Can we blame the devil for our sins?

Question 6017.

It is tempting to blame the devil for our sins, and the temptation is almost as old as sin itself. Adam blamed the woman and by implication the God who gave her, the woman blamed the serpent, and the pattern has been running ever since.

Scripture takes our enemy entirely seriously. It also refuses, absolutely and without exception, to let him carry the responsibility that belongs to me.

The first attempt to blame the devil did not work

Genesis 3 gives us the original enquiry. God asks the man what he has done, and the man produces a masterpiece of evasion: the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate (Genesis 3:12-13). Two accusations and a confession squeezed in at the end.

The woman then says the serpent deceived her, and she ate. Her statement is true. The serpent had deceived her. And it makes no difference whatever to the outcome. God does not say that in view of the deception the sentence is suspended. All three are addressed, and all three bear consequences.

That sets the pattern for the whole Bible. Deception is real, temptation is real, and neither of them transfers guilt. When we blame the devil we are repeating a defence that has already been heard and rejected once, in the only courtroom that matters.

Where sin actually comes from

James traces the sequence with a precision that leaves no room for outsourcing. Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire; then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin (James 1:14-15). His own desire, not somebody else’s suggestion.

The imagery is drawn from fishing and from childbirth. A lure only works on a fish that wants what is on the hook. The enemy is an expert at presentation, but he supplies no appetite. The appetite is mine, and it is the appetite that makes the presentation effective.

Jesus said the same thing about the source. From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery. He located the factory inside the person. That is a good deal less flattering than blaming an external enemy, which is probably why we prefer the alternative.

The enemy is real and he is not omnipotent

None of this reduces the devil to a metaphor. He is a created being of great intelligence and long experience, he prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8), and he has schemes that Paul assumes believers will recognise. Anyone who treats him as a joke has not read the New Testament attentively.

But note what Peter tells us to do about it. Resist him, firm in your faith. The instruction assumes the ability to refuse. If resistance were impossible, the command would be cruelty. James adds that if we resist the devil he will flee from us, which is not the behaviour of an irresistible force.

He is a creature, not a rival deity. He cannot read your mind, cannot be in two places at once, and cannot make you do anything. He can suggest, pressure, accuse and deceive, and that is a formidable arsenal, but it stops at the door of the will.

Influence, oppression and the limits of the argument

There are situations where genuine spiritual oppression is in play, and I am not one of those who explains everything by psychology. Believers can give ground, as Paul implies when he tells the Ephesians not to give the devil an opportunity (Ephesians 4:27), and ground given can be difficult to recover.

Even there the logic runs the wrong way for the excuse. The opportunity was given. The anger was nursed past sundown, the bitterness was kept warm, the habit was fed. Oppression that follows a series of choices is not an alibi for those choices.

I have written elsewhere on where the ground is lost in the study on giving no place to the devil. The pastoral point is that recognising the enemy’s activity should make me more careful, not less accountable.

Why we reach for the excuse and blame the devil

Blame is a painkiller. If the fault lies out there, then nothing about me needs to change, and the discomfort of self examination can be avoided for another week. It is a very effective anaesthetic and it does nothing whatever for the injury.

There is a religious version too, which is worse because it sounds spiritual. A man who says he was under attack has framed his failure as evidence of his importance to the kingdom. I have heard it done, and I have very nearly done it myself, which is how I recognise it.

The trouble is that a sin I have not owned is a sin I cannot repent of, and a sin I cannot repent of is a sin I will repeat. To blame the devil is to lock the door on the only exit.

Confession is the way back

The gospel makes ownership safe. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Confession is not grovelling; the Greek behind it means to say the same thing, to agree with God about what happened.

That is why honesty costs a believer so little in the end. The penalty has already been carried. When I stop trying to blame the devil and simply say what I did, I am not walking towards condemnation. I am walking towards a Father who has been waiting for exactly that sentence.

David spent a year avoiding it and described the experience as his bones wasting away. Then he wrote that he acknowledged his sin and did not cover his iniquity, and that God forgave it. The relief in Psalm 32 is audible, and it arrived the moment the excuses stopped.

Resist rather than blame

The New Testament pattern is straightforward. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). The order matters: submission first, resistance second. Resistance attempted without submission is willpower, and willpower is not enough.

Practically that means putting on the armour, which is a list of things you do rather than feel: truth, righteousness, readiness with the gospel, faith, the certainty of salvation, and the Word of God used aloud. It means prayer, and it usually means telling one other believer the truth about where you are.

The enemy is defeated, and the cross is where it happened. He fights as a condemned prisoner rather than as a reigning king, and every believer who resists him is fighting a battle whose outcome was settled at Calvary.

What we can properly lay at his door

Refusing to blame the devil for our sins does not mean pretending he has done nothing. Scripture credits him with a great deal. He is the father of lies, and the atmosphere of falsehood we breathe is partly his manufacture. He is the accuser of the brethren, and the voice that tells a forgiven believer that forgiveness cannot possibly extend this far has his accent.

He blinds the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4). He snatches away the word that has been sown. He masquerades as an angel of light, which means the most dangerous falsehoods will arrive looking respectable and quoting Scripture, exactly as they did in the wilderness.

So there is real work to attribute to him, and Christians who ignore it fight badly. The distinction I am pressing is narrow but absolute: he supplies the pressure and the packaging, and I supply the consent. Only one of those is sin, and it is mine.

Demonic influence and the believer

People sometimes ask whether a Christian can be so afflicted that responsibility is genuinely diminished. I would not rule it out entirely; Scripture describes bondage, strongholds and a snare in which people are held captive to do the enemy’s will. Long entrenched sin does narrow a person’s sense of freedom, and pastors should say so rather than pretending every struggle is a simple matter of choosing better.

What I do not find anywhere is the idea that the believer is a puppet. Paul writes to churches full of people with appalling backgrounds and tells them to put off the old ways and put on the new, which is an instruction to responsible agents. The indwelling Spirit is greater than the pressure, and the New Testament never treats that as theory.

Where the bondage is deep, the answer is not to blame the devil and wait for a dramatic deliverance. It is repentance, the closing of doors, the support of the local church, prayer, Scripture, and often patient practical help over a long period. That is less exciting and considerably more effective. See also the study on habitual and addictive sin.

Adam, Israel and the long history of excuses

The habit of shifting responsibility runs right through the biblical story. Aaron told Moses that he threw the gold into the fire and out came this calf, which is possibly the least convincing sentence in the Old Testament. Saul explained that the people had spared the animals and that he had been afraid of them. Pilate washed his hands in a bowl and considered the matter closed.

In every case the excuse is partly true and entirely useless. The people did pressure Saul. The crowd did demand a crucifixion. And the responsibility stayed exactly where it started, because responsibility does not move simply because we would prefer it somewhere else.

When we blame the devil we join a long and undistinguished line. It is worth noticing that not one member of that line was helped by the attempt.

So, now what?

Take one thing you have been quietly attributing to pressure, circumstance or attack, and say it plainly to God as your own. Not as a general apology, but as a specific admission. Watch what that does.

Then take the enemy seriously in the right way. It is possible to blame the devil for everything and resist him in nothing, which is the worst of both worlds. Stop giving him opportunities, close the doors you know are open, and stop nursing the resentment you have been describing as a personality trait.

Notice too where the impulse to blame the devil comes from in the first place. It is fear of what ownership will cost, and the gospel has already answered that fear at the cross.

You do not have to blame the devil to acknowledge that he exists, and you do not have to carry the guilt you own, because Jesus has already carried it. Which will you do first this week, the owning or the resisting?

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7 (ESV)