The devil never gives up because of his hate for God’s children. Adam, for instance, was “the son of God,” Luke 3:38, so what was evil’s reaction to that? “A child of God, eh? We’ll see about that,” and went about getting Adam to NOT act like God’s son at all. And it worked, because how could Adam be a true son of God when he neither obeyed God or trusted him?
Having nailed the first Adam, the devil was at it again to nail the second Adam – by trying to get Jesus not acting like God’s Son too. He tried three ridiculous, but potentially ruinous temptations, two of them prefaced with the snarky, “If you are the Son of God,” Matthew 4:3,6.
The devil’s objective was to prove Jesus wasn’t the Son of God. But why was that so important? Because, John 1:12, “to all who believed him (Jesus) and accepted him (as the Son of God), he (God) gave the right to become his children.” At stake here, therefore, was humans becoming God’s children for believing in Jesus being the Son of God.
But why would the devil not want that happening? Because, John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” Belief in Jesus being the Son of God means that humans will be indestructible. So the devil has to come up with something to stop it.
But how? Well, there was one way of stopping it, because “anyone born of God does not continue to sin,” 1 John 5:18. Bingo, just get Christians sinning, then, because, 1 John 3:10, “Anyone who doesn’t do what’s right isn’t a child of God.” Couldn’t be any clearer, could it?
So, how to get Christians sinning? There’s a clue for that too, in 1 John 3:7, when John writes, “Dear children, don’t let anyone lead you astray.” Ah, so it’s not getting Christians to commit a blatant and obvious sin, it’s getting us to wander off the path without realizing it. And the devil has all sorts of ways of making that happen, like pride, distraction, delusion, etc., so how can we paltry humans stand up against his cunning?
Fortunately, John asks and answers that question for us in 1 John 5:5. “Who is it that overcomes the world (and the devil’s cunning use of it against us)?” Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God,” because, verse 11, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” And because we believe that, “This is the assurance we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us,” verse 14.
So when the devil’s at it again with his ridiculous, but potentially ruinous temptations to lead us astray, we’ve got a Father who very much appreciates our belief in his Son, which he will prove by keeping us on track when we ask him.
Buck To Basics 