Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
Personally, I like to avoid conflict, but sometimes the other person whom I encounter loves it. That is the way it is with me and Satan. “I lie, you die” was his introduction of himself; he got that line from Jesus (John 8:44). The worst thing about his conversation with me is that it finds resonance altogether too often inside of me. A fifth column has penetrated the walls of my being and works effectively to weaken my defenses. No matter how often I call the public safety officers at the Holy Spirit’s headquarters, my own arrogant rebellion against my Creator and Lord continues to peek out and flame up, spewing its poison into my system again.
Sin takes many forms, but often, our sins against others stem more from self-interest than true concern for them. We feel the need to defend ourselves. Our worlds grow dark, and we grasp for something to hold on to. We feel our feet giving out beneath us, and we grab on someone else to hold us upright. Instead, we fall on top of him or her and break their brittle bones. They are down, and our offense to defend ourselves causes us both to stumble and fall. And darkness hurled does not become darkness vanished.
For any number of reasons many of us try to avoid catching ourselves in the mirror. But we cannot avoid catching a glimpse of ourselves reflected in God’s design for human life, built into the very structure of our thinking, as it is. It keeps popping up in a number of forms, not only in Scripture and civil codes but in common sense and peer pressure. It confronts us at one turn after another. The mirror of the law does not tell us that we are the fairest of them all. Like the apostle Paul, our mirrors make a good case for labeling ourselves “chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15).
This inner battle we experience is not just ours alone—it is part of a much greater war. The entire creation serves as the battlefield between the Creator of life and the Murderer who lies (John 8:44). God sent David’s descendant onto the battlefield, without even a slingshot, and the devil came in his dragon’s costume to swoop him up and swallow him down (Rev. 12:4-6). But the dragon made a fatal mistake: the Child was not a mere meal to be swallowed but a deadly poison that undid him. He has never been the same since, and it is fatal. The macho maneuverings of Satan stumbled over the child in the crib, who turned into a criminal on a cross and a corpse in a crypt. He was not expecting that the One he had made his enemy would come at him in such a way. The blood of the Lamb is the strangest of weapons. It dealt a death-blow to death. Satan was not expecting that it would end that way. The Child won without his ancestor’s missile system. He went into combat with the strangest of weapons, his own death on a cross and his own corpse come back to life. He had the last word, and it is “Peace.” The Hebrew word “shalom” is usually translated “peace,” but “peace” only begins to cover its semantic field. Shalom filled Eden, and Eden meant joy as well as peace. Shalom brings order and puts us all in precisely the places where God has determined we should be.
He has come with the final word, and it is “I forgive you.” “I restore you to righteousness, that is, your true identity.” “I embrace you as my own.” He comes as the final Word, the Word made flesh, who dwells among us, as Immanuel.
He has come with his grace, favor, and mercy, with his faithfulness and absolute reliability. He reveals the one whom no one had seen and displays the Creator on the cross (John 1:14-18).
Indeed, the dragon nailed Jesus to the cross, but Jesus stabbed him with that cross and nailed him down, way down, far from the wilderness he once haunted where he tempted Jesus and the entire family that followed the entire train of saints into the wilderness. Today, for us who still wander in the wilderness, Jesus Christ comes from his empty tomb to defend us. That is the task of the Messiah, the One anointed to deliver and liberate God’s people. He comes as the broken body of the cross, who is indeed King of the Jews and every other nation and people that flow from the lineage of Adam and Eve.
He comes into our lives to announce that the Liar and Murderer has been crushed by truth and life. He found us more than willing to respond to his recruiting message and indulge in one little act of defiance of our Lord and doubt of his Word after another. He has been mortally wounded by the one little word from the cross and empty tomb, a Word that fells him. He can harm us no more. He has been judged with a softly-whispered Word from the cross, a Word that resounds through Satan’s realm like a mighty clap of thunder, a Word that carries the breath of the Spirit of God into those who have died under the devil’s deception and have been raised again with Christ in their baptisms to walk in the new life that Christ has won for us (Rom 6:3-4).
We salute this last word of the King of Kings, the Crucified One, who has died and was the first to rise, our Savior Jesus.