THE DEVIL AND HIS DESTINY
We believe that Satan is the adversary of Christ and the people of God, and that his destiny is everlasting conscious punishment.
Here we are at Halloween and I have arrived, unintentionally and perhaps providentially and appropriately, at the last point of our statement of faith – what we believe about Satan!
If I remember correctly, we retained this statement when we updated the statement of faith and the Constitution in the early years of my service here, simply because the founders of the church felt it important to included it, and we wanted to be true to the spirit of our founding.
Satan is a minor character in the Old Testament, mentioned by name in only three places (1 Chronicles 21.1; Job 1-2; Zechariah 3.1-2). There is also the serpent in Genesis 3, identified as the devil in Revelation 12.9.
In the New Testament, Satan is the deceiver and the tempter and in those characteristics is the adversary, first of Jesus, and then of Jesus’ followers. He and his minions are depicted as defeated by the work of Christ (Revelation 12) but as continuing to be the driving force behind opposition to the gospel and those who preach it or believe it.
Satan through the centuries has always been depicted as disgusting and grotesque – evil at the far extremes. Personally, I have come to see the devil to be more like the creatures in C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters”: similar to fallen people, believing in the glorification of self and whatever attends that – the quest for power and pleasure, the careless exploitation of others for those ends, and the ruthless ruination of those who become obstacles to those ends – and opposed to any notion of having to submit to another being – including God.
Jesus told His disciples that hell was “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25.41) – an everlasting conscious punishment.
Again, C. S. Lewis says it more eloquently than I can:
“You will remember that in the parable, the saved go to a place prepared for THEM, while the damned go to a place never made for men at all. To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man; it is “remains”. To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God; to HAVE BEEN a man – to be an ex-man or “damned ghost” – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will. It is, of course, impossible to imagine what the consciousness of such a creature – already a loose congeries of mutually antagonistic sins rather than a sinner – would be like.” – The Problem of Pain, Chapter 8: “Hell”
Hell, the punishment made for insolent self-absorbed evil spirits like the devil, is a frightfully unimaginable and inhuman prospect. And it’s supposed to be.
Here we are at Halloween and I have arrived, unintentionally and perhaps providentially and appropriately, at the last point of our statement of faith – what we believe about Satan!
If I remember correctly, we retained this statement when we updated the statement of faith and the Constitution in the early years of my service here, simply because the founders of the church felt it important to included it, and we wanted to be true to the spirit of our founding.
Satan is a minor character in the Old Testament, mentioned by name in only three places (1 Chronicles 21.1; Job 1-2; Zechariah 3.1-2). There is also the serpent in Genesis 3, identified as the devil in Revelation 12.9.
In the New Testament, Satan is the deceiver and the tempter and in those characteristics is the adversary, first of Jesus, and then of Jesus’ followers. He and his minions are depicted as defeated by the work of Christ (Revelation 12) but as continuing to be the driving force behind opposition to the gospel and those who preach it or believe it.
Satan through the centuries has always been depicted as disgusting and grotesque – evil at the far extremes. Personally, I have come to see the devil to be more like the creatures in C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters”: similar to fallen people, believing in the glorification of self and whatever attends that – the quest for power and pleasure, the careless exploitation of others for those ends, and the ruthless ruination of those who become obstacles to those ends – and opposed to any notion of having to submit to another being – including God.
Jesus told His disciples that hell was “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25.41) – an everlasting conscious punishment.
Again, C. S. Lewis says it more eloquently than I can:
“You will remember that in the parable, the saved go to a place prepared for THEM, while the damned go to a place never made for men at all. To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man; it is “remains”. To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God; to HAVE BEEN a man – to be an ex-man or “damned ghost” – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will. It is, of course, impossible to imagine what the consciousness of such a creature – already a loose congeries of mutually antagonistic sins rather than a sinner – would be like.” – The Problem of Pain, Chapter 8: “Hell”
Hell, the punishment made for insolent self-absorbed evil spirits like the devil, is a frightfully unimaginable and inhuman prospect. And it’s supposed to be.