Jamin Bradley

The cross was prophesied in the earliest pages of the Bible, when God told Satan that a human would one day crush his head while he bruises his heel. Despite the centuries he had to chew on this remark, Satan walked right into this prophecy when God played Satan against himself.

Knowing that Satan only ever steals, kills, and destroys, Jesus essentially put out his arms and said, “Come at me, bro.” Satan then entered into Judas to orchestrate the killing of Jesus, and by doing so, he orchestrated the murder of a sinless man. Since death is a consequence of sin, and Satan himself had just taken the life of someone unworthy of death, the keys of death were turned over from Satan to Jesus, and Jesus then returned to life. After a long struggle, cosmological justice had been found.

This is similar to the spiritual warfare narrative that Tolkien tells in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf, one of God’s angels appointed to live on Middle-earth, speculates that the best way to overthrow Sauron, one of Satan’s chief principalities, is to become bait. Gandalf expects Sauron to use his powers to do the same things he always does: steal, kill, and destroy. These chief characteristics can be used against Sauron to orchestrate his own downfall. And so Gandalf proposes a plan to essentially tell Sauron, “Come at me, bro,”:

“We must make ourselves the bait, though his jaws should close on us. He will take that bait, in hope and in greed… and he will say… “Let him come on, and behold I will have him in a trap from which he cannot escape. There I will crush him, and what he has taken in his insolence shall be mine again for ever.” We must walk open-eyed into that trap, with courage, but small hope for ourselves.

Of course, taking the keys of death from Satan hasn’t yet stopped Satan from striking back. Indeed, Revelation notes that Satan knows his time is short, and he’s taking it out on us. Nonetheless, Satan is ultimately less powerful without the keys of death, just as Sauron is less powerful without the One Ring. Gandalf comments on this, saying,

If [the ring] is destroyed, then [Sauron] will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed.

This is not a perfect Biblical connection, as Satan still has quite the ability to attack until Jesus brings about the resurrection, but it’s still an insight worth noting. Yes, Satan does still rage against us, but we have the biblical insight to know he has less power than he used to, that Jesus conquered him with the weakness of the cross, and so can we.

When we conform our minds to the wise ways of God, which look foolish, weak, and backward to this world, we rise up with the capacity to wield debilitating blows against Satan.