanding are not perfect. He cannot read our minds. He is not omniscient. God is. He is naturally limited in his capacity and location. He is not omnipresent, but God is. And although the devil is greater than a man, he forever remains less than God because he is just a creature. And so as a creature, he cannot create anything new. He can only copy or corrupt what God has already done.
Number three, the devil is not God, and he is not equal with God. Although there is a present cosmic struggle, Satan’s rebellion and his sinful opposition to the Lord, the parties in this conflict are not evenly matched. Jesus Christ has already won the war, but he has not yet imposed the fullness of his reign and triumph over the devil. And while at times it appears as if Satan’s power is in ascendance, by God’s good grace, he is only being permitted a false sense of authority and a semblance of victory. Because truly pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
The Apostle Peter describes the devil as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. But because of Christ’s victory on the cross, that lion can only roar because he is functionally toothless.
Number four, and although people like to attribute their every misfortune to him, ‘Satan did it,’ or blame him for our every act of personal sin, ‘the devil made me do it,’ since the devil is not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent, he cannot force anyone to do anything. He cannot directly cause, nor be directly involved with every act of evil and wickedness. The sad truth is instead that it is our human sinfulness, our corrupted nature that is to blame. We are each individually responsible for all of our personal sins because we do retain free choice of action.
We just tend to give the devil way too much power, giving him too much credit for far more than he is actually capable of doing. It’s also important to remind us that Christians cannot be possessed, no matter what Hollywood might suggest, because we are already indwelt by the Holy Spirit. So really there is no room in this; God does not share. He is a jealous God after all. But we may still be oppressed and attacked by demonic forces, but it’s very unlikely that any of us will draw the personal attention of Satan himself. And while we are all important to God and we are each important combatants in this spiritual battle, few of us are important enough to attract the devil’s direct ire.
Number five, and finally, while the devil is frightening, he is not to be feared because he is also subordinate to Christ. And we are united with Christ. Jesus Christ is also Lord over the rebellious devil, no matter how much Satan denies it and complains. So Jesus will protect and defend us. Jesus has given us the shield of faith to extinguish the devil’s flaming darts which he casts against us. We have the scriptures and we have read the end of the story.
However, even understanding all of that, there is one fundamental line of questioning we must be certain to specifically attend to. Who is the devil really? What is it that scripture actually says? I mean, sadly, much of what we think we know about the devil and his demons, about angels and heaven comes from either the realm of speculative theology, or from non-scriptural manuscripts like the book of Enoch or the war of the sons of light and darkness, which was an important text for the Essenes at Qumran, the apocryphal book Tobit, or worst of all, the fictional works of John Milton with Paradise Lost and Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.
There’s really a lot that we cannot and should not know. But since scripture is the revelation of Jesus Christ, it tells us only as much as we need to know about this creature, Satan, this creature who has set himself up in opposition to the non-created and only begotten son of God, Jesus Christ.
Scripture says that, and I have all of these citations if you want them, the devil is crafty and devious more so than any other creature. He is a liar and a murderer. He greatly desires and works towards the destruction and corruption of all humanity. He is cursed by God on account of his own sins and for his enticement of Adam and Eve to sin also. He is fallen because of his pride because he desired to overthrow and replace the Lord as God.
He deceived and convinced other angels to join him in rebellion and sin against the Lord, thereby becoming the demons. He will offer temptations to humanity to try and lead us into greater sinfulness. He will blind humanity, trying to keep us from the truth about God’s grace and love. He may still deceive people by masquerading as an angel of light. He and his demons may possess those who belong to him, only those whom the Lord would allow him to. He has a specific place, a special place reserved for him, prepared for him by the Lord where he is condemned to suffer an eternal fire. And while yet even now, even now he and his angels, the demons, are confined and restrained by chains of gloomy darkness.
And most importantly, he is already defeated. All of his strength, power, ability, ambition, and pride are vain and fruitless because Jesus has already won the victory. So the main thing that scripture teaches us and needs us to understand about the devil is that no matter how powerful he might seem, no matter how much authority and influence he has over the world, no matter how many victories he seems to win, Satan is and remains a loser. He lost before he ever even began.
And as much as he tries to build up his kingdom, it is falling down around him even more quickly. God wins, the devil loses. End of story. The age-old struggle is not between God and the devil. It’s just simply the devil’s rebellion against God. And once Christ returns to sit in judgment and the Lord pours out his almighty wrath, the eternal sovereign will be the only person left standing because every knee will be bowed, even the devil’s.
Now, when you think about it that way, that is really good news, isn’t it? So returning to John, the thing to understand about Jesus’s present audience, those who are hearing him, is that the true offspring, you know, the true offspring of Abraham, the people who believe in him and believe him by virtue of their union into him are winners. While those who do not believe Christ, those who belong to the world and its favorite prince, the devil, are losers like their infernal father.
