For most of my Christian life, sadly, I thought he was. Isn’t it obvious? The world is filled with misery, suffering, and death. Violence, stealing, hatred, greed, and every other vice are common. I was convinced sin would only finally be overcome at Christ’s second coming, at the judgment of the living and the dead. In the meantime while I didn’t believe the devil had free reign because God is sovereignly in control of all things, for whatever reason, God allows him to sow misery all over the world. There is victory and transformation in individual Christian lives, in churches and families, but on a societal level, I didn’t believe things would ever change much for the better. I wished and hoped and prayed they did, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Like most other Christians, I believed heaven is my home, and down here we’re just passing though, aliens and strangers caught in the wilderness until we get to the promised land of heaven. Now, I’m pretty sure I was wrong about all of it.
My pessimistic assessment of life in this fallen world began to slowly change over six years ago as I began to grow more optimistic for a variety of reasons. My optimism was theologically confirmed in August of 2022 when I embraced postmillennial eschatology, something I’d previously rejected as a joke unworthy of consideration. Since then, my understanding of redemptive history has completely changed from a primary focus on the life to come, to a focus on both this life and the one to come. I realized victory and transformation wasn’t just for our personal lives and the church, but for the entire world, and the nations within it, in what we’ve come to call the Great Commission. Jesus’ command to his disciples in Matthew 28 assumes entire nations are to be discipled and baptized, not just individuals within those nations. That’s what makes the commission great! It is actually world transforming.
Redemptive History and the Binding of Satan
Before we get to Satan, it’s important to get some historical perspective on redemptive history post resurrection and ascension. We must remember that the gospel is a covenantal work of God in history, slowly developing as he created his-story in and through his people. When God promised Abram that through him and his offspring all nations on earth would be blessed, he was pointing us forward to the gospel, the good news, something by his power and sovereign will he would bring to pass that would bless nations. Prior to Christ that blessing was extremely limited, but when he rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God everything changed. The kingdom of God, Christ’s reign, had come, and Satan would finally be bound for a thousand years. In Revelation 20 John tells us what happened in Christ’s victory over sin and death:
And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.
There has been much debate over that thousand years, but for most of church history it was believed John was referring to the church age, the time between Christ’s ascension and his second coming, not a literal thousand years on earth. I’ve become convinced, unlike most Christians today, that the binding of Satan happened at Christ’s first coming, and not something happening at his second. This is hugely important for how we live the Christian life. There are several reasons I believe this.
When Christ came at his first advent something drastic happened to Satan. He wasn’t left free to roam and create havoc anymore. In John 12 he gives us his version of the triumphal entry. Jesus predicts his death, and right in the middle he makes this statement:
31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.
Now is the operative word because right after this he predicts the kind of death he will die to bring this to pass, saying he will be “lifted up.” His crucifixion was the binding of Satan, the thing which finally limited his power on earth. In other words, we’re living through the period of history when Satan is bound. There are several other passages in the gospels confirming this.
In Matthew 12 Jesus heals a man who was blind and mute, and the Pharisees claim Jesus is driving out demons by the power of Satan, which Jesus dismissed as absurd. A city or house divided against itself cannot stand. Then he tells them something that changed the course of history, redemptive history to be exact:
28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Jesus and John the Baptist used the exact same words to introduce his ministry, “The kingdom of God is near,” and now it isn’t just near, it is here! And when Jesus is raised up and then ascends to heaven, the devil will be bound for a thousand years, or the entire age of the church. Then Jesus himself uses this analogy to refer to this binding:
29 “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first binds the strong man? Then he can plunder his house.
I think it’s not a coincidence God in his providence has John and Matthew use the same Greek word for bind. Once Christ accomplished his mission, Satan would be limited in a way he had never been in the history of the world to that point. Christians look around at all the evil in our day and think nothing has really changed, that the devil is still rampaging today as he always has, but that’s not true.
Something else happened in Jesus’ ministry indicating the limits that would now be put on Satan. He sent out the 72 to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, and when they return they are blown away that even the demons submit to them in Jesus’ name. That had never happened before Jesus came, and could not happen because Satan had yet to be bound, limited in what he was allowed to do. Then Jesus tells them why they could do it:
18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Satan’s authority was now limited because Christ resisted his temptations in the desert (Matt. 4), unlike the first Adam, which was when Satan initially gained all his power and authority to wreak havoc and death upon the world.
What Makes the Great Commission Great
What exactly does this binding mean? We don’t have to guess. If we go back to Revelation 20, John tells us:
3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.
