Evil Characters
Most successful stories and movies require an antagonist of some kind—someone who intends evil, commits evil, or who opposes the good that other people are doing. During wartime, the antagonists are the enemy who must be defeated. When people are strongly divided in a discussion, the antagonist is the one who is “wrong” on policy issues.
The greatest antagonist of all is Satan. He intends to do evil. He commits and promotes evil wherever he can. He opposes everything that is done out of faith in Jesus. For Satan, there is no redemption or change from his evil will.
In the beginning, Satan managed to visit evil upon the human race by tempting Adam and Eve to disobey God and eat of the forbidden fruit. Satan continues his implacable hatred against God and His holy laws, against God’s Word and the message of salvation, and against those humans who are made children of God through baptism. Satan roams the earth ever seeking to devour God’s children by tempting them to doubt God and His Word, by urging them to disobey God, and by enticing them to love the things of this world more than God.
However, this evil antagonist did not conquer the world, though he greatly desired to. In His love and mercy, God sent His own Son to defeat Satan’s temptations and attacks. Jesus’ story is one of intense suffering and agony of spirit. Jesus was in every way tempted like we are, yet He was without sin. Jesus was born under God’s Law to keep it perfectly in every way. Jesus gave His life over to death in order to pay the penalty of our sins—the penalty of eternal death that God’s holy justice required for all who broke His laws.
Jesus demonstrated His victory over Satan by rising to life again on the third day. This means that Satan’s temptations can be defeated by the power of God’s Word. It means that Satan does not control the minds and lives of God’s children. It means that eternal death is not the future for those who love Jesus, but eternal life in heaven.
God’s baptized children are part of an enormous contest between God and Satan. While Jesus defeated Satan, the devil continues to work evil in this world, though greatly limited by God. The contest between God and Satan is over humans. All humans born in the world are born into Satan’s kingdom because they are born with the sinful nature they inherited from their parents. Out of His mercy, God adopts those who are baptized into Jesus and His salvation and receives this who believe on Jesus through His Word.
The adversary “wins” when people continue in their evil rebellion against God. He wins when believers turn away from hearing God’s message of salvation. He wins when he gets people to despise or ignore Jesus. He wins over those who seek their future in this world instead of in Jesus and His death.
The adversary “loses” when the Holy Spirit calls people to faith in Jesus and keeps them in the true faith. For God has “delivered us from the power of harness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:3). Through baptism, God unites people with all Jesus did to save them and gives them a new spiritual life that is no longer under Satan’s control, but no lives under the grace of God. God gives believers in Jesus the ability to put off “the old man…and put on the new man which was created according to God” (Ephesians 4:22-24). On the Last Day, Jesus will raise up all people, and give to the believers eternal life, where they will be free from any influence of Satan.
We might wish that the great battle between God and Satan were just a story, a fiction, a fable. But God has revealed that this battle is real, with only two outcomes in eternity. Satan’s evil is real—he is not acting. Jesus’ salvation is real—He rose from the dead to proclaim His victory over Satan, sin and death. Jesus promises, “Whoever believes on the Son of God shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).