THERE is something deeply humiliating to your sense of human goodness in the fact that the question, who the real prince of this world is, is answered by your Savior as many as four times: “the prince, the head, the king of this world is not your God, nor His Anointed One, nor yet yourself, but Satan.”
This has often been misunderstood, and it has been represented as though Jesus thereby indicated that Satan was appointed by God as “prince of this world”.
Of this, of course, there is no mention.
No, when your Savior, the nearer He makes His approach to the Cross, points out with ever greater emphasis, that the prince of this world is Satan, He states the condition as it actually is.
He does not say: “Satan is the prince of this world by right”; neither also: “Satan must remain the prince of this world until I succeed him on the throne.”
What Jesus declares amounts to this: As a matter of fact, which it will not do to deny, Satan is the prince of this world, as now, that I am on the way to the Cross, becomes for the first time clearly evident.
There is a world; in that world there are people; among the people of this world there rules a certain spirit; that ruling spirit strikes the upper key; whatever rises up against this spirit or resists it, in the end abandons the attempt; and this ruling spirit which restlessly triumphs in this world of men and represses every resistance and oppresses it, is not the spirit of God, but always the spirit of Satan.
Satan is too strong for you, and you, O child of man, fallen away from God, inclined by nature to hate God and your neighbor, and incapable of doing any saving good, you put Satan continually in the right over against your God, even against your will; and deeming that you strive in your own behalf and not in that of Satan’s, you strengthen his forces and allow him the victory.
Thus in fact here upon earth, in your world of men, not your spirit, not the spirit of your God, but very positively the spirit of Satan rules.
You do not let God be King, you yourself are no prince in the earth; no, whatever you may think or say, the prince, the head, the ruler in this world of men is no one else than Satan.
NOW consider carefully that our Savior does not state this as a fact at the beginning of His ministry, but only at its close.
First in John 12:31, and then in John 14:30 and 16:11, occurs this title of Satan, which so deeply puts us men to shame.
From this you clearly see that this terrible name for Satan is directly connected with the decease which Jesus had to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Only on the way which leads through Gethsemane to Golgotha did Satan become manifest as the prince of this world.
For this reason, on the way to Gethsemane, Jesus said to His disciples: “I will no more talk much with you, for now the prince of this world cometh.” (John 14:20).
If you ask whether Satan had not stood before as prince of this world over against Jesus, we reply: that this in part is true.
Already in the wilderness, at the temptation, Satan had said to Jesus: “All this power and the glory of these kingdoms will I give Thee; for to me they have been given, and I give them to whom I will. If then Thou wilt fall down and worship me, it shall all be thine.”
And yet this is still somewhat different, and somewhat less, than what is implied in Jesus’ saying, that Satan actually appears to be the prince of this world.
Somewhat different, for the giving away of the kingdoms outside of Israel was in Satan’s power only because the transition of dominion in Asia, Africa and Europe had thus far almost always taken place by criminal cunning and unscrupulous violence, and thus under Satan’s inspiration.
But also somewhat less. For at the temptation in the wilderness Satan truly appears as the one who has authority over the kingdoms of the heathen; but always yet with the exception of Israel; and hence only in the political domain, but not definitely yet in the heart of the nations.
Also after the temptation in the wilderness the call still goes out to Israel to bend the knee before God’s anointed King, and to the multitude and to the priests, in the face of Pilate and Herod, to decide for Jesus as against Satan.
Now that on the other hand the question is to be settled, and neither Gethsemane nor Golgotha can be averted, now it becomes evident, that Satan wields power not only over heathen nations but also over Israel; and also that in Israel he has seduced not merely the judicial authority of Pilate and Herod, but has so dominated the people and its priests by his spirit, that everything arrays itself against the Anointed of God, jostles Him to the Cross, hangs Him on the accursed tree, invokes His blood upon themselves and upon their children, and in this last and ascending act of the insanity of sin, renders Satan’s dominion over the whole world, Israel included, complete.
And was this not so? Who but Satan bare rule in that dreadful hour of darkness, when on the accursed tree our Savior bled to death?
