This passage, when it stands alone, is reminiscent of the opening scene of a Quentin Tarantino film: it’s somewhat startling, yet we have no idea what led up to the series of events being depicted. In order to make sense of the scripture and of the film, we have to go back to the beginning. If Christ’s primary work on the cross consisted of overcoming the devil, when did this warfare start and where else is it depicted in Scripture?¹

The Old Testament depicts a warrior God who is constantly fighting against the sinister supernatural and cosmic forces of the universe (e.g., Psalm 29:10; 74:10-14; Job 26:12-13). These are often “depicted in terms of God’s battle with hostile waters and vicious sea monsters that were believed to surround and threaten the earth.” For the ancient Hebrews, water was seen as a menace: a mysterious and unknowable realm “where forces were hidden from human understanding.”² God Himself uses the analogy of controlling the sea in Job 38. Referring to the dawn of creation He asks Job, “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb . . . when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther?’” Creation is shown as being predicated on God’s ability to control the waters from bursting forth and overtaking the land and His entire earthly establishment.

In addition to battling the watery forces and mythic sea creatures, God and his angels are often depicted as battling lesser gods. Perhaps one of the more startling occurrences of this is found in Daniel 10. After three straight weeks of praying to receive clarity for a vision Daniel had been given, an angel of the Lord finally appears to him. The angel explains to Daniel that there was a supernatural reason that a response to Daniel’s many petitions was delayed:

"Since the first day you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia." — Daniel 10:12-13

This unusual window into the heart of spiritual warfare on a plane that we cannot see has a telling impact: God and his angels are truly at war with the demonic. In this case it appears that the fight was against a territorial demon in the Persian Empire, but regardless the truth of Daniel 10 remains the same: the warfare that transpires in the spiritual realm has a direct affect on the earthly realm because heaven and earth are intimately connected.

In the New Testament this warfare is ratcheted up to even greater heights. Satan is depicted by the biblical authors as having a significant amount of power over the dominion of the earth. John writes that the “whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), and Christ calls Satan the “prince of this world” (John 14:30).³

When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness by offering him “all the kingdoms of the world” (Luke 4:5), Jesus does not deny that he has the power to do this. This is notable because Satan, knowing full well that Jesus was God incarnate and understanding that bluffing would not work with Christ, demonstrates the truth of his rule by making the offer anyway.

In Ephesians 2:2 Paul refers to Satan as the “ruler of the kingdom of the air.” Athanasius feels that this fact is a significant hindrance in keeping man from God:

Again, the air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of our race who, having fallen from heaven, endeavors with the other evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to keep souls from the truth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying to follow it." 4

It is against this backdrop of spiritual warfare and a world dominated by the “powers” and “principalities” of demonic forces that Jesus enters into the human race and sets to work on what the New Testament authors wholly confirm is nothing short of a deathblow to sin, death and the devil. Christ is depicted as binding the “strong man” (Satan) in order to “plunder” his home (Luke11:21-22). The Satan’s objective to “steal and kill and destroy” is directly juxtaposed with that of Jesus to “come that (we) might have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). How does he accomplish this? By “destroy(ing) the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14-15). For the New Testament writers, the cross is “God’s final settlement of the Satanic opposing power which has arisen against God.”⁵

Far from being centered only on the anthropological effects of the atonement, the Christus Victor model recognizes that Christ’s victory over the devil’s dominion has had cosmological significance. Once again, Boyd explains it well:

The implication of the cosmic conquest for us is that we are rendered “irreproachable” or “free from accusation” (Colossians 1:21-22). Since our sins are atoned for, “the accuser” has no more claim on us, and hence we are set free (Romans 8:1, 31, 33; Colossians 2:13-15). But it is crucial to note that this freedom is a function of a victorious enthronement, the significance of which far outruns what it does for us. The cross and resurrection are anthropologically significant only because they are first cosmologically significant. 6

The point is not to take attention away from the freedom from sin and restored relationship with God that the atonement accomplished. Rather, by drawing attention to the cosmological shift that occurs when Christ defeats death we do proper justice to the magnitude of his victory. Due to his victory, God has indeed now “rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Colossians 1:13). We are free indeed!

Tomorrow we will tackle the question of how it is that Christ’s death on the cross was able to defeat the devil.

---

¹ I am greatly indebted to Gregory Boyd for what follows. Through his writings, sermons, and personal discussions I have gained a much better understanding of Christus Victor and the warfare worldview of the Bible.

² Leland Ryken, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 201.

³ It is interesting to note here that Satan seems to have much greater power than a territorial demon. Whereas the “Prince of Persia” almost seemed to be bound by his geographical location, Satan clearly has dominion over “this world.”

⁴ Athanasius, On the Incarnation, (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 55.

⁵ Karl Heim, Jesus the World’s Perfecter, trans. D. H. Van Daalen (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1959), p. 70.

⁶ Boyd, God at War, (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 250-251.