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Disorient, Distort, Deceive: Satan’s Core Strategy Against Us
When it comes to resisting temptations to sin, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. Temptations arrive in many ways at many times, and the Bible gives many different strategies to defeat them.
But we can notice one fundamental similarity in all the temptations we face, a dimension that’s always present in satanic deception. Remembering this similarity will help us in the fight, whatever resistance strategy we implement.
To help us see this unifying theme in temptation, let’s examine history’s most remarkable example — the devil’s temptation of Jesus. This scene illustrates Satan’s core strategy, how Jesus kept his head clear, and how we can imitate Jesus’s example.
Anatomy of Temptation
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus being tempted by the devil at the beginning of his ministry, but Matthew’s account provides the most details. He describes three specific temptations and Jesus’s response to each (Matthew 4:1–11).
Theologians down through history have pointed out that there’s a lot going in this particular temptation from historical and theological standpoints, but I’m not going to address those topics here. Instead, my goal is simply to identify a specific dimension common in all of Satan’s temptations.
Dialogue with the Devil
To begin, after Jesus fasts for forty days, the devil seeks to take advantage of his physical weakness and severe hunger.
Devil: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” (verse 3)
Jesus: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (verse 4, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3)
Then, from the pinnacle of the temple, the devil seeks to take advantage of Jesus’s faith in a scriptural promise.
Devil: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (verse 6, quoting Psalm 91:11–12)
Jesus: “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (verse 7, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16)
Finally, after showing Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” (verse 8), the devil seeks to take advantage of Jesus’s promised exaltation.
Devil: “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (verse 9)
Jesus: “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” (verse 10, quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16)
Three Essential Elements
Notice that the three temptations have three elements in common.
First, the devil sought to narrow Jesus’s focus specifically on each tempting proposition, so that Jesus would view each in a distorted context and therefore experience them as disproportionately compelling. More on this in a moment.
Second, each temptation promises both explicit and implicit rewards. I will paraphrase some that I discern, as if spoken by the tempter:
Bread: Jesus, if you miraculously create bread, it will relieve your starving agony and, more importantly, validate your claim to divinity.
Jump: If you demonstrate the truth of this audacious promise in the sight of all those witnesses down there, you will glorify both the trustworthiness of God’s word and the trustworthiness of your claim as God’s Son.
Worship: Since it is in my power, if you will bow to me, I will make sure that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess your lordship.Third, each tempting proposition makes implicit threats. Again, I’ll paraphrase some that I discern:
Bread: If you’re unwilling to miraculously create bread, doesn’t it indicate your inability to do so? You’re no Moses, much less the Prophet, much less the Son of God. You’re just another self-deluded “messiah” — and you know what happens to frauds.
Jump: If you’re unwilling to demonstrate the truth of these promises, doesn’t it indicate that you don’t really believe them? You’re no Son of God. You’re just like every other hypocritical rabbi: teach, teach, teach, but you won’t risk your life to prove God’s word is true — and you know what happens to hypocrites.
Worship: The road you’re on is more than risky; it’s doomed. If you don’t bow to me, you will die. And I will make sure it is unspeakably horrible.Satan’s Core Strategy
This dissection of Jesus’s temptation experience helps us examine not only the devil’s specific strategy with Jesus, but the core strategy he employs in every temptation.
“Jesus was not ignorant of the universal diabolical dimension of temptation: to disorient, distort, and deceive.”
What was the devil trying to do? Essentially, he was seeking to do with Jesus what he did with Adam and Eve and what he does with each of us: disorient Jesus’s perception of reality, so he could distort Jesus’s perception of reality and deceive Jesus into believing a false story about reality.
See if this doesn’t sound familiar. Satan comes when Jesus is in a weakened state — we humans are more easily disoriented when we’re physically, emotionally, psychologically weak. Think about how differently you’re prone to respond to various pressures when you’re weak, rather than when you’re strong and refreshed.
