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Everything is idyllic in Genesis 1–2. God creates all things, including Adam and Eve—the very apex of creation—and definitively declares everything “very good” (Gen. 1:31). But this idyllic scene turns insidious by Genesis 3:1–15. A sinister reptile creeps onto the scene, a very “crafty” serpent (3:1). Where he came from and how he gained entrance, no one knows but God. Scripture keeps it a secret (Deut. 29:29), but what it has revealed to us and to our children is that God, whose eyes are too pure to look on evil (Hab. 1:13), permitted this serpent to infiltrate His temple-garden for His own holy ends (Westminster Confession of Faith 5.4).
Adam was supposed to keep him out. God appointed him as a priest and a king in the garden. His priest-king role emerges from Genesis 1–2. He was given the task of having “dominion” over all the creatures of the earth (1:26). Like a king ruling over his subjects, Adam ruled over all creatures in the garden. But he was also a priest who was to “work” and “keep” the garden (2:15). These two verbs (“work” and “keep”) appear together only when describing the work of priests in the Old Testament (cf. Num. 3:7–8; 8:25–26; 18:5–6; 1 Chron. 23:32; Ezek. 44:14). Like a priest serving in the temple, Adam served in the very presence of God within the garden, making it a temple. All this sets the biblical-theological context for the tragedy to follow, for Adam, God’s priest-king, faltered at his post.
The crafty serpent of old, the devil, infiltrated the temple-garden to carry out his mission to detract, deceive, and destroy. The detraction comes in Genesis 3:1: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Clearly, Adam had taught Eve well, for she responds with the right answer, yet adds “neither shall you touch it” (3:3; cf. 2:17). But the serpent cleverly alleviates her fears, assuring her that she will surely not die but instead “will be like God” after eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (3:4). In his classic Paradise Lost, John Milton depicts the serpent as handsome and cunning rather than bestial and crude, because only a compelling adversary could successfully detract Eve from sincere obedience to God in His very presence.
This is when the serpent plants the trap of deception. After reasoning that the fruit was “good for food,” was “a delight to the eyes,” and could “make one wise,” she ate the fruit and even gave some to Adam, who was with her (3:4–5). One sighs at this point, for Adam—God’s priest-king—should have known better. The devil flipped the Creator–creature distinction, making it irresistibly tempting to reign supreme. With this move, the serpent’s deceptive mission was accomplished.
One disobedient bite of the fruit destroyed the harmonious fellowship between God and humanity. They “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God” (3:8), breaking vertical fellowship with God, and Adam had the nerve to blame God by blaming Eve, ruining their horizontal fellowship: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (v. 12). All Eve could say was, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (v. 13). In this way, a serpent intruded and profaned God’s temple-garden, humanity was expelled from His presence, sin and its effects entered the world, and all mankind lost communion with God and one another, meriting God’s wrath and curse rather than life and peace.
Detraction, deception, and destruction—this threefold tactic captures the crafty serpent’s threat against the church from Genesis to Revelation. In fact, Revelation 12 and 20 relate the same spiritual battle between Satan and the church from different perspectives and with greater detail. Debatable details within these two chapters need not detain us here. We are primarily interested in how the devil threatens the church and how Christ, the last Adam, gains the victory.
In Revelation 12, Satan is introduced as the “great red dragon” (v. 3), bearing the obnoxious features of the boastful “little horn” in Daniel 8:9. He is the “ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). He is “the deceiver of the whole world” (12:9; cf. 20:2, 7–8). But he sets his aim specifically on the woman (i.e., the church), her “male child” (i.e., Jesus) whom she begat, and her “offspring” (i.e., believers). The male child, however, “who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (cf. Ps. 2:6–9), is “caught up to God and to his throne” (Rev. 12:5). This is King Jesus, who, together with “Michael and his angels,” fights and conquers “the dragon and his angels” (v. 7), while the woman is protected and nourished in “a place prepared by God” (v. 6; cf. vv. 13–14). To this, a “loud voice in heaven” declares that the “salvation,” “power,” and “kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God” (v. 10).
Herein lies the serpent’s detracting, deceptive, and destructive tactic against the church: he accuses us before God (cf. Job 1:6–12; Zech. 3:1). “They’re worthless.” “If they really loved You, they wouldn’t give in to that specific sin so much.” “I can’t believe how many ‘good’ works are done with so many ‘bad’ motives in their hearts.” “The world is better off without them.” These accusations go up “before our God” (Rev. 12:10), but we’ve heard them all before. They have a way of turning us inward in a self-justifying direction, detracting us from trust in God’s definitive Word. They deceive us into accepting Satan’s lies as truth and God’s truth as lies. And they ultimately destroy our assurance of the eternal, unchanging love of God our Father and our confidence in the blood that cleanses all sin. How does the church withstand this attack?
It trusts in the person and work of Christ. The saints gain the victory over the accuser “by the blood of the Lamb” (12:11). Christ, our conquering King, is the only Priest who offered Himself as a sacrifice for sins (Heb. 1:3; 7:27; 9:12; 9:26), a priestly sacrifice that forbids anyone, even the devil, from bringing a charge against God’s elect. “It is God who justifies” (Rom. 8:33). The next time the devil throws your sins in your face, follow Martin Luther’s advice. Say this: “I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made a satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He is, there I shall be also.” Our Priest-King did what Adam should have done to merit for us what Adam never did. Satan is cast out, thrown down, and conquered (Rev. 12:9, 10; cf. Luke 10:18; John 12:31), while the saints reign with our Priest-King as priests and kings in the new creational temple of God.
That’s what Revelation 20 records. Satan, “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan,” is “bound” at the cross (20:2; cf. Matt. 12:22–29; Mark 3:22–27; Luke 11:14–23). This prevents widespread deception of the nations during the church age (i.e., the thousand [symbolic] years; Rev. 20:3). His deceptive ways, though still present in this world (cf. 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Peter 5:8–9), are limited by God. But those who believe in Christ during the church age are spiritually raised from the dead (the first resurrection; Rev. 20:4–5). “Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years” (v. 6). We are priest-kings in the Priest-King, fulfilling what was declared at the beginning of Revelation: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1:5–6).
Christ allows us to share in His reign by faith. Just as Christ crushed the serpent, fulfilling Genesis 3:15, so, too, Paul tells us that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). Though his threats persist against the church, Satan’s end is certain. For at the end of the church age, he will seek to deceive the nations but will be thrown eternally into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:7–10). At that glorious moment to come, all that will remain is the new creational temple: the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb (21:22). No more detraction, deception, or destruction. No more sin, guilt, and frustration. But as we wait for this night of weeping to pass, we trust in our “dear Lord to defend, to guide, sustain, and cherish, [who] is with [us] to the end.” For one day, dear Christian, “the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.”