Among the nations the very remembrance of the knowledge of God had been lost, and was retained in Israel alone.
As righteous retribution for its apostacy and sin, Israel had come under the power of heathen Rome, and in Herod Edom, i. e. Esau, bare rule again over the children of Jacob.
Not alone among the nations, but even among the very people of God, sin and unrighteousness had played official authority into the hand of a Pilate and a Herod, both representatives of a world-power, which was not led and dominated by the Spirit of God, but by the spirit of Satan.
The only small place in the world that had still been able to resist the power of Satan and to contest with him absolute authority over the world of men, was Galilee and Judea and the Trans-Jordanic, where the people, at least the rank and file, together with the order of the holy priesthood of Aaron, could still have entered protest against Satan, and made choice of Jesus.
And for one moment it seemed as though it would truly come to this.
Was it not to the very gate of Jerusalem that with Hosannas He was acclaimed as “Son of David”? But in the end this too proved semblance.
At the moment of decision, with surprising swiftness Satan wins more and more ground, even in that little place, that only place in the world where thus far he still had been resisted.
The multitude departs and gives it up, and another crowd of people exclaim: “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” The priests will presently rend their garments, to condemn Jesus as a blasphemer. They who will vex, insult and sneer at Him on the Cross, already feel the evil blood rise to their faces.
Even His own disciples are intimidated.
In Gethsemane they slumber. When He is arrested they flee. Peter denies Him thrice. And one of Jesus’ disciples, Judas Iscarioth, is he into whose heart Satan entered.
Confess, do you not see how hand over hand in that last hour Satan’s power increased? How, just when it came to the crisis with Jesus, he conquered that last small territory of Israel, which was the only one that had thus far not been his?
Is it then not so, that now for the first, but thank God also for the last time, Satan could rejoice and jubilate with hellish delight, that he was the prince of the whole world, and that that whole world, up to its highest utterance, was not dominated by God’s spirit, not by man’s spirit, but by his spirit?
Thus it should needs be understood, that the poignancy of Jesus’ struggle, the fearsome terror of soul and of His passion to the death may be faintly comprehended.
He, the Holy One, in His own person the necessary means, to discover the whole world, in its apostacy from God, to itself.
Up to that hour there always was yet something, however little, on which man could lay hold; in which man could yet hope; to which man over against Satan could appeal.
All the rest of the world had fallen away from God, but in Israel His praises were still sung. Israel’s inheritance was in heathen power, but on Sion the bleeding sacrifice remained yet smoking upon the altar of the Lord.
No, the world was not yet lost, it did not lie altogether under sentence before God, as long as on Sion there always were yet children of men, consecrated to Jehovah, to give Him praise and honor.
But now with this also it must come to the test, whether these offerings were made in spirit and in truth or merely in semblance and unreality.
The Anointed of God appears.
The Promise of the fathers is manifest in Israel.
He asks no offering in money or in property. He demands nothing for Himself. One thing only He proclaims, which is: the honor of His Father; and for one thing only does He ask, which is: the love, the surrender of the human heart.
What He asks is, that the multitude in Israel at least shall break itself loose from the bands, the works and the dominion of Satan.
And what is the answer?
Even this, that they rejected the Messiah; that they condemned the Anointed of God as a blasphemer; that they demanded His blood; that they put upon Him the curse; and did not rest until they had seen Him bleed and die upon the Cross.
Further than this nothing rested.
Sin had exhausted itself, apostacy had become complete. The contest for Satan as against Jehovah had in Golgotha been fought out to the finish.
In this terrible deed, the whole world cut itself off from God, and in that Cross has bowed the knee to Satan.
And the world would have perished, and would have sunk away in hellish corruption, if Jesus to His saying: “The prince of this world cometh”, could not have added: “but he hath nothing in me.”
For this was the mystery of godliness: Jesus carried the world in Himself.
The Word had become flesh.
He who died was the man Jesus Christ.
And because that man Jesus Christ did not bow the knee unto Satan, but defied the curse of eternal death, at the Cross of Christ Satan suffered defeat.
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