The scriptures and the lives of God’s saints bear witness to the existence of the devil. The devil is a fallen bodiless spirit, an angel created by God for His service and praise. Together with the devil are his hosts of wicked angelic powers who have rebelled against the goodness of God and seek to pervert and destroy God’s good creation.
How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, Day Star, son of Dawn!
And the angels which did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day . . . (Jude 6, cf. 2 Pet 2.4).
. . . the devil and satan, the deceiver of the world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Rev 12.9).
In the New Testament the Lord Jesus speaks of the devil whom He called “prince of this world” (Jn 12.31, 14.30, 16.11) in this way:
He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8.44).
The devil and his multitude of evil spirits, “the principalities . . . the powers . . . the world rulers of this present darkness . . . the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places” (Eph 6.12) war against man seeking to destroy him by ensnaring him in sin.
Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour (1 Pet 5.8).
Christ has destroyed the power of the devil. He came into the world precisely for this reason. If one is “in Christ” he is led out of temptation and delivered from the evil one. If one is in Christ, the evil, who is also called Satan, which means the Adversary who “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11.14), cannot deceive or harm him. To be victorious over the alluring and deceiving temptations of the devil is the goal of spiritual life.
