Who is Satan?

Question 08117.

Knowing who Satan is matters more than most Christians realise, because almost every error in this area comes from a false picture rather than from a false verse. Get his size wrong and you will either live in fear of him or ignore him altogether, and both mistakes suit him perfectly well.

So let me set out the biblical portrait. It is more sober than the horror film version and more serious than the pantomime one, and it ends somewhere that ought to steady any believer who has been unsettled by this subject.

Who Satan Is: A Created Being, Not a Rival Power

The foundation of understanding who Satan is lies in a single fact: he is a creature. Colossians 1:16 sweeps every invisible authority into the category of things created through Christ and for Christ, and that includes the one who later rebelled.

This rules out the dualism that lurks behind most popular thinking, in which God and the devil are matched opponents locked in a contest whose outcome remains open. There is no such contest. The relationship is not God against Satan but creature against Creator, which is not a contest at all.

Job 1 shows this plainly. Satan appears among the sons of God, must ask permission, and operates only within limits that God sets and can tighten at will. That is not the behaviour of an equal, and any picture of him that forgets it will produce fear where there should be confidence.

His Names Tell You His Trade

Scripture names him according to what he does. Satan translates a Hebrew word meaning adversary, and the Greek diabolos means slanderer or accuser. He is called the tempter, the deceiver of the whole world, the father of lies, the accuser of our brothers, the evil one, and the god of this world.

Look at that list and a pattern emerges immediately. Almost every title concerns speech. He accuses, slanders, tempts, deceives and lies. Notice what is absent. He is never called the destroyer of the elect, the thief of salvation, or anything suggesting he can undo God’s work.

That is a large part of the answer to who Satan is. He is a liar with a long career and an excellent memory for your weak points, and his weapons are almost entirely verbal.

Keep that list in view whenever you are trying to work out who Satan is in a given situation. If something in your life is accusing you, condemning you, or whispering that God has changed His mind about you, the source is not hard to identify. The accuser has one line of work and he has had a very long time to perfect it.

Where He Came From

Scripture gives us the fall of a high-ranking angelic being through pride, using the oracles against the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14 and the prince of Tyre in Ezekiel 28. Both passages describe human rulers, and both reach beyond them to a figure whose fall was from heaven and whose sin was self-exaltation.

I am comfortable holding that dual reference without forcing an either or. The human kings are real, and behind their arrogance stands the original arrogance. Paul warns against appointing a new convert as an elder lest he become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil, which assumes exactly this account.

So who Satan is, historically, is a creature who was given a high place and wanted a higher one. I have written more fully on how Satan fell.

What He Can Do

He is genuinely dangerous and I have no wish to minimise him. He tempts, as he did with Eve and with Jesus. He accuses believers before God, as Revelation 12 describes. He blinds the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel, which 2 Corinthians 4:4 states directly.

He can hinder ministry, as Paul says he hindered his travel to Thessalonica. He can afflict physically within limits, as Job’s account shows and as Paul’s thorn may indicate. He works through deception, counterfeit and disguise, appearing as an angel of light and sponsoring teaching that sounds almost right.

That is a serious portfolio, and it is why Peter tells us to be watchful. But every item on it operates within permission, and none of it can touch the believer’s standing in Christ.

What He Cannot Do

Here is where knowing who Satan is becomes liberating. He is not everywhere. He is one finite being who can only be in one place at a time, which means that the great majority of Christians have never had his personal attention and never will.

He cannot read your mind. Nothing in Scripture grants him access to your thoughts, though he can observe your behaviour with centuries of accumulated skill and make excellent guesses. He cannot create, since creation belongs to God alone, so his miracles are limited to counterfeit and manipulation.

Above all he cannot separate you from Christ. Romans 8 lists angels, rulers and powers among the things that cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the sentence that settles the whole question for a believer.

Nor can he compel you. Temptation is not coercion, and the New Testament never allows a believer to say the devil made me do it. That is worth stating clearly, because a distorted view of who Satan is can quietly erode the responsibility that Scripture insists on. He can suggest with great skill. The decision remains yours.

Is He Literal or Symbolic?

Some readers will have been taught that Satan is a personification of evil rather than a person. I do not think that survives contact with the text. He speaks, he is spoken to, he plans, he asks, he leaves and returns, he is judged, and he receives a sentence.

More decisively, Jesus dealt with him as a person during the temptation, quoting Scripture to him and dismissing him. Symbols do not offer someone the kingdoms of the world, and they do not depart until an opportune time.

So who Satan is includes the plain fact that he is a somebody rather than a something. See my fuller answer on whether Satan is literal.

His Present Position

At the moment he has real influence in this world system. He is called its god and its ruler, and 1 John says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. That explains a great deal about the age we live in without excusing any of it.

But his position is that of a condemned man awaiting sentence rather than a monarch in secure possession. The cross disarmed the powers and made a public spectacle of them, and Hebrews says Jesus took on flesh in order to destroy through death the one who has the power of death.

So who Satan is now is a defeated enemy conducting a loud and destructive retreat, which is precisely why he is so busy. Revelation 12 says he comes down in great wrath because he knows his time is short.

His Certain End

The Bible does not leave his story open. He will be bound during the Millennium, released briefly, defeated finally, and thrown into the lake of fire where he will be tormented day and night for ever.

That end is not in doubt and it is not conditional on anything we do. When we speak about resisting the devil, we are not fighting to secure a victory but standing in one that has already been won.

For the sequence in detail see what will happen to Satan and why he is released after the Millennium.

Why Knowing Who Satan Is Changes Things

A believer’s practical experience of the Christian life is shaped enormously by the picture they carry of the enemy. I have watched people paralysed by an inflated view of him, unable to make a decision without wondering whether it was an attack, and I have watched others walk into obvious spiritual danger because they thought the whole subject belonged to the Middle Ages.

The biblical portrait corrects both. Knowing who Satan is means knowing that he is real enough to require armour and small enough to flee when resisted. Those two facts sit together comfortably in Scripture and they should sit together in us.

It also puts the focus where it belongs. Every passage that tells us about the enemy tells us far more about Christ, and none of them invite us to spend our time studying him. Paul says we are not ignorant of his designs, which is a long way short of being preoccupied with them.

The Question Behind the Question

People usually ask who Satan is because something has happened. A frightening experience, a run of trouble, a sin they cannot shake, a family history that worries them. The doctrinal question is often carrying a pastoral weight underneath it.

If that is you, let me say the thing that matters most. Whatever is happening, your position in Christ is not in question and the enemy has no authority over it. He may make a great deal of noise, and noise is genuinely distressing, but he has no legal standing where a believer is concerned because the case was settled at the cross.

Take practical steps by all means. Confess what needs confessing, cut off whatever gives him leverage, tell a mature Christian, and pray. But do it as someone who is secure rather than someone who is negotiating, since that is what you actually are. See what resisting the devil looks like in practice.

So, now what?

Put your picture of him back to biblical scale. Not a myth, not a cartoon, not a dark equal of God, but a created, finite, defeated, malicious and thoroughly serious enemy who works mainly through lies.

Then respond the way Scripture tells you to. Resist him and he flees. Stand in the armour God supplies. Keep your conscience clear so he has less to work with. Fill your mind with truth, because lies lose their grip in the light. And when you next find yourself unsettled by him, ask yourself honestly whether you have been believing something about him that the Bible never said.

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.

John 8:44 (ESV)