Why such a long leash?

Even though we may not be able to fully explain why Satan came into being, we know he does exist, and he was there from the beginning of mankind because he tempted Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Genesis. 

We also know that Jesus commanded “the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27), Which is a fantastic statement. He said to Satan in the wilderness, “Be gone!” and he was gone (Matthew 4:10). And we know at the end of history, God will throw Satan into the lake of fire so that he can’t influence God’s people anymore or harm us anymore (Revelation 20:10).

So, from all this, we know God could have bound Satan completely the moment he fell or at any point in history in between. We know he doesn’t because, in the end, the whole New Testament is telling the story of Satan’s activity in this world and how he deceives, how he tempts, and how we need to do warfare against the principalities and powers.

“Seeing and savoring the superior beauty of Christ is the way we defeat the evil one.”

Some people point out that Satan is blinding people. He’s blinding people. So, what is God’s reason — God does all things in wisdom and for reasons; he doesn’t act whimsically — for not destroying Satan until the end and giving him such a long leash.

Stealing the word seems like snatching it, like a bird taking seed off a path.

in 2 Corinthians 4:4: “In their case [the case of unbelievers] the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 

Luke 8:12 is the parable of the four soils, where that first soil is the seed along the path, representing those to whom Satan comes along and snatches the word right out of their hearts so that they don’t believe and are saved.

Why does God allow that blinding, that word-stealing power?

The key lies in the fact that if God had eliminated Satan so that the only enemy to be defeated is our own human depravity, part of the glory of the triumph of salvation would be missing. 

I’m going to deal with only one aspect of that glory. I’m not going to talk about the glory of the cross in this (Colossians 2:15) or the glory of our ongoing warfare with the principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:11–12). I’m only going to focus on the glory of God’s victory in the moment of conversion. 

What happens at that moment of unblinding?

If there were no Satan to deceive us, we would still be blind to the glory of God in Christ. We would not see Christ as more beautiful, more desirable than anything else. We wouldn’t. Why? Because we are deeply depraved people. Paul describes us like this in Ephesians 4:17–18: “The Gentiles,” which is us before Christ, live “in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

So, not a word about Satan — not a word. He’s not our main problem; we are our main problem. At root, blindness is our hardness of heart against God, producing ignorance, alienation, and darkness of understanding. We don’t need Satan to be blind. We are blinded by our own depraved nature.

Then the question is this: Why speak of Satan as blinding unbelievers the way 2 Corinthians 4:4 does? Because God is showing us the double prison we are in. 

We are doubly dark: the darkness of our own shackles around our wrists and ankles and the darkness of Satan’s locked doors — like Peter in prison, who had to have the hands free, then he had to have the gates freed, and the doors freed. 

There are layers of bondage: the darkness of our own delusions about God — that’s one level of bondage and blindness — and then the added darkness of Satan’s lies and deceptions all around us.

Double Glory

Therefore, when Christ converts us by the power of the Spirit, he gets double glory because of this double blindness. He conquers Satan’s deceptions, and he conquers human depravity. 

And here’s the key to why he saves us like this rather than obliterating Satan earlier. If he had obliterated Satan earlier, his power would have been glorified. But if Satan remains, and we can defeat his deceptions by seeing the superior beauties of Christ, then not only is the exceptional power of Christ glorified, but also the superior beauty of Christ is glorified.

If we realize that the nature of the blindness of our depravity is that we find other things besides Christ more desirable than Christ, more attractive than Christ, more to be preferred than Christ himself. 

That’s the essence of our blindness. 

We are so corrupt that we cannot see that Christ is a superior beauty, a superior worth, a superior greatness, and, therefore, a superior satisfaction over everything else. In our depravity, we are blind to all of that.

But that’s precisely the same way that Satan blinds us with his deceptions. He’s a liar, and the essence of his lie is that the pleasures of sin he offers are more to be desired than Christ. Therefore, to be saved, to be converted, to experience the victory, the glorious triumph of Christ and the Spirit in our lives, is to have both these blindnesses removed. And that’s described in 2 Corinthians 4:6.

And the way they are removed is that we are granted to see, in one grand miracle, both the delusions of depravity and the deceptions of Satan because they’re the same. 

We are granted to see Christ, the glory of Christ, as superior to everything that our rebellious hearts ever dreamed of and superior to everything Satan ever offered. That double glorification of Christ triumphing over both of those blindnesses would not have happened if Satan had been snuffed out at the beginning.

So, one huge implication of this for us is that seeing and savouring, desiring, and preferring the superior beauty of Christ is the way we defeat the evil one. So, I’ve said more than once, let’s take up arms and be glad. Let’s take up arms and be delighted in the Son of God. Gladness in Christ over sin, over Satan, is the victory.