It is part of the name of a movie released in 2021. The phrase “the devil made me do it” appears to make light of the reality of the devil and the power and influence of this spirit being on the lives of humans some time after we started on this planet.
Folks, he does not carry a pitch fork when he goes to work!
There are a couple of things that needed to be emphasized here. Firstly, the devil is real and the only real way to know the real truth about him (let’s use that pronoun) is to listen to the One who is before him. Let’s spin the imagination a bit. Let’s consider a loving parent who now has a son that was found guilty in a court of law as a serial killer.
We are just imagining… ok? If that parent decides, in all honesty and truthfulness, to tell the story of the son’s childhood years from kindergarten through college you may make better sense of the transition in the son’s life – from innocence to heartlessness.
The parent knows that son; and most likely, can describe the son’s choices and transformation over time. The parent, and the society struck by his terror, may be equally baffled and bewildered by the choices that were made. But they are real choices made by a real son. The Bible gives a similar account of a real angel called Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12-17 and Revelation 12:7-9.
Secondly, the devil or Satan is NOT your friend. If I were the devil, I would try my best to make those who believer in Jehovah God think that I am harmless – that I am not who the Bible describes me to be. Contrarywise, this is how Jesus in the book of Revelation describes that archenemy to the apostle John:
So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” –Revelation 12:9 (NKJV)
That does not sound like just a “friendly ghost” to me!
Back in the 1990’s during the First Gulf War, I wrote a blog [I think Blogger was CMS of choice back then] article partly lamenting how many people (including some Christians) do not pay much attention to the existence of the devil – the enemy of our souls. A US soldier stationed near the Kuwait-Iraq border wrote a comment to my article and said, “I agree with you. Where I am right now, I cannot afford to forget for a single moment that there is an enemy across the lines. The moment I do, I might be dead!” (paraphrase)
Listen to the language the Bible uses when talking about the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. –Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV)
We are not up against an ordinary enemy. It’s true that according to the Bible, the devil is a loser, but devils don’t give up as long as they are devils. They must be destroyed. So until that happens, we need to “take on the whole armor of God, that you [we] may be able to withstand” his onslaught.
The Great Controversy
One of the most difficult questions asked by people who struggle to believe in God is this: If God is in control and if He is greater than the devil, why is there so much suffering in the world?
There is no way to satisfactorily answer this question unless you understand the conflict between good and evil. How did it begin? What is sin? Who are the parties? What is Satan really like? What does he really want? Who is God, what is His character, power, and justice like? And like every soldier and civilian in a conflict zone, we need to have a clear understanding of those issues.
This issue is so important that the trustees of the classic book The Great Controversy have made it available online to be read by everyone. It describes the struggle with sin from it’s inception (as we saw in the references to Isaiah and Revelation above) down to the coming resolution of the conflict. It deepens ones understanding of the struggle between good and evil. That book helped me better understand the puzzling question of why a merciful God would delay justice on the earth for so long.
The Deceiver
So when someone says, “the devil made me do it”, it is true. Although we have to take full responsibility for our actions, we know from scripture that the sin-fection (I mean sin infection) was deliberately unleashed by “that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9) as an act of war. He is the arch-deceiver and hence scripture encourages us to wear the “armor of God”. We are on a battlefield. We are encouraged to “resist the devil” (James 4:7) and to “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).
Humans are no match for the devil – no matter how disciplined and faithful we may have become by following Christ. And our Lord and Savior knows that. We are still living on the battlefield and we are still susceptible – everyone of us! This issue of the great controversy or the great struggle between good and evil has been guaranteed to end well for Christ and His followers.
The battle lingers but the war has been won. God tells us through the Bible how Lucifer – a perfect creation – chose to become serial-killer-in-chief. We also learn that Satan (in essence) is on death row, and he knows his time is short.
God has also communicated to us through His Word how much He loves us and wants to save us. It’s just a matter of time – the war will be over!
