Daily Devotional

You’ve probably heard the adage: “When you point a finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at you.”

Satan is an expert at this. In fact, did you know that his name means “accuser” and “adversary”? Here, we see that Satan is our accuser; he delights in pointing the finger at us. It’s not that we don’t deserve it. We aren’t being falsely accused; we have indeed broken the law. Satan is eager to hunt out those sins, but they are also the very sins into which he himself tempted us (Matthew 4:1, 3; 1 Corinthians 7:5; 1 Thessalonians 3:5). If we investigate Satan’s track record, we will actually find him to be the originator of sin (Ezekiel 28:15, 16), “for the devil has sinned from the beginning” (1 John 3:8). Yes, we are sinners, but so is Satan.

Now this is where Christ’s victory at the cross comes in. The cross wasn’t just about Jesus’ death. Jesus was also resurrected—and that means we can be too (Romans 8:11). Calvary’s most important purpose was to achieve salvation for humanity: “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2); He “died for us, that … we should live together with Him” (1 Thessalonians 5:10); “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11).

The events of the cross furthermore returned the dominion of Earth back to Adam—not to the first Adam—but to the last, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:45–47). This is the full extent of the devil’s defeat. He wasn’t simply “cast out” from his place in heaven; after the cross, he was “cast down” from his role as usurper of planet Earth. “The kingdom” of our world ultimately belongs to the One who spilled His blood for it.

Son of God, thank You for taking my place that I might have the gift of eternal life in You.

For Further Study: Job 1:8–12; Zechariah 3:1; 1 Corinthians 1:18