Le Génie du Mal, Guilaume Geefs

 This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

Our duty, as men and women, is to pro­ceed as if lim­its to our abil­ity did not exist. We are col­lab­o­ra­tors in cre­ation. Teil­hard de Chardin

There are two equal and oppo­site errors into which our race can fall about dev­ils. One is to dis­be­lieve in their exis­tence. The other is to believe, and to feel an exces­sive and unhealthy inter­est in them. C.S. Lewis

But this is not the full story. Let’s lis­ten to another part of the story that God wants to share. We need to go way back; back to the begin­ning, even before we were cre­ated. An impor­tant char­ac­ter of the Bible shows up who also is very cru­cial to its story. In fact, he is the antag­o­nist, our oppo­nent, enemy and foe. He is the neme­sis, and he is a for­mi­da­ble one (not to God, but to his chil­dren and to his cre­ation). His name is Lucifer (or Satan) and he is an essen­tial char­ac­ter in the story of God’s pur­poses of cre­ation and redemp­tion and it can be a great dan­ger to for­get that.

To begin, Lucifer was and is a very unique being.  In terms of under­stand­ing who this per­son is, in the book of Ezekiel, we are painted a por­trait of who this remark­able angelic being was before his rebel­lion and fall.

You were in Eden, the gar­den of God; every pre­cious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, emer­ald, chryso­lite, onx, jasper, sap­phire, turquoise, and beryl. Gold work of tam­bourines and of pipes was in you. In the day that you were cre­ated they were pre­pared. You were the anointed cherub who cov­ers: and I set you, so that you were on the holy moun­tain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You were per­fect in your ways from the day that you were cre­ated, until unright­eous­ness was found in you. (Ezekiel 28: 13–15)

The Mes­sage trans­lates one sec­tion of these verses, this way: “A robe was pre­pared for you the same day you were cre­ated.” In this telling, we can think of the story of Joseph and the favoritism from his father Isaac when he was given his spe­cial coat of many col­ors (Gen­e­sis 37: 3–4). With a pas­sage like that, it is obvi­ous that Lucifer is favored by God as well. But this is where sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems begin to emerge in the story—God had other plans.

God ear­lier was par­tial to Lucifer, but now he has decided to cre­ate some­one even more favored, even more beau­ti­ful, and I dare say, with even more author­ity than this beau­ti­ful prince. Lucifer (see Isa­iah 14:12–15) was one awe­some crea­ture, but now he was about to be sub­ject to another cre­ation and peo­ple. Sim­ply put—we, as human beings sup­planted Lucifer as God’s beloved. In terms of the over­all plan, we were the right­ful heirs right from the begin­ning. In read­ing the Scrip­tures, it can be sur­mised that Satan’s jeal­ousy of man began a whirl­wind of destruc­tion that we are still sub­ject to today. Again, under­stand­ing who we are in the story is of utmost impor­tance. To help spell this out bet­ter, below is the hier­ar­chy of the cre­ation in terms of the posi­tion of God, the angelic beings, and mankind as his creation.

Before Cre­ation

• God
• Lucifer and the angels

After Cre­ation

• God
• Human cre­ation
• Lucifer (Satan), the fallen angels and angels

After the Fall of Man

• God
• Lucifer (Satan), the fallen angels and angels
• Human cre­ation

After the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ

• God
• Human cre­ation
• Lucifer (Satan), the fallen angels and angels

Specif­i­cally, if we reframe this under­stand­ing of the “hier­ar­chy” of God’s cre­ation, it begins to paint with broad strokes where Lucifer fits into the cen­ter of this story. If we, being made in God’s image, can now begin to under­stand why this fallen and evil crea­ture wanted our destruc­tion, we can begin to under­stand why we are so impor­tant and why our lives are so cru­cial to the makeup of this world.

The delin­eation above tells us some impor­tant the­o­log­i­cal insights. First, after God cre­ated the earth and Adam and Eve, human beings not only had domin­ion over the earth, but over Lucifer and the angels as well. How­ever, here’s the bad news and a very impor­tant, but tragic point: after man dis­obeyed God, Lucifer now has now taken domin­ion and author­ity over God’s trea­sured cre­ation, his chil­dren. In essence, when we Adam and Eve “obeyed” Lucifer, when they fol­lowed him into his lie, when they dis­re­garded God’s com­mand for their lives—on paper, it was all over and lost.  The New Tes­ta­ment spells out what Gen­e­sis tries to tell us:

As for you, you were dead in your trans­gres­sions and sins, in which you used to live when you fol­lowed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the king­dom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are dis­obe­di­ent (Eph­esians 2:2). 

In the early part of the book of Gen­e­sis, we see this exam­ple when it tells the story of the Fall. As we go on and flip a page or two into the book of Gen­e­sis, the pas­sage describes this awful sit­u­a­tion with greater clar­ity. In this jeal­ousy Lucifer had toward God’s chil­dren, in his great hatred toward us, he attempts to lead us away from the One who truly loves us—and with noth­ing more than a piece of fruit,with just a sim­ple red apple that you could pick on a cold Octo­ber day.

