This Sunday, June 10th, 2012, at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine: “Satan Bound By Christ” (Mark 3:20-35)

Dear Christian Friends,

The Holy Scriptures teach that Satan has been bound by the Lord Jesus Christ and this is — sadly — one of the most frequently and flatly denied truths of God’s Word. Why does this denial occur? Recall that in Scripture we are admonished to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7), but we prefer to walk by sight! Just look! Look at the violence, the wars, the immorality…just look at the evidence: the work of Satan’s hands. One would have to be delusional to even insinuate that Satan is bound. There are just too many signs to the contrary. Right?

Not so fast. Satan has been bound, and this means that Jesus Christ does indeed reign, but this binding of Satan does not mean that the devil is annihilated. I’ve heard of the analogy describing Satan as being chained to a post like a junk yard dog. On that chain and tied to that post, the evil one is still capable of circling a perimeter like a roaring lion seeking to devour (1st Peter 5:8), but the fact is that he really is bound. Those who have been revived and born again know the Word of the Lord; and will not venture into Satan’s little circle of darkness that is already shrinking as the Last Day approaches when he will be thrown into the everlasting lake of fire (Revelation 20:10).

In the meantime, Satan barks his head off, and raises a lot of dust, and tries his best to get into your head: “look at the chaos, disease, war, immorality…look so that I can convince you that I still reign and that I am the reason why you must succumb to loneliness and despair!” Don’t listen to him Christian. Resist him and he will flee from you (James 4:7)! Better yet, turn to the Word of Christ and see why Satan is indeed bound to the extent that not even our daily trouble can keep us from the Kingdom of God!

Jesus described His own ministry in Mark 3:27: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.” Jesus bound Satan in the wilderness described in the first chapter of Mark. The temptations of the evil one while having crushed Adam in the Garden were ineffective against the LORD! In this power over the evil one Jesus once proclaimed to His first-century disciples during His earthly ministry: “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven (Luke 10:18).” His was the victory over Satan in the wilderness, but even before that when God took on flesh, but even before that when God declared in Genesis 3:15 that Satan’s head would be crushed by humanities’ champion.

After demonstrating to the hard-of-heart scribes that their accusation against Him as one who was the prince of demons driving out demons collapsed as demonstrated through our LORD’S reductio ad absurdum, the LORD went on — more importantly — to proclaim the richest Gospel and the most terrifying Law. The richest Gospel was His clear and simple statement: “all sins will be forgiven the children of men (Mark 3:28) and His terrifying Law was His teaching on one of the most controversial teachings in Holy Scripture: the blaspheming against the Holy Spirit as the one and only exception to the first teaching.

The Law in the “unforgivable sin” is crushing: there is no forgiveness for this one sin. What is it? Let’s have Pieper speak on this: “The sin against the Holy Ghost is committed when, after the Holy Ghost has convinced a person in his heart of the divine truth, that person nevertheless not only rejects the truth he is convinced of, but also blasphemes it.” (Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 1, 573)

That is, a person utterly realizes that what they know to be true is from God, and yet in accord with a most rebellious heart, they speak against the truth of God and attribute to what is of God the very work of the devil. In other words, the person openly attacks — while knowing better — the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit which is to bring people to the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, but this person committing this sin calls the Gospel evil while knowing perfectly well that they are lying. What is most terrifying is that someone reaches this point, they no longer care about their loss of salvation!

The good news is that to be concerned about the sin is to be assured that one has not committed it. But why is it still there [in terms of being kept before us in Holy Scripture]? Because Satan tempts us daily to call that which is holy evil, and that which is against God, something good. Isn’t this the state our great nation is falling into too? When we begin to proliferate the murdering of babies and the acceptability of contradicting God’s gift of marriage, how far have we gone to call what is evil good; and what is of God socially unacceptable and according to today’s standards, truly unloving. The irony is thick: the God of love is unloving when He does not accept immorality and darkness! Something is wrong!

But those who do God’s will belong to Christ. This is not our work, but God’s. Who does the will of God? Those for whom God’s grace through faith in Christ apart from the works of the law turn their hearts to confess Christ and rejoice that all — not some — of their sins have been washed away by the blood of the Lamb; and that death and darkness can never prevail, since Jesus is RISEN! Thank God, Christ has bound Satan!

In Christ,

Dr. Espinosa

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