Who is Satan’s Enemy?

I’d like to conclude my recent exploration of the fall of mankind, Is Eve Guilty? (See the bottom of the post for links, if you are interested in reading the series in entirety.) I’ve been asked why I started this series? Because Genesis 3:15 mentions woman and her seed, not man’s. That thought erased all my previously held assumptions, and penciled a few new ones! 🙂

Summary of views

The Council for Biblical Manhood / Womanhood and complementarian teachers overlay gender roles on the Genesis account. They believe that…

Adam is held responsible for the fall because he is the Covenant Head. This assumes that God mainly works for the many through one. God uses men to represent His authority, not women. Adam was created first and was God’s primary focus. He is chief in his marriage and for all humanity. The Christian husband patterns his role after original Adam’s.

My goal was to overlay a different premise and see where it ended up.

Adam is held responsible for the fall because his sin was deliberate rebellion defying God, whereas Eve’s sin was the result of the serpent’s cunning deception. Adam, as first creation, is the source for all humanity, even Jesus Christ. But, for Jesus to be born without Adam’s sin nature, Eve was formed through Adam, so her seed (without Adam’s sin taint) would birth sinless Messiah.

And, since this inevitably comes up when discussing gender…

My disclaimer

Neither gender is superior to the other. God judges character – heart motivation evidenced (to us) by persistent behavior. Assuming Adam is to blame for the fall because his sin is more heinous is in no way arguing the superiority of women. All women are fathered by Adam, and we all share his guilt. We are all God’s enemies without the mediation of His Son, and as Christians we are all co-heirs as siblings of Christ.

Enemies

God calls woman the enemy of Satan (Gen 3:15). Until recently, I can not recall one lesson or sermon expounding on this enmity between women and the serpent. The first two phrases of this verse are passed over for the Messianic promise found in the last phrase. But there is so much depth to explore in every phrase of this verse! Woman and woman’s offspring can mean Eve, all women, all Christians and Jesus. These select are the ones Satan battles against. Where are the sermons detailing why Eve and HER offspring are singled out as Satan’s enemies and not Adam? Instead, we must hear sermons time and again on the curse of Eve and her uppity impulses. (See my disclaimer.)

1. Eve is an enemy because she blamed Satan as the source of her sin in response to God’s question. She stood against the devil, and God confirmed her place at war with Satan.

2. Woman is an enemy because it is through woman that the serpent’s demise is promised. Satan would stop at nothing to render her useless and impotent in the war she waged through childbirth against him.

And then, knowing of a Seed whose coming would be his doom, Satan would aim his sorest blows at her function of motherhood, and torture her by every means that could be devised, in her child-bearing. How he would hate her every time she was about to become a mother! (Katharine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, Para 99.)

3. All believers are enemies because they are the ones at war with Satan’s children. In Genesis, Eve’s offspring are those who war with the devil’s offspring. In the New Testament, it is God’s offspring who war with Satan’s children. Jesus himself called some the sons of Satan and some the sons of God. (Matthew 13:38, John 8:41-43, John 1:12-13) And 1 John 3 details the difference of offspring. ⁸ The one who does what is sinful is of the devil… The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ⁹ No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. ¹⁰ This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

4. Jesus (and again all those who believe in Him) are enemies because they will crush Satan’s head. (Romans 16:20)

Although I assume Adam believed God and found forgiveness through faith in the coming Redeemer, I find it significant he is not mentioned as Satan’s enemy. At this point in the dialogue, I guess he was more a friend than foe. The one who struggles against evil in the Genesis account of the fall is Eve. She is Satan’s declared enemy and the mother of all his foes.