Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Institutes of the Christian Religion (text only) Revised edition by J. Calvin,H. Beveridge > Status Update

Chapter 14 (Sections 13-19)
DEMONS!!!

(13) Scripture informs us of the Devil and his demons that we might know that we have a powerful enemy who unceasingly seeks out destruction and thereby be constantly on our guard with all vigilance and perseverance. Knowing also that the struggle against his wiles will last our whole lives, let us call upon God to aid us as we strap on the armor of God and prepare for the fight ahead.

(14) The number of enemies with which we war are countless, legions upon legions. Thus we must never be slothful in regards to our readiness to defend ourselves, and we must never assume any kind of peace or truce. We are most vulnerable when we stupidly think ourselves secure.

(15) Satan, the head of the demons, is seen in the beginning seducing our first parents from their allegiance to God through lies and half-truths, that he may both deprive God of honor, and plunge God's image-bearers into destruction. "The minds of men he involves in error; he stirs up hatred, inflames strife and war, and all in order that he may overthrow the kingdom of God, and drown men in eternal perdition with himself. He is the author, leader, and contriver of all malice and wickedness."

However, (16) as Satan is an angel, a creature, his malice is not from creation, but depravation. "He abode not in the truth," intimating that he was once in the truth, and became "the father of lies." We are not privy to the cause, mode, date, and nature of Satan's fall because God only gives us brief, indistinct glimpses in His Word. Knowing such surely would profit us nothing, and the Scriptures were written for our edification, not to indulge our frivolous curiosity. We know only that when he fell, he took legions of other angels with him, and that God "did not spare them" (2 Pet 2:4).

Notwithstanding his continual malice against God and His saints, (17) "Satan cannot possibly do anything against the will and consent of God." We see this from the stories of Job, Ahab, and David. His "contrariety and opposition depend on the permission of God," speaking of the result and not the will and endeavor, which "is wholly bent on contumacy and rebellion." The result is that he only ever executes those things he has permission to do, and thus does his Creator service, however unwilling.

(18) God thus uses Satan and his demons to exercise believers, assail them, solicit them, disturb them, alarm them, and occasionally wound them, but never conquer or oppress them. For unbelievers, God uses demons to "hold the wicked in thralldom, exercise dominion over their minds and bodies, and employ them as bond-slaves in all kinds of iniquity." The heathen are thus seeds of the serpent, children of the devil, helpless against his advances.

Not so with believers! "The promise of crushing the Serpent's head applies alike to Christ and to all His members." The Holy Seed will conquer and not be conquered. They may fall, but they will arise. They may be wounded, but never mortally. They may face occasional defeats, but in the end, theirs will be the victory. Satan was defeated when a Man (Christ) stronger than he disarmed him by dying (Heb 2:14) and bound him, taking away his dominion over the souls of believers. "For the Devil is said to have undisputed possession of this world until he is dispossessed by Christ."

A nefarious doctrine concerning demons has arisen claiming that (19) they "are nothing but bad affections or perturbations suggested by our carnal nature." This heresy is easily refuted by clear, unobscure passages of Scripture. "How absurd the expressions, that devils are doomed to eternal punishment, that fire is prepared for them, that they are even now excruciated and tormented by the glory of Christ, if there were truly no devils at all?" Teachers who promote such error do nothing but the bidding of the Devil himself who would have us imagine that we "have no enemy and thereby be more remiss or less cautious in resisting."

My thoughts: The West has gone through a period where they, drinking deeply of materialistic modernism, fully bought, hook, line, and sinker, the heresy Calvin touched on at the end of the section. Praise be to God that we seem (at least at a popular level) to be coming around once again to acknowledging the reality and activity of malevolent spiritual forces working in opposition to our well-being. (We are still unfortunately a long way off from naming them correctly and dealing with them accordingly.)

As Christians, acknowledging our enemy rightly has the additional benefit of allowing us to read history rightly. We have an enemy who ever strives against the church and against Christ's kingdom, attacking from both outside and in.

Focusing on the internal attacks: he seeks to spread theological error through ear-tickling preachers, and thus redirect the church off-mission. He seeks to compromise faithful ministers and theologians through temptations and then publicly expose them in order to bring shame on Christ's name. He seeks to frame secondary or even tertiary theological differences as major primary doctrinal chasms, so that he might further divide the church of Christ into ever smaller and smaller cloistered groups defined by doctrinal purity to the minutest degree instead of by unifying love. Many more could be named.

Where a shepherd falls, where a church/denomination splits, where there is hardly a notable difference between the Church and the world, there is his dark hand behind it somewhere. One need not even mention the ways he stirs up the heathen to hatred and attack Christ's Church from without.

Here's the good news: Satan has been overcome and bound (Matt 12:29; Rev 20:2). He has been cast out of power (Jn 12:31), his domain is being raided by a Man stronger than he, and his goods are being plundered. The world which was once filled with only darkness in the dead of night has seen a great Light. The Day has dawned and the Sun of Righteousness is rising with healing for the nations in His wings. In His light all can see light that Satan cannot quench. Though for now he can still roar and wage war against it, he is powerless to stop it's inevitable advance.