Satan Believes the Bible

Satan believes the Bible is the word of God. He agrees with the bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me.”

A popular pursuit in my high school days was hunting through the Bible to find a “life verse.” I never really liked that fad. Shouldn’t one’s life be based on the entire revelation of God rather than one small snippet? I thought limiting myself to a single passage, like a cliché inscribed upon the page of a calendar, was a bit unnerving. Likewise, it seemed to me that it would be so easy for such a verse to be pulled out of context.

Forced by my youth group to pick something, in my teenage rebelliousness, I wound up picking Ecclesiastes 10:19:

A feast is made for laughter,
wine makes life merry,
and money is the answer for everything

It seemed perfect for my purposes: ludicrous , devoid of context, and funny. People were appalled, but had difficulty criticizing my choice since it was, after all, from the Bible. And how can one criticize the Bible?

Satan has read and studied the Bible. He can quote it. Satan’s use of scripture in some ways may be similar to what I did with that passage.

In the story of Satan’s temptation of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, we find Satan easily quoting a passage from the Bible at Jesus. What does his use of Scripture there—and Jesus’ responses, using the Bible in retaliation—tell us about Satan’s beliefs about the word of God—and his understanding of it?

The lone quotation that Satan makes from the Bible is recorded in both Matthew and Luke (Matthew 4:5-6 and Luke 4:10-11). He quotes from Psalm 91:11-12. He does so based on his understanding of it as part of a messianic psalm. That is, like most scholars of Jesus’ day, Satan understands it as a promise given to God’s Son in his incarnation as the Messiah. That’s why Satan begins the temptation as a demand for proof, “if you are the son of God,” before issuing the challenge that he toss himself off the temple and demonstrate that fact.

According to the Gospel of John (John 8:42-44), Jesus describes the Pharisees as being the children of Satan in their beliefs and practices.

So how did the Pharisees interpret the Bible? Consider their conclusions about the Messiah: who he would be, where he would come from, and how he would act. They had created a well-developed character study. They’d made a list of things that he must do and ways he must behave. He would be a stickler for the Law. He would condemn sinners. He would rail against the Roman government.

By their estimation, Jesus failed to live up to what they had decided they knew was necessary for someone to be the genuine savior of Israel. He was loose about keeping the Sabbath. He spent time with disreputable people. He was not overtly political.

Based on their list, Jesus did not match their requirements and so they concluded what was only obvious to them: that he could not be the Messiah. Because Jesus could not be who he claimed to be, they had to find alternative explanations for those things in his performance that otherwise would seem to confirm his identity. Miracles were explained away as the works of Satan. What else could they be, since Jesus’ actions contradicted parts of their list? They could not imagine the possibility that their criteria was off in any way. They never considered the possibility that they had misunderstood something. They were certain that what they had decided about the Bible’s meaning was identical to what the Bible actually meant.

When Jesus preached, “you have heard it said, but I say to you” they did not hear Jesus correcting their misreading of Scripture. Rather, they heard Jesus contradicting Scripture. In their minds, they knew what the Bible said and what Jesus was saying was different from what they knew it said. Pharisees took the Bible seriously. They were committed to the Bible. The Bible was the word of God and must be obeyed without fail.

Satan takes the Bible just as seriously. When he quoted the Bible to Jesus he believed that he was making a powerful argument. If Jesus really were the son of God, then he would not be able to resist the Bible—the very word of God—and would be forced to obey it.

So when he told Jesus to jump off the temple, the Devil had every reason to expect that Jesus would have no choice but to do just that. He was doubtless surprised when Jesus said no and forced Satan to consider an entirely different way of understanding the verses. Satan had taken the passage in Psalms as a blanket promise or even a command. He hadn’t considered the possibility that it couldn’t be used as a blank check against God’s account.

Satan is not infallible as a biblical scholar. His own biases get in his way as much as they did for the Pharisees—or if we’re honest, with us. But Satan, like most Christians and like the Pharisees, believes the Bible and accepts it as the Word of God. He views it as authoritative. He is certain that if he can demonstrate something biblically, he has proven something, and that it cannot be argued against. This belief is also clear from the fact that Jesus, in responding to each of Satan’s temptations, quotes the Bible at Satan, because Jesus knows that Satan believes the Bible and accepts it as valid, truthful, and an authority that must be accepted. When Jesus responded to Satan’s temptations with Scripture, Satan accepted the responses and backed down.

So we can be confident that Satan believes the Bible and studies it. He wants to figure out just what it says. However, Satan approaches it counter to something Paul says about the spirit of the law verses the letter of the law (see 2 Corinthians 3:6, Romans 2:29, 7:6). The Pharisees—along with those who think like them today—approach the Bible much as a lawyer might approach a deposition or the statements of a witness. They want the list that will tell them what to do in all eventualities; they want the rules laid out so they know what they can’t do, and so they can figure out what they can do without violating any of the other rules. Satan thinks like a lawyer–or an engineer.

The essence of this sort of approach to the Bible, with its focus on discovering the rules, is that such readers get locked into thinking about rules rather than on what’s right. They forget that Jesus and Paul argue that the law—all laws—can be summed up by “love your neighbor as yourself” (see Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-31, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14). If one focuses on what’s best for others, remarkably one doesn’t have an inclination to harm them. Love fulfills all rules.

But of course Satan doesn’t see that, can’t imagine it matters, and thus misses the whole point of the Bible in his obsession with what he thinks are the rules and regulations.