When I was a teenager, I was taking a car trip wth a few of my friends during which I acted cruelly toward a complete stranger. As we were driving up a hill, we passed by an elderly man who had gotten off of his bike to push it up the steep grade. When we were close to him, I leaned out the window and shouted an expletive in his ear. It was designed to startle him, and I’ve no doubt that I did.
Many might chalk it up to the kind of immature ugliness associated with high school boys. In hindsight, however, I believe it is evidence of my being under the authority of Satan,“the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making excuses. I’m not mimicking the comedian Flip Wilson: “The devil made me do it.” What I’m saying is that I was as subject to the forces of evil, perhaps not in degree, but undoubtably in essence, as was the demoniac who confronted Jesus on the shore of Lake Galilee (Luke 8:26-33).
Demons delight in turning a man into a beast. They would have had no care, no desire, to see the glory of God manifested in the pitiful soul Jesus met. Anything they could do to vitiate God’s image in this man they would do out of their hatred for God. Their evil intent has not ceased, and will not cease until the day they are thrown into the abyss, the lake of eternal fire that God has prepared for them (Matthew 25:41). To the extent that my regretful actions participated in that vitiation, I showed myself to be in league with them.
But thanks be to God, in his mercy, those who have been made alive in Christ, are no longer at the whim of such evil influences. We have a new master to whom we are subject. And he is the one who has power over demons, even Satan himself. It is he who holds the keys to death and hell, and to whom all authority in heaven and earth has been given. And rather than being like a thief who only comes to steal and destroy, he has come to give life, and that more abundantly. Motivated by a deep eternal love, his intent is to cause the image of God to shine more gloriously through each of his brothers and sisters, enabling them to be agents of blessing and not sorrow.
By the grace of God, I believe that I would not now do what I did then, and for that I am grateful. I trust that you, too, can say such a thing, if you have been made alive in Christ. He really is making all things new (Revelation 21:5).
