Praise the Lord, in His earthly ministry the victorious Christ defeated the devil and destroyed his works! Hallelujah!
As we prayerfully consider the matter of the spiritual warfare of the church as the new man, this week we come to the topic, The Victorious Christ.
What’s the connection between the victorious Christ and the spiritual warfare of the church as the new man? The victory of Christ is the basis for the spiritual warfare of the church as the new man.
If the Lord as a Man in His humanity had not won the victory over Satan, all of our spiritual warfare would be in vain. We as the church are able to fight the spiritual warfare because of the victory that Christ has won. When we fight, we don’t fight FOR victory but FROM victory and IN victory!
Hallelujah, Christ is Victor! This individual Christ is not only the Head of the Body but also the constituent of the entire one new man – He is in every member and He is every member of the new man.
The victory of the individual Christ has everything to do with the victory of the one new man. In every stage of His ministry – His earthly ministry, His heavenly ministry, and His coming back – Christ has overcome and has defeated God’s enemy.
But the story doesn’t end here, with the individual Christ defeating Satan; we all as the corporate Christ must also defeat Satan! And it is the victory of the individual Christ that is the basis of our spiritual warfare.
This week we want to see how Christ was engaged in spiritual warfare from incarnation, through His human living, His resurrection, His ascension, and His coming back, and how at every stage and in every step He is victorious!
In His Earthly Ministry the Victorious Christ Defeated the Devil
Jesus Christ was manifested to destroy the devil and his works. He didn’t do this only when He was on the cross but even earlier than that; throughout His human living the Lord Jesus in His earthly ministry defeated the devil.
In His earthly ministry the victorious Christ defeated the devil and destroyed the works of the devil (see 1 John 3:8; Matt. 4:1-11).
God created man in His image and according to His likeness so that man would positively express God in humanity and negatively deal with God’s enemy by representing God with His authority over all the things that oppose God, especially Satan and his kingdom (see Gen. 1:26, 28).
The first man didn’t accomplish this intention, but Christ came as the second man, and He fully expressed God and represented Him. In His human living the Lord fully bore the image of God, expressing in His humanity the rich attributes of the bountiful God through His aromatic human virtues.
Also, in His human living Christ brought God’s authority, the kingdom of God, wherever He went. Long before His death, while He was still in His human living, Christ both expressed God and represented Him to completely fulfill Gen. 1:26.
At the beginning of His public ministry, Christ was led by the Spirit to have a direct encounter with Satan; before He did anything else, the Spirit led Him into the wilderness (see Matt. 4:1-11).
His earthly human ministry would have a been a failure if He would not have expressed God and defeated Satan as a man.
At the very beginning of is ministry, Christ was tempted by Satan and tested by God. This He had to do as a man; He stood as a man to confront the enemy of God (Matt. 4:3-4, 6-7).
Why did He stand as a man and not as the son of God? Because this is the principle of God: God wants us to deal with Satan, a creature dealing with a creature, so Christ as a man defeated Satan. He fasted for forty days; as He fasted, He no doubt was praying, and He was also feasting on God’s word.
This is how we confront the enemy: by feasting on God’s word, by taking in the word of God by means of much prayer and petition. The Lord as a Man had to pray and read the word of God just like us; He had to do exactly what we have to do, to take in God’s word by prayer, and then confront Satan.
The tempter told Him, if You are the Son of God, speak that these stones become loaves of bread! The Lord answered, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4).
Satan addressed Him as the Son of God, but He replied as the Son of Man, and He quoted Deut. 8:3. Based on the Lord’s answer to all of Satan’s temptations, the Lord must have brought the scroll of Deuteronomy with Him and He must have been enjoying it with much prayer during this time.
He was soaking Himself, saturating Himself, and immersing Himself in the word of God, for He knew that a battle will come. We need to do the same: we need to pray over God’s word and take in the word of God by means of all prayer and petition, allowing the word to fully equip us, furnish us, and make us ready for battle.
The way Satan fights is by speaking lies – and he often speaks lies by telling the truth, for he speaks lies by using God’s word and twisting it.
He came to Eve and spoke God’s word to her, adding a question mark and asking, Did God really say…? She should have just said, Yes, God said this, and I say Amen to God’s word!
Satan’s way is to inject thoughts into us, and he does so by speaking; this is why many times we need to speak back to Satan, speak the word of God.
Satan can quote the Bible to us, but he doesn’t have the word of God abiding in Him; we however, need to eat the word, let the word abide in us, be filled with the word, and speak the living word of God back to His enemy!