Anyone who does not believe Jesus is not the offspring of Abraham, even if they might be descended from him, and if they do not belong to Jesus and father Abraham, then there is only one other person they can belong to, and that’s the devil. So just as there is a likeness in the relationship between the children of God and Jesus, so too there is a similar relationship of likeness between the devil and his offspring. And that is the relationship that Jesus now calls our attention to and explains.
After first explaining that everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin, Jesus affirmed them saying, ‘I know that you are offspring of Abraham.’ But then he publicly charged these disbelieving Jews with conspiracy to commit murder, saying, ‘Yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father.’
And then these incensed and perpetually offended Jews retorted, ‘But Abraham is our father.’ And Jesus responded, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.’ But based upon their response, and while the implied identity of the father of these Jews at this point could seem ambiguous to us, his audience surely understood what Jesus meant because they protested.
‘We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.’ Some might suggest that their response was a continuation from when they asked Jesus, ‘Where is your father?’ suggesting that they were alluding to rumors about Jesus’s legitimacy and questioning whether his father was truly Joseph. And while that interpretation might be valid considering the more plain and simple understanding of the word translated as sexual immorality, I do not think it is reasonable based on the rest of the surrounding context.
Because reasoning from the recent analogy to Ishmael, Abraham’s illegitimate son and the product of unlawful fornication, this makes their response a denial and rejection of Jesus’s allegation that they were not Abraham’s rightful heir. Instead, they did what they were accusing Jesus of doing, falsely claiming the Lord God as their father. But they didn’t mean it in the same natural paternal sense that Jesus did. Instead, they assumed this status as their right because God did claim all of Israel as his firstborn son and the Levites as his firstborn inheritance or possession.
He even claimed the schismatic northern kingdom as his son. But they either forgot or did not understand this, as Paul would teach in Romans 9:6-8, that every Israelite in history, that every Israelite did not belong to God’s elect Israel. See, these Jews were living in denial of the truth. They were not who they thought they were. They lived in an age when a person was ordinarily defined by who their father was, by their family, and by their ancestry. But their assumed pedigree was false.
Remember, Jesus was a carpenter because his earthly father was a carpenter. Andrew, Peter, James, and John were all fishermen because their fathers were fishermen. John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, he was a priest because he was a Levite from the division of Abijah. And the Jews were Jews because their family was Jewish, because they were descended from Jacob and Abraham. While the Gentiles were Gentiles because they were not descended from Jacob and they were not adopted into Israel.
And so when we view all of this through the lens of covenant, there are only two functional relationships that matter. Those that define how we relate to the Lord by whether one is in Adam and a child of the devil or one is in Christ and therefore a child of God, and whether a person is subject to Adam’s covenant of works or to Christ’s covenant of grace. This defines whose they are and it influences and directs what they do, which is Jesus’s next point that those in Adam are enemies of God, while all those in Christ are God’s children.
Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God, and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It’s because you cannot bear to hear my word.’
Explaining that people who belong to Christ, who have God as their Father, love Jesus and they will obey Christ because he is the perfect image of the Father who sent him. Whereas people who do not belong to Christ, they do not love him and hate him instead. They cannot withstand his presence, and they will staunchly and obstinately refuse to obey him. Rather than loving and obeying Jesus Christ and the eternally sovereign Father, they are just as closely related to their infernal father.
And in the same way as the elect Christians are related to Christ, Jesus tells them, ‘You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character. For he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.’
Jesus said that the devil was a murderer from the beginning because his ultimate goal and intention when he approached Eve in the garden in the guise of a serpent was the death and destruction of the human race. And the devil knows that the Lord God is true and that the Lord does not make empty threats. So when God told Adam that in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die, the devil knew that God would be obliged to carry out his judgment and enforce justice if Adam and Eve transgressed his covenant.
And Jesus also explains how the devil is a liar by his nature because the only means he had to affect humanity’s downfall was through deviousness, deception, by sowing doubt and distrust in the absolute truth—God’s truth, the truth about God and the truth about the capital T Truth, God the Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, since their father, the devil, is a murderer and a liar, they are also murderers and liars. Because their inclination, desire, and will is to do their father’s desires. So Jesus explains why they were seeking to kill him—because Jesus is the truth.
And because Jesus was telling them the truth and because Jesus was leading them to the truth and into fellowship and communion with the truth. See, throughout Jesus’s ministry, the devil and his children were doing everything they could to try and stop Christ. They were trying to thwart God’s sovereign will and eternal plan because Jesus came to undo the damage the devil had done to humanity’s relationship with the Lord God our Father.