Then he poses to Jesus propositions that put a distorted twist on truth. The devil wove plenty of truth into his presentation of a false reality. Was it inherently sinful for Jesus to desire to satisfy his hunger? No. Was it inherently sinful for Jesus to demonstrate his sonship through miraculously making bread? No — he did this very thing later when he fed the five thousand (Matthew 14:13–21). Was it inherently sinful for Jesus to put his faith in a specific promise of Scripture? No. Was it inherently sinful for Jesus (in particular) to long to be highly exalted and for every knee to bow and tongue to confess his lordship? No (see Philippians 2:9–11).
All of these, given the right context, were good and righteous. What made the devil’s propositions evil was their distorted context. And I think it required more resolve from Jesus’s human nature to resist than we might at first assume.
Jesus Resists
But resist he did. How? One way to describe it is that he skillfully used the armor of God against the schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:11). In Jesus’s responses, we see him lifting the “shield of faith” and wielding the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:16–17).
Another way to describe it is that Jesus was “not ignorant of [Satan’s] designs” and therefore refused to be “outwitted” by him (2 Corinthians 2:11). Jesus was not ignorant of the universal diabolical dimension of temptation: to disorient, distort, and deceive. So he had his antennae up; he was anticipating it. And when it came, he expected it to sound appealing and appear life-giving, when in reality “its end is the way the death” (Proverbs 14:12).
“The devil tempted Jesus to see himself in a different story.”
The devil tempted Jesus to see himself in a different story, one he implied would be better if Jesus took matters into his own hands. Jesus discerned the insidious temptations by remembering the Real Story he was in, which is what his Scripture quotes reveal. He had come to undo the curse of the fall — the catastrophic result of the first Adam believing a perverted story — by doing only what he saw his Father doing (John 5:19).
Remember the Story You’re In
That is the crucial application point I want to draw from Jesus’s temptation: remember the story you’re in. All of us tend to respond to tempting desires or fears based on the narrative of reality we believe (or want to believe) at the moment. What will lead to more joy or less misery, according to the story we’re believing? If we allow ourselves to be disoriented and sold a distorted bill of goods, and if we then take the bait of a deceptively appealing false story, we will be “lured and enticed by [our] own desire,” which when “conceived gives birth to sin, and sin . . . [eventually] brings forth death” (James 1:14–15).
Many different strategies for fighting different kinds of temptations exist. But all of them require that we not be outwitted by Satan due to ignorance of his designs to disorient, distort, and deceive. God calls us, like Jesus, to “be sober-minded [and] watchful,” since our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). So, like Jesus, we anticipate what temptation will be like, and when it arrives we resist the devil by first remembering the story we’re in.
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All My Sins Were Canceled — So Why Continue to Confess?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. If you were with us Friday, we looked at the sin that remains in us as believers. And it raises another question, one about confession for sin. If God has “forgiven us all our trespasses,” and if all our sins were “canceled” at the cross, why do we need to continue to repent?
It’s a question inspired by the glorious truth of Christ’s finished work in Colossians 2:13–14. It comes from a listener named Judy who lives in Rockford, Illinois. “Dear Pastor John, I’m struggling with a question regarding God’s word and want your input. Once we have repented and turned to the Lord for salvation, is it necessary to repent every time we sin afterward? I’ve always believed that. But recently someone told me that after our initial repentance, at the time of salvation, ongoing repentance is no longer necessary.
“At first, I was flummoxed! But then there are so many verses that say he has forgiven our sins, past, present, and future. Colossians 2:13–14 for example. Christ has forgiven all our sins, canceled all our debts, and has nailed it all to the cross finally and fully! So am I doubting this work if I go on repenting for sin? I’m a former Roman Catholic, and this ongoing confession of sin reminds me of their way of keeping Jesus on the cross through false traditions. Can you help me think this through?”
Maybe the most important thing that I could do to help Judy is to point her and the rest of us to the all-important distinction between redemption as something that is already accomplished and finished, once for all — never to be repeated or added to — and redemption that is applied to us when we’re saved, when we’re converted, and then in an ongoing way, now and forever.
And in making that distinction, we will see that forgiveness of sins, which is what she asked in particular, can be viewed in these two ways, accomplished and applied — which relate, I think, directly to her question. So let me unpack this understanding of redemption for just a moment and then look at her question specifically.
