God has given us authority as believers. In order to address this, we’re going to have to deal with Satan’s authority. Satan has power but, that power has been blown out of proportion.
People have been led to believe we are fighting a being whose power is superior to ours, and we are just barely able to cope with him. That’s not what the Scripture teaches at all.
It does say in Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
So Satan is a factor; he does exist. He has a hierarchy of principalities and powers that we’re dealing with, but in the verse just prior to that – Ephesians 6:11-, it says that we have to stand against the strategies of the devil.
The only power Satan really has against us is deception. He doesn’t have the power to just overcome us. (1 John 4:4, Revelation 12:11).
In Genesis 3 we see that when the first temptation came against Adam and Eve, Satan didn’t come to them with some superior force. For example, instead of possessing a big animal like an elephant, putting his foot on Adam’s head, threatening them, and saying “Serve me or else…,” he possessed a snake, the most subtle creature God made!
The word “subtle” means “sly, deceptive, or cunning.” The reason Satan came through the snake was that he really didn’t have the power to force Adam and Eve to do anything, and he knew it.
He could only deceive them. He came against the nature and character of God and began criticising Him, saying, “God doesn’t really love you—He’s holding things back from you.” He used deception to tempt Adam and Eve to sin against God. They were the ones who had all the authority, and the reason Satan had to do it this way was that he didn’t have the power to come against God. The difference between Satan’s sin and Adam and Eve sin is, they wanted to be like God while Satan wanted to be God! They sinned in the flesh, he sinned in his very core, he sinned in his spirit! [Man sin (Genenis 3:4-5, 6); Satan sin (Isaiah 14:14, 2 Thessalonians 2:4)].
This “son of perdition” doesn’t just proclaim himself as God; he opposes everything else that people worship as God. This clearly shows that he will persecute anyone who doesn’t accept him as god.
Adam and Eve didn’t want this. They didn’t want to be in the place of God and be worshipped as such. They just wanted to experience how it feels to be like God, knowing good and evil. They thought that is what wisdom is and they thought they could get wisdom by eating the fruit.
There’s so much more I don’t have time to go in to, but one of the main points I want to get across is that concerning the authority of the believer, you have to recognize that Satan has zero power and authority over you. He only has dominion in his kingdom of darkness and you have been removed from that kingdom and translated into the kingdom of God. You are IN Christ.
He is a defeated foe. His only power against you, as a believer, is to come against you with lies and deception. Just don’t believe him. That is why it is important that you study the Word of God because ignorance will kill you, but knowing the truth will set you free! (Hosea 4:6, John 8:32).
If your life is being destroyed, you may say to yourself, “Satan is the one who is firing these shots at me,” and that is correct but the truth is you are the one who is giving him the bullets to shoot you. You’re the one who has to respond to his lies and deception. You are the one to stop him by saying ‘it is written…so get out of my way’.
Most importantly is, you have to realize that Satan can only come against you if you open the door to him. If you don’t yield to Satan, he would have no inroads or power against you.
“ We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.
We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
These scriptures are talking about the weapons of your warfare, and every weapon mentioned refers to your mind, dealing with thoughts. Satan doesn’t have the power to do anything to you except through deception. He can influence the way you think if you let him.
I want to quickly summarize some things. In the beginning, God, of course, had all authority. All power and authority have to emanate from God because He is the only one who has power in Himself.
Everything else is delegated from Him. When He created the heavens and the earth, He had all power and authority. Then in Genesis 1:26, when God created Adam and Eve, He said, “Let them have dominion…over all the earth.”
Put that together with Psalm 115:16, which says, “16 The heavens belong to the LORD, but he has given the earth to all humanity. ”
God had ownership of everything by right of being the Creator, but He gave dominion, or authority, over the earth to physical human beings.
Satan has never had the right and power to rule over the earth. But Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4, that he is the god of this world. How did he become that? He took it through deceiving man to sin. God gave that power to mankind, and when man fell, he yielded his God-given authority and power over to the devil. Satan was never given power by God to oppress man or to rule this earth.
