By Not Known
When the LORD first appeared to Moses in Exodus 3, He told Moses in verses 19-20, “I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go.” And verse 22 says, “So you shall plunder the Egyptians.” These words are fulfilled not just in the coming events unfolded in the Exodus, they point forward to the ministry of the Lord Jesus. They point to the Gospel.
In stating the reason for His coming, the Lord Jesus highlighted the significance of the exorcisms He had performed in Mark 1 to 3 by echoing these words in Mark 3:27, “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.” The strong man is referring to Satan. This world is his house. The goods in his house are the people living under his dominion. They are his minions, doing his biddings. Through the influence he exercises over their minds, their desires, and hence their wills, he turns them against God and His laws.
Since Adam’s defeat at the Fall, such is the condition of all mankind described in Ephesians 2:1-3, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
From Adam to Abraham to Moses to us, none is strong enough to resist the devil. “For all had sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23),” till Christ, the stronger man came, to bind Satan and plunder his goods. Christ’s death on the cross disarmed Satan (Col. 2:14-15). In speaking of His own death, the Lord Jesus said in John 12:31-32, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The cross is a judgment on Satan. Hebrews 2:14-15 tell us that Christ partook of our physical nature so that through death, He might destroy the works of the evil one and deliver those subjected to lifelong slavery.
To be freed by Christ is, therefore, to be transferred from the kingdom of darkness, the domain of Satan, into the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:13). The effect of this transfer is a radical change in the deepest longing of our hearts and minds (Rom. 12:1-2). It is a constant decision to turn away from the love of the world, the longing for the glories offer by this world, to the love of the Father, to do God’s will instead of Satan’s will (1 John 2:15-17). It is a transformation that leads one to say as Paul in Galatians 6:14, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”