Did Jesus really whip up on the devil?

“And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen” (Rom. 16:20).

“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14).

As one considers the unspeakable cruelty that human beings have imposed upon other human beings throughout recorded history (such as the holocaust, etc.), it may well seem these verses ring hollow indeed. Did the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ really signify total victory over the devil? If so, why is he allowed to continue his malicious and murderous reign over this earth? Is Satan not aware that he is both a defeated and doomed foe? On the surface, hard questions indeed! However, an event at the end of World War II may help by way of illustration and application to answer these probing questions.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the first two atomic bombs were dropped upon the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one blinding instant over 150,000 people perished. Some were blown apart, others burned alive, still others crushed by fallen objects, and many were actually vaporized by the terrible heat. However, a number of the survivors who may have escaped the initial blast perhaps without a single scratch or cut were, nevertheless doomed to die in the near future by a frightful and (up to that time) unknown terror called radiation poisoning. Stated another way, these poor people were, practically speaking, as dead as the original bomb victims.

What is being proposed here is that Satan was being subjected to a double and lethal dose of divinely induced spiritual radiation poisoning, with the first being administered on the cross and the second inside the tomb!

Thus, while the devil may at present appear and act as if he survived God’s wrath untroubled, he is, in reality, a doomed foe whose time is running out.

Martin Luther may well have had all this in mind when he wrote the third stanza of his great hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Note the stirring words:

And tho this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph thru us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him—His rage we
can endure, for lo, his doom is sure: One little word shall fell him.