QUESTION: Why Didn’t God Just Destroy the Devil Immediately?

ANSWER: Great question! Another way to ask this question might be, “Why did God allow the fall to happen?”

Our world is broken because of the fall.

Our loved ones die because of the fall.

The innocent suffer because of the fall.

The cross was necessary because of the fall.

So why did God even let the fall happen?

Why did He allow the fall to happen in the first place?

Why didn’t He just destroy the devil immediately after he rebelled, and why has He allowed him to continue to wreak havoc in the world?

In order to answer that question, we have to take a very large step back and get a very wide-angle, 30,000-foot view of the story that Scripture tells.

The first thing we need to understand in order to wrap our heads around this question is that God has given all of His creations the freedom to make their own choices.

The God of the universe is a God of freedom, and when He created the world, He imbued the creatures of the world with some form of free will.

He created us not to be robots, not to be NPCs. He created us to be free agents who can freely choose to follow Him or reject Him, to do right or do wrong.

God created us with the freedom to make our own choices, and He wants us to freely choose Him, and to freely choose the path, the design, that He created us to live in.

So, you could say, in the beginning there was freedom.

And within this story, in which God has created the creatures of this world to have the freedom to make our own choices, we meet this character the Bible calls “the Satan,” or the adversary, or the accuser, or the enemy.

We meet the devil.

And the devil uses his freedom to rebel against his Creator.

In the beginning, the devil was like every other creature, every other creation.

And just like everyone else, he was given the freedom to make his own choices.

And he used that freedom to rebel against the Lord.

We see a glimpse of this in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. The Lord compares the wicked kings of Tyre and Babylon and Assyria to this fallen creature, Satan.

And we see this notion that Satan was a fallen cherub, or a fallen angel, some sort of spiritual being who rebelled against the Lord. And in that process, he stirred up a third of the other spiritual beings, a third of the other heavenly hosts, to rebel against the Lord too, to join him in his rebellion.

And because that was true, they were cast out of heaven.

They were cast out of God’s heavenly court.

They were cast out of God’s presence because they used their freedom to rebel against their Creator.

And amidst all of this, God continues in His work of creation.

He creates humanity.

And He gives humanity the same freedom to choose that He gave to the devil.

It’s actually very interesting, and this is one of the most ignored concepts in all of Scripture, but God creates humanity in a very specific way.

He creates humanity for a very specific purpose.

Genesis says:

> God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27, WEB



God created us in His image.

He created us to be His image-bearers.

And that’s a very important term.

Because to be God’s image-bearer does not mean that we look like God. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are more like God than anything else.

No. To be an image-bearer is to have a specific role.

It’s to have a specific job, specific function, a specific calling.

We were created and called to be God’s image-bearers. And what does an image-bearer do?

In the ancient world, an image-bearer was someone who was sent by the king to watch over his land, to watch over his property, to watch over his people, and to enforce his laws.

God told Adam and Eve to work and keep the Garden of Eden, and to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Garden of Eden, and then fill the earth and subdue it.

Take care of it.

Steward it.

Adam and Eve were called to exercise God’s authority here on earth.

To lead worship of the Lord here on earth.

To fill the earth with new humans and to teach them God’s ways, and so forth.

That’s what it means to be an image-bearer.

And as God’s image-bearers, it would have been our job to subdue the serpent and take him to God’s tribunal to be judged.

Adam and Eve were God’s image-bearers, and it was their job to subdue the serpent and take him to the foot of God’s tribunal to be judged.

That was the choice we had to make in the Garden: are we going to use our freedom to follow God by rejecting the serpent and bringing him before God’s tribunal, or are we going to use our freedom to rebel by joining the serpent?

If we had done that, the rebellion would be over, and the rest of the story would go exactly the way it was intended to.

If the original humans had rejected the serpent, dragged him in front of God’s throne, and said, “This serpent is trying to stir up rebellion against You,” he would have been destroyed right then and there, and the rest of history could have played out in perfect peace and harmony.

But that all hinged on which choice humanity would make.

In other words, the devil was allowed to live so that humanity could make our choice in the garden.

So that humanity could have the same choice that the devil had.

So that we could make the right choice where he made the wrong choice.

We were meant to overcome the devil in the garden as God’s image-bearers, but instead we chose to join him in his rebellion.

And as a result, that small heavenly rebellion turned into a grand cosmic rebellion that broke the world and brought about the fall.

So yes, God could probably have destroyed the devil in the beginning, but if He had done that, He would have been making the choice for us.

The choice had to be ours.

And we made our choice.

And the results have been disastrous.

That is, once again, the horrifically bad news that the whole story of Scripture is built upon.

But into this horrifically bad news, God’s Word brings the gloriously good news that the fall wasn’t the end.

Our rebellion wasn’t the end.

When we joined the serpent in his rebellion, God’s purpose wasn’t thwarted.

Even as the universe was plunged into chaos and disorder and brokenness by our rebellion in the garden, God’s glorious plan of redemption was still at work.

Because humanity was meant to overcome the devil in the garden, but the first humans failed, and so has every single one of us in every generation that came after them.

But there’s one human who didn’t.

In the person of Jesus Christ, God Himself became a human like Adam and Eve, like you and me, like all those who failed to fulfill their role as image-bearers by overcoming the devil.

God Himself became a human.

He became an image-bearer.

And He overcame the devil through the cross.

Jesus came to earth as a human. He lived a life of obedience instead of rebellion. He stood firm in temptation rather than succumbing. He fought off the devil’s lies instead of believing them.

He overcame the devil, just like the first image-bearers failed to, and then He went to the cross to pay for our sin.

To do away with the righteous condemnation that came from our rebellion.

And in the process, He defeated the devil forever.

The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

> Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.
Hebrews 2:14, WEB



As the true human, the true image-bearer, Jesus broke the power of the devil.

And now, with his fate sealed through the cross, the devil will be destroyed in the end.

Revelation says:

> The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 20:10, WEB



The Lord may have left the devil to wreak havoc on the world in the beginning, but not because He is letting him get away with it.

No.

Because of the cross, Satan’s days are numbered and the lake of fire awaits.

Because of the cross, a day is coming when the devil can’t wreak havoc anymore.

Because of the cross, all the horrors that have been unleashed on the world through the fall are one day coming to an end.

Because of the cross, everything that we have broken will one day be fixed.

One day the innocent will no longer suffer.

One day life will no longer be filled with pain.

One day we will be reunited with our dead and departed loved ones, and we will rest alongside them in the rest that Jesus offers to us.

All because Jesus came to be a truer and better human than we were, a truer and better image-bearer, to subdue and overcome and ultimately defeat the devil through the cross.

The deafeningly bad news that the story begins with will ultimately give way to the gloriously good news that God has lavished on us through the cross.