A panoramic view of the creation, the enslavement and the redemption of all things is mapped out in the home page of this website. It is reproduced here for reference.
A theme that underlies the entire ministry of Jesus Christ is the apocalyptic assumption that God is battling Satan for all creation and the souls of all mankind. Jesus understood Himself to be the one in whom this battle was to be played out in a decisive way. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and establish God’s domain. This objective was accomplished when God the Son allowed Himself to be crucified (Heb 2:14) as the only possible sacrifice to generate the reconciliation, expiation and propitiation that took place between God and His creation and God and the souls of all mankind. The death of Jesus Christ occurred at a specific time and place (John 19:30); but the consequences of this substitutionary atonement instantly exploded throughout Heaven, Hell, and the universe, throughout all that has been, all that is and all that ever will be.
By the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, all creation was redeemed from the bondage of evil and each soul was offered redemption from the bondage of sin. But Satan was not a willing seller and is at war with God to retain possession. The outcome of the struggle was completely decided by the substitutionary atonement. Yet few would claim Jesus has set His corrupted creation free from the influence of Satan or set redeemed souls free from the influence of sin. Evil continues to rage; the world, at every level, is at war. Christians are on the front lines of this Great War between good and evil whether we like it or not. As we stand side by side with Jesus in this war, the suffering of the Christian soldier has a meaning and value to God commensurate with this titanic spiritual struggle of the ages.
God created the universe with such precision that the slightest change in any one of its properties would preclude our existence and God designed the earth as a home for man. God placed certain powerful angels in charge of His creation and instructed them to be good stewards. Some angels began to oppose God under the leadership of Satan, the most powerful and intelligent of all rebellious angels. Satan exercises a pervasive, structural and diabolical influence, on whatever he touches, which caused all creation to be captured by the bondage of evil. That which God created as good began to exhibit a pain-ridden, bloodthirsty, sinister and hostile demeanor. “Mother Nature,” became an inherently violent and terrifying system dominated by disease, suffering and death – a system red in tooth and claw. Man had not yet been created.
God set aside some real estate for the Garden of Eden and restored it to its condition prior to Satan’s diabolical influence. He then created Adam and Eve to live in this Garden. In full view of all the angels in Heaven, Satan demanded unrestricted access to Adam and Eve and, although they were created sinless, Satan won them over. Evil had taken up residence in the soul of man, that particular evil called sin. The will, intellect and heart of Adam and Eve had been possessed and permeated by sin. But what about us, the descendants of Adam and Eve?
God is just. God does not impute to us the individual sins of Adam and Eve. But He knew it would be pointless to allow the offspring of Adam and Eve to be born sinless. He knew they would follow exactly the same path as their created ancestors. So He allowed the generations of Adam and Eve’s offspring to be born with a sin nature. We are all born corrupt, averse to God and inclined to evil. However, for this depraved nature we are not responsible and no guilt or demerit attaches to it. We become responsible for this sin nature only after attaining the age of accountability and ratifying it as our own. The age of accountability is not the same for all persons and, for many, it may be very young indeed.
God knew, before the creation of the universe, that all this was going to happen. On one hand, God knew sin would prevent Him from fellowship with man; on the other hand, God knew He would love each individual unconditionally and would not want eternal separation to be the inevitable consequence of sin. But sin could not simply be overlooked; a price had to be paid for every crime. Unfortunately, if you and I paid the price for our own crimes, our souls would spend eternity in Hell. Before the universe began, God chose an incredible, astounding and magnificent solution to this dilemma.
Although God could have simply restored and repossessed His corrupted creation and the corrupted souls of mankind, His purity of wisdom, holiness, justice and truth demanded a punishment for every evil, particularly that evil called sin which resides in the human soul. Only one punishment, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, was great enough to redeem all creation from the bondage of evil and offer redemption from the bondage of sin to all mankind. But Satan will never acknowledge the efficacy of that punishment. He is battling God to retain possession of that which was given to him (Luke 4:5-7). The substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ began a new phase of warfare. It marked the denouement when God the Son redeemed all creation from the bondage of evil and began the process of setting creation free from the influence of Satan himself. That denouement also marked the instant when God the Son offered redemption from the bondage of sin to all mankind and began the process of setting redeemed souls free from the influence of sin itself. For a time and within limits, God continues to permit certain consequences of rampant rebellion and the brutal corruption of all life. But He expects His people to engage the enemy and be soldiers in His army.