Four Once-for-All Victories
Here’s what I mean by the once-for-all, finished, complete, never-to-be-repeated, never-to-be-added-to redemption. When Christ died on the cross for his bride, the church, as Paul says in Ephesians 5:25–27, he accomplished at least four decisive, once-for-all things.
“Christ offered a perfect sin-covering sacrifice to God — so perfect that it never needs to be repeated.”
First, Christ offered a perfect sin-covering sacrifice to God — so perfect that, unlike the Old Testament sacrifices, it never needs to be repeated; it cannot be repeated. “[Christ] has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27). In other words, a perfect, once-for-all, never-to-be-repeated sacrifice for sin — that happened decisively on the cross.
Second, this sacrifice accomplished what the New Testament calls propitiation. “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood [in other words, when he died], to be received [when you come into existence two thousand years later] by faith” (Romans 3:25). This means that the sacrifice of Christ provided a holy and righteous satisfaction for the demands of God’s justice in the punishment of sin, and so his condemning wrath is removed forever from his people.
Third, positively the New Testament calls this reconciliation. From God’s side, the hostility of wrath is removed toward his Son’s bride.
And fourth, by this sacrifice, God decisively purchased — paid the finished price for — the liberty of his people from sin and wrath and death and Satan. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). That’s finished; that’s done; the price has been paid.
So these four realities are what I mean by a once-for-all, finished, complete, never-to-be-repeated redemption. It happened in history, before we ever existed. It was outside ourselves. I can remember, what, 45 years ago, sitting in a seminary class where for the first time I heard the Latin phrase extra nos (“outside ourselves”), because of Luther, and it had just never hit me before that all the decisive things had been done already for me.
So God did this for everyone who would be united to Christ: a perfect final sacrifice, an all-satisfying propitiation, a glorious reconciliation from God’s side with the removal of all divine condemnation, a full purchase of our liberty from wrath and sin and death and Satan forever, a finished price paid.
Forgiveness Accomplished and Applied
Then the question becomes, how does this once-for-all redemption get applied to actual people — us, individuals in real life? Of course, we could write books — I mean, books and books — on the answer to that question.
He calls us out of darkness into light. He regenerates us by the Holy Spirit. He unites us to Christ so that everything Christ accomplished is made ours in him. He gives us the gift of faith. He justifies us. He adopts us. He sanctifies us over a lifetime. He causes us to persevere to the end. He intercedes for us continually in heaven. He glorifies us with life and joy forever in his presence. All of that is the application to us, individually, of what was decisively secured two thousand years ago, once for all, when Christ died and rose again.
And Judy’s question relates now to the forgiveness of sins and the ongoing act of what she calls repentance. So let’s put forgiveness of sins into this understanding of redemption accomplished and redemption applied — which, by the way, is the title of a very important book by John Murray that I recommend to everybody to read if you want to go deep and get a lot of help about these things: Redemption Accomplished and Applied.
Ephesians 1:7 says — so I’m focusing now on forgiveness of sins and trying to see whether the Bible puts it into this framework — “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” In other words, in the shedding of Christ’s blood, once for all in history, all who are in Christ have forgiveness for all their sins. We have it — he says we have it. We have it absolutely secure. We have it purchased for us. That’s what the blood accomplished and secured.
Colossians 2:14, which she referred to, says that the record of our debts was nailed to the cross. That’s what I would call forgiveness accomplished: price paid, redemption offered, nails driven, forgiveness secured. It is accomplished.
Then Acts 10:43 says, “Everyone who believes in [Christ] receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” When we believe, we receive the forgiveness Christ purchased. That’s forgiveness applied. So when we become Christians, we are united to Christ so that the forgiveness he purchased becomes the forgiveness we experience. And since the purchase was complete, and he nailed the whole record of our debt to the cross, therefore the whole purchase will be experienced — it will be. God doesn’t lose any of his own.
How to Handle Daily Sins
Here’s the final question, then. Since we are conformed to Christ progressively and not all at once, therefore Christians are going to sin. There are no sinless Christians in action. “If you say you have no sin, you’re a liar,” John said (see 1 John 1:8–10). What should our attitude be, then, toward our ongoing acts and attitudes and words of sin?