That was the purpose and the point of the incarnation. God became man to restore humanity to a right relationship with God. Because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
See, the devil tried, and the devil is still trying to thwart God’s plan. But he cannot and he never will. Rather, all of the devil’s schemes, plots, and machinations were thwarted and rendered utterly futile the moment Jesus died upon the cross and had risen again on the third day. Still, although the war has been won, the spiritual and moral conflict continues to rage around us. And it will continue to rage until the great and glorious day when Christ returns and puts a final end to it.
And each and every one of us, all of us are soldiers in a spiritual army. The only question is which army. Are we the children of Abraham marching in God’s army or are we children of the devil marching in Satan’s? Whose side are we on? Whose side do we want to be on? And if we consider the choice objectively, knowing who and what scripture says God is, and knowing who and what scripture tells us the devil is, the choice should be obvious. I mean, there’s no hope and no help to be found with the devil. And our only hope and our greatest help is only to be found in Jesus.
Recognizing this, we remain in the midst of this conflict, and we can and we should take comfort by understanding the things that are going on around us in the world. I mean, we can see how these two armies are lined up against one another—good versus evil, right versus wrong, order versus chaos. We can identify individual battles and see how they affect one another because they are all related.
I mean, we have battles that are things like mercy ministry and charity work, relational evangelism, Christian charter schools, and homeschooling versus others like Planned Parenthood, sexual grooming of all kinds, social lawlessness or civic violence, and immoral media content. We can also see how things that might appear only to be minor can have a broader and deeper impact upon the wide spiritual landscape.
Think about the difference between a kind word and a helping hand versus belittlement and stolen opportunities, encouragement versus discouragement, even leaving a penny versus emptying out the change cup, or letting a hurrying car merge into your lane versus cutting off others when rushing through traffic yourself. See, each and every kind of those things in their life add to the spiritual environment either positively or negatively because each of the many things we do flows out of our heart, and our heart is fueled by the one who dwells within it, by the one to whom we belong, who is our commanding general.
As Christians, as the children of Abraham, all of our good works are done from out of our love for God because God has already saved us from out of his love for us. We demonstrate our love for God by loving our neighbors. And so we live with hope, expecting a future far better than what we presently know. And we share the good news that we presently enjoy because we also want others to enjoy its benefit. I mean, we want to see the world become a better place, both because we know that God will make it a better place when Christ returns, but also as part of our repentance from sin, our active repentance, working to restore and repair the damage that we, and this is a collective, we as humanity and our wickedness have done to the world, because we have been given a ministry of reconciliation.
But the reprobate and unregenerate children of the devil, they do everything they do out of hate. They are motivated and fueled by their hate for God and the sovereignty of his created order. They hate God’s moral law and everything reasonable. They hate the world because God made it. They hate whatever is good within themselves, hating all vestiges of the image of God that they willfully blind themselves to with their sinfulness, turning themselves into an idol, worship through their selfishness, their self-centeredness, and greed.
I mean, this is what drives all of our human self-destructive activities like drug use, sexual sin, our thrill-seeking, and all other risky behaviors. See, they hate everyone because they remind them of God. That is the true source of racism and sexism. And without understanding it, all that they want and everything they do works to further the devil’s ultimate goal and desire: the destruction of all things until he alone remains as the Lord of an ash heap.
So no matter whom we serve, no matter whom we owe our allegiance to, no matter through whom we relate to God—by Adam or by Christ—we all echo or, in a vague sense, channel our spiritual fathers by living and willing and doing as they will. And regardless of which, we each will do as our respective father desires. Just as we cannot rightly claim that the devil made me do it; he remains the initial instigator and the influencer of our sins.
So too, we cannot claim that Jesus made me do it, except that he is the first cause, the source, and the driving impetus for all of the good that we do for God’s glory and honor. Therefore, because like attracts like, we know who we are and we know to whom we belong because of the company that we keep and because of the things that we do together.
Because we know who and what the devil is—the biggest loser, impotent and ineffectual. And because we know who and what he is not—he is not God—we shall not fear him. Therefore, because we know who and what Jesus is, the Lord God Almighty, the truth and the logos, who is Theos and Andros, we shall not fear, for we are in him, and he is in us. So his rod and his staff both are a great comfort to us.
There is no neutral ground. We are all on active duty as spiritual soldiers. And while we may each have different roles or duties, skills, and abilities, we are all marching forward together in the same army, in the same direction with the same purpose and goal. We cannot and must not shirk our duties.
We have each been called by one side or the other, and everybody will answer. So fear not. Trust Jesus Christ in faith. Believe that Jesus, God the Son, has set you free—free from sin, free from service to the devil, and free from fear. And know that you are free indeed. Then live out your freedom by serving Christ and advancing his kingdom in the world against all the powers of darkness until he returns and establishes his reign at the final victory. Amen.