For a good portion of my life as a Christian, if you asked me to categorize supernatural beings in a hierarchical form and divide them into good guys and bad guys, it would have looked something like this:
| God | Satan |
| Angels | Demons |
The problem with my viewpoint (among other things) was that it treated Satan as if somehow he was a threat to God and God’s purposes in the world. It’s not as if I thought Satan was equal with God. I understood that Satan was a created being in rebellion. But somehow when it was categorized in my mind this way it seemed like the cosmic battle lines were drawn as if it was God vs. Satan, and God’s angels vs. Satan’s demons.
And while Satan might like to think that he can be a threat to God, this isn’t how Scripture portrays the cosmic battle that we find ourselves in. As we consider why there’s pain and suffering in the world, it’s important to recognize how the battle lines are actually drawn up.
Then Yahweh God said to the serpent,
“…I will put hostility between you and between the woman, and between your offspring and between her offspring; he will strike you on the head, and you will strike him on the heel.”
Genesis 3:14-15 LEB
Right from the start when pain and suffering entered the world, God Himself frames the battle that will play out over history. Notice the role God actually plays in Genesis 3. The hostility is not between Him and anyone else. God draws the battle lines between humanity and between the devil and his offspring. God is not threatened by any of this hostility. In Genesis 3, God is the Judge of lesser, created beings who pose no threat to Him. (Even when created beings want to be higher than Him, He is not threatened by it. He is still the Judge—e.g. Isaiah 14:12-15.)
For us humans, it’s important to recognize that hostility (and thus pain and suffering) exist because we are locked in this struggle. Humans can be seeds (or offspring) of the woman or of the devil. Scripture portrays people as both. This is why Jesus calls the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” (Matt. 12:34) and tells the Jews that want to kill Him that their father is the devil (John 8:44).
Conversely, the Messianic hope that runs throughout the Old Testament began with the promise of God in Genesis 3:15 that a seed of the woman would someday deliver a crushing blow to the serpent’s head. The serpent and his offspring (both supernatural and human) are what’s wrong with this world. And while there is hostility between the woman’s offspring and the serpent’s offspring (both supernatural and human), victory requires that the serpent himself be defeated. For this whole mess that we’re in to be fixed, the serpent has to be dealt with. What we need around here is a human that can crush this snake’s head.
If you’ve read the Old Testament, you know that mankind (including the family that God chose to be the conduit of His blessing to the world—Gen. 12:3) was beyond hope of being up to the challenge. There were plenty of people that we might have hoped would fill this role as the woman’s offspring (Abel, Noah, Moses, Joshua, David, etc.), but they all fell short. And those are just the good examples.
You know the rest of the story. In this age-long battle filled with hostility between the woman and the serpent, the Judge picked a side. This is why the Gospel is such an epic story. God Himself became a human so that humanity actually had a fighting chance. And this brings us back to my original paradigm of thinking that God and Satan were somehow locked in a game of Immortal Combat. The only reason there was ever a battle between God and Satan is because God became a human in Jesus.
Now, while Jesus did defeat the serpent and the forces of darkness (Col. 2:15, Heb. 2:14), you probably know that Satan (the serpent) is still around wreaking havoc, which means that hostility between the two seeds still exists, which means that pain and suffering still exist.
So, why didn’t God just take the devil out when Jesus was on earth? Well, the short answer is that God wants other humans to take part in the process (see the Epic Gospel book for more on this). Satan’s head will be crushed not only by Jesus, but also by the body of Christ (Rom. 16:20).
Up Next: The Problem of Pain: Why would God “put hostility?”
Epic Gospel 