No genuine Christian who loves Christ can be cavalier about the very thing Christ died to abolish — namely, our sin. That would be one mistake we could make: we could be cavalier in our attitude. “Well, he died to forgive them all, so they don’t really matter, because they’re all covered by blood.” No true Christian talks like that about his own sin.
“Confessing is not a payment. It is simply an agreement with God that this was an ugly and unworthy thing for me to do.”
But the other mistake would be to panic and feel that with every sin, there needs to be a new redemption, a new sacrifice, a new penance. And I mention penance because that might be what Judy feels, perhaps, coming out of her former religious tradition that she mentions. “I have to pay something, right? I see it. I have to pay something. I have to make this right.” That would be a great mistake. The payment was perfect. You can’t add to it at all. You can’t add to your sin-covering at all.
Instead, what the New Testament says, in 1 John 1:9, is this: “If we confess” — and I’m underlining that word confess. Repentance or penance might not be the most helpful word here. Just stick with John’s word. Confess means “agree with,” “see it the way God sees it,” “feel about it the way God feels about it.” So John says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
So confessing is not a payment. It is simply an agreement with God that this was an ugly and unworthy thing for me to do, and I’m ashamed of it. I’m sorry for it. I turn from it. I embrace the finished, complete, perfect, once-for-all work of Christ afresh. I rest in it. I enjoy the fellowship that he secured.
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How Does Childbirth Save Women?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to this new week on the podcast, week number 530 for us. Amazing. Thanks for being a part of this podcast over the past decade, and thank you for praying for God to sustain us in this work.
Last Monday, we talked about the value and dignity of womanhood. It was a really important episode in a world blind to God’s glorious, intentional design for male and female creatures. That was APJ 1909. And we’ve celebrated the incredible glories of motherhood as well. On motherhood, I regularly recommend one episode from seven years ago that we recorded. I’ll never forget it. It’s titled “I Want Kids. My Husband Doesn’t.” It’s just a great, classic episode in the archive on the glories of motherhood. And as always, you’ll find our archive at askpastorjohn.com. There you can search for episodes 908 and 1909.
Speaking of the glories of motherhood, we have an international question today about 1 Timothy 2:15, an important text, a curious text, that we haven’t touched on in about four years now. We should. And we will because today’s question is from a listener to the podcast named Luba, who asks, “Pastor John, can you please comment on 1 Timothy 2:15? What are we as women supposed to be saved from in childbirth? And what does this mean for women who will never have children? This verse is highly discussed among us Christians inside of Russia. Thank you for your wisdom.”
In this context right here in 1 Timothy 2, Paul is making the case that spiritually qualified men should be the authoritative teachers — or you could say pastors or elders — in the church rather than women. Now, we’ve addressed that issue several times in Ask Pastor John. But this time, the issue is different.
Saved Through Childbearing?
Here’s the text at the end of verse 15, with a very puzzling sentence. I’ll read the whole two verses and then underline that last sentence that she’s asking about.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. [Now, here’s the sentence:] Yet she will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Timothy 2:12–15)
So what is the meaning of verse 15? “Yet she will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.”
Who’s she? “She will be saved” refers to “the woman” (or Eve) in verse 14, but I think Paul means for us to generalize it — I think Luba is right to make that inference — because he shifts from the singular she to the plural they in the very next phrase. He says, “She will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith.” The natural way to take this they is “women in general.” So, I think she’s right to ask the question she’s asking the way she’s asking it.
So what does it mean that women in general “will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control”? What about women who never have children? How does the verse apply to them?
Some have suggested that “through childbearing” refers to the birth of Jesus. Since a woman bore the Savior, we could say that women are saved through that childbearing. But that’s unlikely because, among other reasons, the only other use of this Greek word childbearing is found in 1 Timothy 5:14, where it simply means ordinary childbearing among women in general. It says, “So I would have the younger widows marry and bear children” — childbearing. So I don’t think that’s what it refers to.
“In spite of childbearing being part of God’s curse on sin, women will be saved through it.”
