Lucifer was perhaps the greatest of all angelic creatures.  He was created by God to be beautiful and perfect in many ways.  The problem began when he began to notice his beauty.  Pride seeped into his heart.  Pride led to self-will in that he wanted to be like God and self-will to rebellion.  Lucifer became known as the Adversary, or more commonly referred to as “Satan” which is the Hebrew word for adversary.  Satan apparently led other angels (now referred to as demons) into rebellion sometime before the creation of man.

The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image to love and be loved.  Because of Satan’s hatred toward God and his consuming desire to be worshipped, he successfully tempted God’s original creation, Adam and Eve, to fall into sin and condemnation.  This act of rebellion became a curse for all mankind which Christians refer to as “original sin”.  Satan continues his unrelenting, world-wide struggle against God and all goodness.  His ultimate goal is to defeat the divine plans of God’s grace by seducing people to reject God and worship him (the world) instead.  His primary method is through lies and deception — about himself, his purpose (man’s eternal ruin), his activities, and his coming defeat.

God had the power to destroy Satan at the moment he became the Adversary.  Instead, in his divine wisdom, God has chosen to tolerate Satan and uses him to test man until that final day of judgment.  On that day, Satan and all the other enemies of God will be cast into the “lake of burning sulfur” called hell. 

In the ongoing conflict between good and evil, it certainly seem as though God has given Satan every advantage.  Yet, we can be assured that God’s victory is certain.  The world will try and tell us something completely different.  We get easily distracted by what Satan has contrived to focus our attention away from eternal truths.  The most important truth there to know is the absolute assurance of God’s victory over the world and Satan.  The symbol of assurance and God’s victory is the cross.

To help understand how a cross can be a symbol of victory is to recall that God created us perfectly.  However, we can’t on our own make ourselves what God intended us to be because of original sin.  Our bodies have become corrupted and imperfect.  What we need is a new start, a new creation, a clean slate.  God became man and died on the cross to reconcile us with God and to give us a new life in Christ.  He became our perfect substitute and took the eternal punishment of hell in our place.  By faith, Christ becomes our substitute so we can be declared perfect through Jesus Christ.  It is only through Christ that we enter a personal relationship with God and are declared holy and perfect; just like God originally intended us to be.  This is the certain victory that God gives us through faith in Jesus.

 

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