In these last days, Satan is making a ferocious attempt to demean God, discredit man and destroy God’s relationship with man in full view of all the angels in Heaven! Satan’s all-consuming purpose is to drive an irremovable wedge between God and man, to effect an alienation that cannot be reconciled. Satan claims the concept of salvation by faith, the grace of God and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ is a sham. God the Father should not have attempted it, Jesus Christ could not have legitimately paid for it and you and I, driven by our sin nature, could never receive it. According to Satan, it’s all smoke and mirrors so that God can save his wretched humans without appearing to compromise His own character. The accusation, once raised, cannot be removed, not even by destroying the accuser. If the salvation offered to every man and woman can be exposed as a perversion of wisdom, holiness, justice and truth, then a chasm of alienation would stand between God and man that could not be bridged. Reconciliation would be unthinkable. God’s whole enterprise in creation would be radically and irrevocably flawed; He could only sweep it away in awful judgment as He nearly did once before (Gen 6:5-7).
As integral players in this Great War, the course of our Christian lives must never elicit the rulers and authorities in heavenly realms to question the manifold wisdom, holiness, justice and truth of God.
Christians eagerly anticipate the next denouement but the struggle is relentless!
From the instant of the incarnation to the instant of death on the cross (John 19:30), Satan was aggressively attempting to thwart the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. He was, however, constrained by certain Rules of Engagement, defined by God, and specifying such items as: when and where battles are waged, how winners and losers are determined, the consequences of winning and losing, the Allowed Weapons for each side and the Constraints on Effectiveness for each weapon. Satan could not, for example, arrange that Jesus should: be crushed by an ox-cart in a childhood accident, succumb to cancer as a teenager, meet death from ALS as a young man, or be killed in a construction accident as an adult. Satan could not afflict Jesus with devastating sickness, disease, injury, disability, anxiousness, despondency, desperation, hopelessness and fear. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus was the healer of all these things. They held no power over Him.
But Satan was able do the one thing that could, if successful, destroy the possibility of a substitutionary atonement. He could tempt Jesus to sin. For example, early in His ministry, Jesus, under guidance of the Holy Spirit, was led into the wilderness for 40 days where he was tempted to sin by Satan himself. Satan did not have the power to kill Jesus, but he tempted Jesus to commit a variety of sins such as the sin of presumption and the sin of betrayal. Jesus did not succumb!
Jesus experienced all normal human motivations such as hunger, thirst, weariness, sexual desire and loneliness. The one exception to human experience we find in Jesus is that He did not sin. He experienced desire, but He did not seek to satisfy those desires by sin.
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:15).
The spotless lamb, "without blemish," was required for the Passover (Ex 12:5) and the words, "without blemish," constantly recur in the descriptions of the sacrifices which pointed forward to the atonement accomplished by Christ.
The Scriptures are completely unanimous in declaring the perfect sinlessness of Christ under all circumstances. The sinlessness of Christ is not merely a personal attribute, characteristic of His human nature as well as His divine nature, but it is an attribute which is absolutely essential to the atonement. Satan knew that a single sin would disqualify Jesus as the legitimate agent of the substitutionary atonement.
Shortly before His arrest, Jesus prayed on the Mount of Olives:
Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done. (Luke 22:42)
Jesus did not fear death on the cross. He was incarnated as fully God and fully man to live a sinless life and die for crimes He did not commit. But the death had to follow a particular sequence of events known only to the three persons of the Trinity. Jesus was concerned that His human weakness might interfere with the proper execution of these events. But it did not! His death triumphantly met the self-imposed requirements of a substitutionary atonement. (See also Sections 1.4, 1.5, 1.24, 3.13, 11.7 and 13.20 of Theology Corner)
Oswald Chambers had a unique perspective on this issue:
“We can never fathom the agony in Gethsemane, but at least we need not misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and Man in one, face to face with sin. We know nothing about Gethsemane in personal experience. Gethsemane and Calvary stand for something unique; they are the gateway into Life for us.
It was not the death on the cross that Jesus feared in Gethsemane; He stated most emphatically that He came on purpose to die. In Gethsemane He feared lest He might not get through as Son of Man. He would get through as Son of God – Satan could not touch Him there; but Satan’s onslaught was that He would get through as an isolated Figure only; and that would mean that He could be no Saviour. Read the record of the agony in the light of the temptation: ‘Then the devil leaveth Him for a season.’ In Gethsemane Satan came back and was again overthrown. Satan’s final onslaught against our Lord as Son of Man is in Gethsemane.
The agony in Gethsemane is the agony of the Son of God in fulfilling His destiny as the Saviour of the world. The veil is drawn aside to reveal all it cost Him to make it possible for us to become sons of God. His agony is the basis of the simplicity of our salvation. The cross of Christ is a triumph for the Son of Man. It was not only a sign that Our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Every human being can get through into the presence of God now because of what the Son of Man went through.” (Chambers, April 5th)
We know very little about the earth-shattering, apocalyptic struggle between Satan and God the Son. We know a little about the Temptation in the Wilderness (Luke 4:1-13) and the Trials of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-42). But the daily aggression mounted by Satan against Jesus Christ is hidden from us.