Satan’s parroting God’s word is different from the Lord’s speaking His living word. This is a basic principle in the spiritual warfare; we need to realize that the enemy fights by speaking lies even when he tells the truth; then, we need to counter that with the truth!
The truth is Christ Himself experienced by us, realized by us, and constituting us. If we want Christ as reality to be constituted into us, we need to contact Him as the Spirit in the word. We need to eat the Lord’s word every day, and then we will experience this victorious Christ who in His human living defeated the devil!
He has overcome the devil with all his temptations – whether on the anxiety related to food and human living, religion, and worldly glory and success, Christ has defeated the devil!
The devil’s temptation of the first man, Adam, was a success; however, his temptation of the second man, Christ, was an absolute failure (Matt. 4:11).
And the Lord’s last words after this confrontation were, Go away Satan! We need to practice saying these words to Satan; he’s not our focus, but he bothers us, and so we need to speak to him, countering him by the word of our testimony.
We need to remind Satan that the victorious Christ in His earthly ministry defeated the devil – Christ as a man has defeated the devil!
Praise You Lord Jesus for being the victorious Christ in Your earthly ministry who defeated the devil and destroyed his works! Hallelujah, Christ is Victor – He has won the victory, He has defeated Satan in His human living, and He is now the resurrected and ascended Head of the Body – and also our life! Lord, keep us in Your word, praying over Your word and taking in Your word by means of all prayer and petition. May we be saturated with Your word and soaked with Your word so that we may fight the spiritual battle by speaking Your word and standing in Your victory!
We can also tell Satan,
Satan, you were not only defeated but completely defeated by a man – Jesus Christ, the God-man! We just want to remind you, Satan, that even though you may have your way with us a little right now, this is not forever, for we are part of the one new man, who will also defeated you! Satan, Jesus Christ is victor; we stand in His victory, we take in His word, and we say Amen to His word! Jesus Christ is Lord! The Man Jesus is the victorious One!
In His Ministry on Earth the Lord Jesus Destroyed the Works of the Devil
The devil has his person and his works; the victorious Christ defeated the devil and destroyed his works in His earthly ministry.
Whatever Satan was able to do, Christ undid those works and destroyed them. Satan bound people with sickness, sin, death, and demons, but Christ came and destroyed the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He destroyed both Satan and his works (Heb. 2:14).
The Greek word for, “destroy” literally means “undo, loose, dissolve”, and “for this” refers to “unto this, to this end”. The devil sins continually from ancient times, and he begets sinners to practice sin with him.
Therefore, the Son of God was manifested that He might undo and destroy the devil’s sinful deeds; He condemned through death on the cross in the flesh sin initiated by Satan, the evil one (Rom. 8:4; Heb. 2:14).
Christ destroyed the power of sin, the sinful nature of the devil, and he took away both sin and sins. Hallelujah! In His earthly ministry the victorious Christ defeated the devil and destroyed his works.
He was the only One who didn’t practice sin, because He was not of the devil. In every part of His human living and during every day and even every minute when He was on earth, He was defeating the devil.
Every day that Christ lived on earth, Satan suffered loss. He testified, The ruler of this world is coming, and in Me he has nothing (John 14:30). The devil tried, but he didn’t get anything in the Lord.
After defeating the works of the devil every day of His human life, Christ absolutely destroyed them through His death on the cross. Christ destroyed Satan, his cosmos, and he crucified sin, sins, and everything related to the works of the devil. Hallelujah for Christ’s victorious human living!
Thank You Lord for being manifested to destroy all the works of the devil. You defeated the devil in Your human living and You destroyed his works. Hallelujah, on the cross the victorious Christ has completely destroyed the devil and his works. Sin has been judged, old Adam was finished, the power of sin was destroyed, and both sin and sins were taken away! Hallelujah for our victorious Christ in His earthly ministry who defeated the devil and destroyed his works!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Matthew, msg. 11 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Spiritual Warfare of the Church as the New Man (2018 Memorial Day Conference), week 3, The Victorious Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
# ”Man shall not live by bread alone, / But by each word which doth proceed / From God’s own mouth”; these we must eat / And let them be our life indeed. (Hymns #814)
# Praise Him! praise Him! Christ is Victor! / He has won the victory! / Sin is judged, old Adam finished, / Full redemption now we see! / Vanquished all the evil powers / Thru the Cross triumphantly! (Hymns #124)
# The vict’ry’s won! We’ve overcome the enemy. / The Word of God we boldly testify. / God speaks His Word—in it there’s life and liberty— / And by the Word the devil we defy. (Hymns #1289)
About aGodMan
