Exercising Authority Over Satan

Today, I’m going to share with you one basic scriptural fact which alone makes it possible for us to overcome evil. The fact is this: that Jesus has already defeated Satan on our behalf. The victory over Satan is not going to be won; it has been won. It was won when Jesus died, shed His blood on the cross, was buried, and rose again from the dead. That was Satan’s total, permanent, irreversible defeat.

And he does everything now that he can to keep us from understanding this fact. He cannot change the fact, but he does everything he can to keep us from knowing it, understanding it, and applying it.

For a statement of this victory of Jesus over Satan, I’m going to turn to Colossians chapter 2, verses 13 through 15.

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Now notice the next verse.

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities,” that’s Satan’s whole kingdom, all his evil powers. “Having disarmed them, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

So, actually, this is something that God the Father did through Jesus Christ the Son. At the cross, He disarmed all Satan’s forces that he uses against us. He stripped them of their weapons. He defeated them. And He not merely defeated them, but He triumphed over them. He made a public spectacle of them.

You see, a triumph is not just the winning of a victory; it’s the public demonstration and celebration of a victory that has already been won. It’s the demonstration of defeated enemies led in chains as captives behind the triumphal conqueror’s chariot. And at the cross, Jesus defeated Satan and all his evil forces, stripped them of their weapons against us, and put them to a public shame. He triumphed over them. He made a public spectacle of them.

Now, we cannot understand how Jesus did this unless we see what took place at the cross. At the cross, Jesus deprived Satan of his basic weapon against us. You remember what I said? That was guilt. That’s why he accuses. He wants to prove us guilty. Well, at the cross, Jesus dealt with the basis of our guilt in two ways.

First of all, through the cross, all our sins can be forgiven. So Jesus dealt with the past. He provided forgiveness of past sins. Secondly, at the cross, God canceled the written code, that’s the law, with its regulations, for it was against us. It stood opposed to us. We could never get to God because of the law and its requirements, because we could never meet those requirements. But at the cross, God took that out of the way. The law was nailed to the cross.

When Jesus died on our behalf, as our representative, He paid the final penalty for all who had broken the law: death. And once we’ve paid the final penalty, then we are no longer subject to the requirements of the law. So Jesus made it possible for us to be set free totally from guilt. First of all, our past sins can be completely forgiven. Secondly, we are no longer required to observe the law as a means to achieving righteousness with God. Instead, we come to God on the basis of our faith in the death of Jesus, and our faith is credited to us as righteousness.

Now, let’s look at the result of what Jesus did. We go back to Colossians chapter 1, verses 12 through 14, where Paul says this:

“Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Notice, it all centers around our redemption through the cross. Through that redemption, we have forgiveness of sins. We are no longer required to observe the law in order to achieve righteousness. And so, by that, God has done two things.

He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and He has brought us into the kingdom of light. Notice that darkness has dominion. It’s a real kingdom. Never pretend that Satan doesn’t have power. He does have power. His power initially came from God, the only source of power. But in his wickedness and in his rebellion, he has turned it and used it against God and against God’s people. But through the death of Jesus on the cross, we’ve been delivered from that whole evil dominion of darkness, the kingdom of Satan, and we have been brought into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. There’s been a total transition. We have to see that, effected through the cross. We’ve been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, and we’ve been carried over into the kingdom of light. We are no longer under Satan’s dominion. Rather, we’re in a kingdom which has dominion over Satan, for the scripture says that God’s kingdom rules over all.

Once we have been delivered from this dominion of darkness, and once we’ve become citizens of the kingdom of God, then God sends us forth as His representatives, as His army, to administer the victory of Jesus over Satan. Jesus won the victory, but God leaves it to us, through faith, to understand the victory that Jesus has won and then to administer it, to exercise authority over Satan.