Who's the Devil?: Evil is always bounded by good
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One of the greatest appeals of the CBS show "Undercover Boss" is how it regularly features caricatures of the person you don't get along with at work getting what they deserve. Often, an employee featured in the show will act rudely or unethically in front of the company's owner without knowing it. At the end of the show, the executive inevitably confronts that person, and that person often loses their job.
In an episode that aired last December, the kitchen manager at a Buffalo Wings and Rings was berating and cursing at his employees loud enough for customers in the front to hear. He was particularly demeaning to what he later discovered was the CEO of the company. Here was a man who was given a leadership position in a restaurant. He was given authority and he misused it. It seemed for a while that he was unstoppable until the boss stepped in. Even then, he allowed the kitchen manager's abuse to go on for a little while and kept his cover. At the end of the show, however, he was summarily dismissed.
Evil tends to go this way. Once it's recognized, evil is tolerated for a time, but evil is always bounded by good. Good seems to have no beginning or end, but evil does. It's end is just as sure as it's beginning.
I've been thinking, reading and writing about Satan lately. I've written about how he had a purpose, how he has authority and how he has his own goals for the world, but I began with his beginning. Satan, the author of sin and inventor of lying, had a beginning, and so did his evil. Therefore, it will also have an end.
To be very clear, while his demise is a logical certainty, it is also set in stone. It is as much an historical certainty as it is a logical certainty.
On Page Three of the Bible, God promises Satan, the form of the serpent, he would "crush (his) head" (Genesis 3:15). The definitive passages about Satan the Old Testament — Isaiah 14:12-23 and Ezekiel 28:11-19 — end with Satan being mocked by the others in the midst of his punishment. In Matthew 25:41, Jesus identifies hell as, "eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
Finally, in Revelation 20:7-10, God reveals the plan he already has for Satan. As human evil is terminated on earth, "the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:10).
This is important because it is the essence of the gospel. God will fix the problem of evil. There will come a day when the sin and lies Satan invented will no longer hold sway over human nature nor the created order.
Between God's promise to crush Satan's head and the realization of Satan's sentence to the lake of fire, God accomplished everything necessary to avoid giving us the same sentence for our participation in sin. Jesus accepted God's judgment of human sin upon himself as he died on the cross. Having risen again from the dead, he offers freedom from Satan's influence as well as life with God, as he intended for us, forever.
This leaves a decision for us humans. We are free to change our minds about God's qualification to be God. Recall that Satan was the first to decide he would not submit to God, but rather he would begin to pursue his own agenda as a self-determined being. As sinful humans, we tend to make the same decision, but God gives us the grace to change our minds about him. People who make the same decision about God's authority as Satan will enjoy the same eternal sentence as Satan. Those who trust God to fix the problem of evil through Jesus escape Satan's sentence and get to live with him in relationship forever.