Scripture does say that Satan is the god of this world, but it’s not because God made him the god of this world. God never put Satan in a position above mankind. He gave mankind dominion and authority over this earth. The only reason Satan has ever been able to oppress, dominate, or cause the problems he does is that people yield their God-given authority to him.
This posed a real problem for God, because He is a Spirit, and He gave authority over this earth to physical human beings. Only people who have physical bodies have the authority and power to rule and exercise influence on this earth.
Satan has to come to us and get us to yield our authority to him. (Rom 6:16). That’s the reason that he likes to possess a body. In Scripture, demons have to have a body to possess because Satan can’t do anything unless he is using a physical human body to work through.
Because God is a Spirit and has given authority to physical human beings, now in a sense, He has His hands tied. It isn’t because God doesn’t have power and authority but because of His integrity. He gave authority to physical human beings, and to be true to His own Word, He can’t just take it back and say, “This isn’t the way I wanted it; time out, stop, I am taking back the authority I gave since you are messing up.” No, God bound Himself by His own Word. (Psalm 89:34)
Throughout history, He looked for someone He could flow through, but the problem was that all men were corrupted by sin and had yielded themselves to Satan. So what was He to do?
What God finally did was come to the earth Himself and become a man. This is tremendous when you understand it because now the devil was in big trouble. He had been using mankind’s power, and God couldn’t intervene directly to solve all these problems, because man was willfully, legally yielding his God-given authority to Satan.
Satan was wrong in what he did, but man gave him the authority and power that was theirs to give. But now, here came God, and He was no longer only a Spirit but was in the form of physical flesh. God became a man. This put the devil in a bad situation because God not only had authority in heaven but becoming a man gave Him authority on the earth. (Hebrews 2:14).
Jesus said in John 5:26-27, “26 The Father has life in himself, and he has granted that same life-giving power to his Son.
27 And he has given him authority to judge everyone because he is the Son of Man.”
Jesus was referring to His physical body when he called himself the Son of Man.
Jesus came and exercised God-given authority. The devil tempted Him, and Jesus never yielded to him. Satan lost in every battle with Him. Then Jesus took ALL our sins on himself, died to pay the price for them, went to hell, rose again, and said in Matthew 28:18 after he rose from the dead, “All authority is given unto me in heaven and on earth.”
He won back the authority God had given mankind, which man misused, and as God in the flesh, Jesus now had all authority in heaven and on earth. In the very next verse, He said, “Now you go, and you do these things.” In effect, He was saying, “I now have all authority in heaven and on earth, and I’m sharing it with you.”
This time, however, there’s a unique difference in the authority God has given back to us as believers. It is a joint authority between the Lord Jesus Christ and us. It’s no longer given to us solely as it was to Adam and Eve.
They could give the authority away, allow the devil to oppress them, and basically be hopeless, but today our authority is shared with the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s like having a joint bank account that requires both signatures in order to cash a check. Our authority is shared with the Lord Jesus, and His authority is shared with the church.
Although we may fail, God is never again going to sign this authority over to the devil. Satan is absolutely powerless. He has no ability to do anything in your life except what he deceives you in and what you voluntarily yield to.
You may give him authority in your life, you may suffer personally for it, but the God-given authority that was given back to man through Jesus will never again pass solely to the devil. It is now shared between the Lord Jesus and us, and He will remain faithful regardless of our unfaithfulness. (Romans 8:17)
You need to recognise that you’re the one who now has the authority and power. Satan is fighting you with thoughts, and your weapons are such that you can take these thoughts captive.
You can recognise that it’s wrong for the devil to oppress you physically and find out what the Scripture has to say about healing. John 8:32 says, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
You’re the one who has power and authority. God has given it to you, and the only thing that keeps you from exercising it, is that you haven’t yet taken your thoughts captive, you are not controlling your thoughts.
You haven’t used these spiritual weapons to renew your mind and to realize what you have and who you are. It’s encouraging to find out that you’re the one with authority and power, not Satan. I pray that you’ll take this, meditate on it, and God will give you the revelation that you’re the one Satan trembles at. You shouldn’t be trembling at Satan, because you are the one who has God-given power and authority. If you resist the devil, he will flee from you (James 4:7).
