Enmity With Christ
God Put Satan On Notice
"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman." Genesis 3:15.
There is a strife between the forces of good and evil, between the loyal and the disloyal angels. Christ and Satan are not at an agreement, and they never will be. In every age the true church of God has engaged in decided warfare against satanic agencies. Until the controversy is ended, the struggle will go on between wicked angels and wicked people on the one side, and holy angels and true believers on the other.
The battle that is raging will grow more fierce as the end approaches. Those who are in unity with satanic agencies are designated by the Lord as the children of darkness. There is not, and cannot be, a natural enmity between fallen angels and fallen humans. Both are evil. Through apostasy both cherish evil sentiments. Wicked angels and wicked people are leagued in a desperate confederacy against the good. Satan knew that if he could induce the human race, as he had induced angels, to unite with him in his rebellion, he would have a strong force with which to carry on his rebellion.
In the hosts of evil there is jarring and discord, but they are all firm allies in fighting against heaven. Their one aim is to disparage God, and their great numbers lead them to entertain the hope that they will be able to dethrone Omnipotence.
When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they were innocent and sinless, in perfect harmony with God. Enmity had no natural existence in their hearts. But when they transgressed, their nature was no longer sinless. They became evil, for they had placed themselves on the side of the fallen foe, doing the very things that God specified they should not do. Had there been no interference on the part of God, fallen humans would have formed a firm alliance with Satan against heaven. But when the words were spoken, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” Satan knew that although he had succeeded in making human beings sin, although he had led them to believe his lie and to question God, although he had succeeded in depraving human nature, some arrangement had been made whereby the beings who had fallen would be placed on vantage ground, their nature renewed in godliness. He saw that his actions in tempting them would react upon himself, and that he would be placed where he could not become conqueror. . . .
God pledged Himself to introduce into the hearts of human beings a new principle—a hatred of sin, of deception, of pretense, of everything that bears the marks of Satan’s guile.
Enmity Between Christ And Satan
And I will put enmity between . . . thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Genesis 3:15.
The Lord said concerning Satan, that old serpent, that he should bruise the heel of Christ, but Christ would bruise his head. Thank God, he cannot touch the head. “With the mind I myself serve the law of God,” said the apostle. The mind and heart are enlisted in the service of Christ, while Satan has enlisted humans and fallen angels to join in his company to league against good. They can bruise only the heel, while in the very act, when Satan seems to have triumphed in putting them to torture and death, the faithful who stand in defense of the law of Jehovah are wounding the head of the great rebel.
This prophecy of enmity between Satan and Christ is far-reaching. It is a delineation of an unwearied conflict between Christ and His followers, Satan and his angels, and fallen humans united in a desperate companionship to reproach, bruise, wound, and exterminate the followers of Christ to the close of time. This controversy between Satan and Christ was carried on here in this world. Satan was constantly afflicting the Son of God and creating prejudice in the minds of people. Not only were Christ’s doctrines and teachings perverted, misinterpreted, and wrested from their true meaning, but falsehoods followed Him everywhere. The misrepresentations that the chief priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees poured into the ears of the people appealed to the worst passions of adulterers, fornicators, and the dishonest, exciting a burning prejudice that made it almost impossible for Him to live upon the earth for even three and a half years after His public ministry began.
Why, then, Christ has said, should those who bear the truth of God to the world be discouraged and fainthearted? “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.” Ye “are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” They will “revile you, and persecute you, and . . . say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”“Yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.”
Satan’s malignity reached its height when the Lord of Glory was crucified, and we may expect in our day that human hearts will be open to prejudice and to the falsehoods, wicked misrepresentations, and slander of those who love this kind of satanic work. It is a wisdom from beneath. It is hell-born, and its results will be as in Christ’s day.
1886. CTr 28-29
