Reflecting on Christ’s first coming helps us to remember Christ’s devil-destroying work. Because He has conquered death, Jesus’ disciples can resist the devil in His name (Eph. 6:11; James 4:7). They can say no to the works of the flesh, knowing that Christ came to destroy those as well. 

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. — HEBREWS 2:14

He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. — 1 JOHN 3:8

The devil has always raged against God and His church, seeking her destruction (John 8:44). But Jesus’ physical entry into the world heightened the intensity of the battle between God and Satan.

Satan remembered the words God had thundered at him in the garden of Eden: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). At Jesus’ birth, the devil was poised to cut short the redeeming work of the woman’s seed. Working through Herod, Satan tried to extinguish the Christ child’s life before He reached His second birthday (Matt. 2:16).

The book of Revelation was written to encourage Christians with the good news that in the end, God would defeat the devil. In chapter 12, John saw Satan as a great red dragon standing before “the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born” (vv. 3– 4). In Revelation 20:10, however, John sees the dragon “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” This is the bitter end of the devil and his coworkers (Matt. 13:39–42; 25:41).

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