The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44) and the deceiver of nations (Revelation 20:3, 8). He “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), and he will do whatever is in his power to get us to forget him altogether and to live as if he doesn’t exist. As believers, we know Satan exists, but many of us still fall into his subtle trap of ignoring him and hoping he’ll leave us alone.

Some have said that the devil’s greatest trick is convincing the world that he doesn’t exist. Satan is the supreme deceiver, striving to rid our minds of his existence and to make us believe that all the Bible’s teaching about him is the stuff of myth, legend, and ancient folklore — antiquated stories that have no place in our enlightened and comfortably brave new world.

The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44) and the deceiver of nations (Revelation 20:3, 8). He “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), and he will do whatever is in his power to get us to forget him altogether and to live as if he doesn’t exist. As believers, we know Satan exists, but many of us still fall into his subtle trap of ignoring him and hoping he’ll leave us alone.

The Attitude I Fear Most

But just as we cannot read a page of Scripture without running into the sovereignty of God, neither can we read very long without coming face-to-face with the harsh reality of the power of the evil one. And so, we recognize that we cannot completely ignore his existence.

Because we too often walk by sight and not by faith — thinking we can live our Christian lives by some sort of spiritual inertia — we fall into Satan’s trap of thinking he’s not really there, or at least as if he’s not very active. It does seem, after all, to be a much more pleasant thought to believe that he’s not around or, at least, that we’re really not a significant enough target for him to spend his time on.

While all true believers know Satan exists, many have succumbed to the notion that spiritual warfare is not that big of a deal. I fear that there are even some Christians reading this now, saying to themselves, “Yeah, okay, sure, I know Satan exists, and yeah, I know spiritual warfare is real, but I don’t believe that Satan or his demons are lurking behind every bush, and I don’t believe that I can really do anything about spiritual warfare anyway.” That is the attitude I most fear for myself, for my family, and for the congregation I serve.

If We Were Not God’s

We do wrestle against cosmic powers — “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). These forces of evil have set their sights on all true believers, and they are unrelenting.

Paul teaches us that the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they might not see the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). The implication is that in having blinded their minds, the devil then focuses his primary work on the followers of his enemy. It would seem to be the case that before we trusted Christ, the devil was certainly our enemy, but not to the degree that he became our enemy after we trusted Christ.

If we were blessed to grow up in a Christian home, he was unquestionably the enemy of our family. But after trusting Christ, we gained Christ and his righteousness by being united to him once and for all, and, as a result, Christ’s enemy became our enemy in a more significant way, and he began to take greater aim at us with his flaming arrows in order to try to bring us down. As Thomas Brooks wrote, “If God were not my friend, Satan would not be so much my enemy.”

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