What then does it mean that “she will be saved through childbearing”? Here, I’m happy to give credit to Henry Alford, a British scholar who died in 1871, who pointed me to a text in 1 Corinthians that I think holds the key to Paul’s meaning here.
‘In Spite of’ Childbearing
So the key question is, What does through mean when Paul says, “She will be saved” — women in general will be saved — “through childbearing”? I think what gets most of us off on the wrong foot is that we almost all jump to the conclusion that through means by means of: “She will be saved by means of childbearing.” Then we cast about for how that could be the case. There is another possibility for what through means, and that was the clue I saw in 1 Corinthians 3:15, where Paul uses this very word in a similar situation and it means something very different.
So here’s what Paul is talking about there. You remember he’s talking about the judgment according to our works — in particular, whether we’ve taught true things in the context of the church. He says there’s wood, there’s hay, there’s stubble, and if some of your works are wood, hay, and stubble, they’re going to be burned up at the judgment. And then he holds out hope that the person himself — even though the wood, hay, and stubble of his works gets burned up — might be saved even though he has not lived the life that he should have lived in any perfect way. He says it like this: “If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15). So there’s that saved idea and through idea.
Now, what’s the meaning of through here, which is the same word used in 1 Timothy 2:15? It does not mean by means of — that is, “by means of fire.” He will be saved through fire in the sense that fire is threatening him and he comes through it safe. It means, virtually, “in spite of fire.” Even though he is under the threat of fire, yet he will be saved. He will come through it saved.
So my suggestion is that this is the way we should try to understand the word through in 1 Timothy 2:15 when Paul says, “She will be saved through childbearing.”
Overcoming the Curse
Now, how would that work? “She will be saved in spite of childbearing” sounds kind of odd, — or “through childbearing” the way a person comes through some threatening circumstance. Well, go back to Genesis 3 and remind yourself what happened after Adam and Eve sinned, which is the context here in 1 Timothy 2. What happened was that both of them were told that the curse of sin would fall on each of them in their respective, special role: Adam in his farming work, the sweat of his face, and Eve in her childbearing. So, Genesis 3:16 says, “To the woman God said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.’”
“The pain of childbearing, the misery of its long-term effects, often was a reminder of God’s displeasure over Eve’s sin.”
Now, let’s let that sink in for a minute. How that must have landed on women for centuries, especially before modern medicine — no hygiene, no spinal blocks, no episiotomies, no sutures, no Cesareans, no antibiotics, no pain killers, and often no recovery. Untold numbers of women died in childbirth, and countless more suffered the rest of their lives from wounds, tearing that prevented childbirth or any kind of normal sexual life. In other words, there were aspects of childbearing that felt like a curse from God because, in a sense, they were.
Often, that burden lasted a lifetime, not just in the moment of birth. How easy it would have been for women in Paul’s day, for example, or through the centuries, to despair and feel that God was against them. He’s just against them. He was their curser, not their savior. The pain of childbearing, the misery of its long-term effects, often was a reminder of God’s displeasure over Eve’s sin.
Now, I think that is what Paul is responding to. And his response was gospel hope. In other words, no to the curse. No, these pains of childbearing, even if they last a lifetime, are not God’s word, his final word, to women. God intends to save. They will be saved through the fiery trials of childbearing, through the apparent curse of childbearing. In spite of childbearing being part of God’s curse on sin, women will be saved through it.
By Faith in the Savior
Then Paul adds, “. . . if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control,” which simply means, I think, “if they’re Christians.” That’s the link with the Savior. She’s justified by faith, and then love and holiness and self-control are simply the fruit of faith that confirm that it’s real for men and women. She is a real Christian, and that’s how she will be saved, in spite of the painful reminders of the curse of God in childbearing through Eve’s disobedience.
So in answer to Luba’s question, “Well, what does this mean for women who have never had children or will have children?” it means this: though they may never have tasted the pain of childbearing in their own bodies, they still might feel a solidarity with all women under the curse of the pain of childbearing because of sin entering the world. So they can share in the same hope as women who have had children — namely, the hope that in spite of the pain women have to endure, in spite of that pain because of the fall, nevertheless, God is for them, not against them, and if they trust in Jesus Christ and walk in lives of holiness, they will be saved.