         The Ser­pent: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”

The Woman: “…God did say ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the mid­dle of the gar­den, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

The Ser­pent: “You will not surely die…”

Before night fell, Lucifer suc­ceeded in his manip­u­la­tion and lie, and God’s chil­dren found them­selves sub­ject to a dif­fer­ent ruler—to this evil and fallen being. In the Fall, in our dis­obe­di­ence to God, we obeyed the Enemy and became his slave. This can be missed when read­ing Gen­e­sis. This is the aspect of read­ing the Bible as a nar­ra­tive and not only look­ing for the obvi­ous. At this point in time, the entire world is under the domin­ion of this rebel­lious angel. As we have said, the Bible calls him Lucifer or Satan and in dif­fer­ent pas­sages he is called “the god of this age” (2 Corinthi­ans 4:4), “the prince of this world” (John 12:31), and “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph­esians 2:2). As Mil­ton writes in Par­adise Lost, “Satan exalted sat, by merit raised to that bad emi­nence.” That day the world turned sour or as Sally Mann has said, “The earth [became] sculpted out of death.”  Because Lucifer knew his demise, what a bet­ter way to end it—to destroy the cre­ation God loved and trea­sured the most.

YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY

Let’s talk a lit­tle bit more about the­ol­ogy. A new thing hap­pens and God does not for­get about his cher­ished ones. As Jesus, he comes onto the scene and restores what had become so messed up—not only is he our sub­sti­tute, but he also ran­soms us from Lucifer’s hand. What does that mean? For some of us, when we think about the cross, we imme­di­ately think of the phrase—Jesus died for our sins—the­o­log­i­cally, this premise is what we call sub­sti­tu­tion­ary atone­ment. How­ever, in the early church, they viewed the cross in another way; they saw Jesus’ death as a ran­som for our lives, as a deliv­er­ance and pro­tec­tion from Lucifer’s author­ity over mankind.  After the Fall, the human race lit­er­ally became his prop­erty and pos­ses­sion. The­olo­gians from the early church up until the present call this ran­som atone­ment. After the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus, all that is nullified—Lucifer’s reign and con­trol can be over if you want it to be.

So often when Jesus spoke to peo­ple he asked them to fol­low him and this was the reason—to fol­low him meant that we would lit­er­ally be turn­ing our back on the one who hates us and we could begin to learn how to live with the One who always had our best at heart. If we were to fol­low Jesus, every­thing could be as it should be—we now have restored to us the priv­i­lege of being an heir and child of God, and we no longer have to be sub­ject to some­one who does not care for us in the least. We now lit­er­ally give our lives back to God and release our­selves from Satan’s con­trol and con­tempt (to learn more about this premise, you can google Chris­tus Vic­tor). As a cen­tral teach­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment about Jesus’ death on the cross, it con­tends that God not only saves us from sin and death, but also Lucifer’s hatred and control.

Let’s look at this con­cept from one more angle. I love lit­er­a­ture. I stud­ied it in col­lege and it is still one of my favorite things to do—to read sto­ries. I have learned so much through them. Drama, tragedy, comedy—they illus­trate for us in excep­tional ways impor­tant truths about life. Sto­ries teach us the most. This is why Jesus spent so much time telling them—it is how we learn best. They stick with us and this is why Jesus spoke truths through para­bles and sto­ries. The prob­lem is that sto­ries don’t always spell it out. You have to read them (and some­times reread) and lis­ten for what they are try­ing to say. Some­times, it’s not so obvi­ous to under­stand what the author is try­ing to say. And when you think about it, the Bible is writ­ten almost exclu­sively as a story when one reads it cover to cover. Some­times when we read the Scrip­tures, we need to remem­ber to read it that way—simply as we would read an exhil­a­rat­ing novel that a friend has rec­om­mended. Wal­ter Wan­gerin did us a great ser­vice when he wrote The Book of God, because it brought us back to the fun­da­men­tals of the story of redemp­tion; the pages we turn do not become just a bunch of rules that need to be fol­lowed out, but the full­ness of a story where we become the cen­tral char­ac­ters along­side our Creator.

This takes us to a final point. Let’s look at the word king­dom. Through­out the gospels, Jesus uses this word over and over when he is teach­ing the peo­ple and his dis­ci­ples. What he is attempt­ing to explain is that in this world there are two king­doms co-existing with one another: the king­dom of God, and for a bet­ter word, the king­dom of the World (to which Satan is the “prince” of this “king­dom”). He makes it clear and states that each per­son is in one camp or the other. Jesus says it about as bla­tantly as it can be said: “If you are not with me, you are against me.” (Matthew 12:30) There is no mid­dle ground. Each per­son is either in alle­giance to him or blindly being swayed by his enemy.  Even Bob Dylan gets it; in one part of a song he wrote, he belts out this truth:

You may be an ambas­sador to Eng­land or France

You may like to gam­ble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavy­weight cham­pion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

 

Might be a rock’n’ roll addict pranc­ing on the stage

Might have money and drugs at your com­mands, women in a cage

You may be a busi­ness man or some high degree thief

They may call you Doc­tor or they may call you Chief.

 

Might like to wear cot­ton, might like to wear silk,

Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,

You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,

You may be sleep­ing on the floor, sleep­ing in a king-sized bed

 

You’re gonna have to serve some­body, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

The ques­tion we each have to ask our­selves is where do we stand, who are we going to serve and fol­low? Again, there is no mid­dle ground. With this issue, there is never a happy medium. Your mail­ing address is either in his King­dom or in the world. You are either for or against Jesus. You are either serv­ing him or some­one else. At least, this is how Jesus explained it.