We can draw a straight line from Satan being given the authority to deceive the nations initially, to that authority being rescinded at Christ’s first coming and his command in the Great Commission to disciple the nations. Prior to Christ’s coming all nations on earth save one, and that not a very effective one, were thoroughly pagan nations. That was all set to change when Christ was given “all authority in heaven and on earth.” Now the nations could be taught to “obey everything” Jesus had commanded them, and not just the individuals in those nations. It would be nations corporately, as well as the individuals that make up those nations. So yes, we can have Christian nations. We must have Christian nations because it is that which makes the great commission Great!
If we go back to the beginning of the calling of God making a people for himself who would be the means of transforming this fallen world into blessing, we are taken back to his call of Abram in Genesis 12. Through him and the Patriarchs, and by extension the people of Israel, all nations of the earth would be blessed. Over 2,000 years to the time of Christ God’s blessing has not gone beyond Judea, and as we see from Jesus’ ministry completely misunderstood. This blessing God promised was to go to the entire earth, to all peoples, but it got stuck with the Jews, and they rejected anyone who could un-stick it! When Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, and sent his Holy Spirit on his people everything changed. The blessing that was promised, which was confined to one nation, was now unleashed on the entire world. Compare the next 2,000 years to the previous 2,000, and there is no comparison.
This contrast of the inability to bring the blessing to the world with seeing it done is what makes the Great Commission great. I stole the title of this section from a book by Ken Gentry called, The Greatness of the Great Commission. In the introduction Gary North says Gentry’s book makes the theological case “for the comprehensive nature of God’s redemption in history.” He says this about the healing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ:
Nothing is to be excluded from Christ’s healing: not the family, not the State, not business, not education, and surely not the institutional Church. Salvation is the salve that heals the wounds inflicted by sin: every type of wound from every type of sin. . . . God’s salvation brings us back to the original task: to exercise dominion to the glory of God, in terms of his Bible-revealing law. The gospel will succeed in history before God comes again to judge the world.
This means the blessings of redemption go well beyond the walls of the church because God’s kingdom, the one Jesus said was coming, is not limited to the church. As we sing in Isaac Watts great hymn Joy to the World every Christmas:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
Watts, the father of modern hymnody, realized everything infected by the curse of sin and man’s rebellion would be transformed by gospel blessings. It is comprehensive in its effects, not limited, expansive in scope, not narrow. That means the gospel of God’s reconciliation to man and the biblical/Christian view of reality affects every nook and cranny of existence, all of material reality. Nothing we do or see or experience, every moment of our existence, is infused with gospel blessing.
God’s Covenant in Soteriology and Eschatology
I mentioned above that “the gospel is a covenantal work of God in history,” which means it’s his work. It is something he is committed to bring to pass. The blessings he promised to Abram started being fulfilled at Pentecost. Now that God’s Holy Spirit indwelt his people, his law, as he promised in Jeremiah 31, would be written on the tablets of their hearts instead of tablets of stone. That would transform people who would eventually transform the world. The last 2,000 years provides us with plenty of evidence as the ancient pagan uncivilized world transformed into the modern world. Because of Pietism and Christian over spiritualizing of the gospel, Christians miss the profound material implications in this fallen world because of the work of Christ.
Our salvation from sin, what Christ accomplished on the cross, soteriology, wasn’t just for our souls or going to heaven when we die, but for our lives in this fallen world. The ministry of reconciliation Paul speaks about in 2 Corinthians 5 is the coming of a new creation (v. 5), of taking the paradise Adam lost, and Christ is restoring. This ridding of our alienation to God in Christ has implications for, literally, all of existence. As I write this I just returned from a shopping trip to Sam’s. Do you realize how big a deal it is that we no longer have to grow or kill the food we eat? We run to the store where almost everything imaginable is available and cheap. We live in a swamp called Florida where we can control the temperature in our houses. I have relatives who live in Phoenix, a desert, where it’s north of 100 degrees for five months a year, who live comfortably with air that is is cooled by big machine at the flip of a switch. I could mention the blessings associated with modern medicine and nutrition, technology, travel, indoor plumbing, or safe drinking water. I’m writing and recording something that can be accessed anywhere in the world at any time. It’s crazy!
I could go on, but you get the point. Most Christians would never connect these things to the gospel because to them these are “material” things, not “spiritual” things. In fact, everything is spiritual because everything human beings do with God’s creation is a reflection of them as image bearers of God. When Christ rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sent his Spirit, everything his people did and thought and created was touched by gospel transformation, a way of doing things that would bring God’s covenant blessings to the earth, so to all nations and peoples. That’s the promise emphasized over and over again in Genesis. Satan is powerless to stop it. His efforts are futile because he has been stripped of his authority over the earth. That has been transferred to Christ, and is now being lived out through God’s people. This is what salvation from sin means, and we’re just getting started!
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