The Temptation to Be Free of God

The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” — Genesis 3:4–5 ESV

The world tries to convince us that the Devil is dead, but it’s a specious argument, one based on circular reasoning. Both Scripture and my own personal experience undercut this argument. Truth is, my life attests: Satan, the father of all lies, the chief prevaricator, is very much alive. Truth is, he’d rather have you believe that he’s dead, inactive, or a myth if it’d keep you out of the arms of God.

The question of God — who first posed it? You know the story of Genesis, how God planted a garden and set a man named Adam in the middle of it. From Adam’s rib he cut a woman and named her Eve. As the story goes, God gave Adam and Eve full rule over the garden, with only one restriction. They could not eat of the tree in the center of the garden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If they did, God said, they would die. Seems simple enough, right?

Enter the Devil.

Taking the form of a serpent, the vile liar visited Eve and tempted her first with a question: “God told you not to eat from that tree?” Eve responded and said God had warned them that if they ate from the tree, mankind would be finished. That’s when the first lie entered the ears of a human. “The serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Genesis 3:4–5 ESV). You can set yourself free of God, the Devil intimated; you can kill him and become your own god.

Sound familiar?

Eve was tricked by the Devil’s lies, and what was the result of that trick? Sin entered the world, and with it, an endless cycle of death and destruction. Into the world came drunkenness. Into the world came sexual immorality and perversion. Into the world came wars and rumors of wars. Into the world came violence and racial divide. The world was forever changed because of the crafty lies spun by a slithering serpent.

• Those lies have slithered on throughout history.

In the Gospels that record the life of Jesus, we see the Devil, still scheming, still spinning the same sorts of lies, still tempting people with the lie that life would be so much better if we could only be free of God.

In the eighth chapter of John, Jesus was speaking to the people, and some religious leaders were in the crowd. Jesus — a man known for saying it like it was — spoke the truth, said that every last one of them had been born into sin slavery. Jesus outed the truth. The Devil was alive and active, and he controlled the desires of the religious leaders of the day.

There was good news, though. He’d come to bring freedom, and if they followed His command, they’d be free indeed.

Jesus, thank you for coming to this world and exposing the Devil’s lies. The enemy of our souls tempts us to become our own god, but You came to reveal that You alone can set us free.

Excerpted with permission from Your Daily Phil by Phil Robertson, copyright Phil Robertson.

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Your Turn

Oh yes, the devil is alive and active, but Jesus came to crush Him! Let's arm ourselves with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit within us to speak against his lies and live in the truth! Come share your thoughts with us about walking in God's truth. We want to hear from you. ~ Devotionals Daily