⁷Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

The devil will flee when we resist him—that is a promise of the holy, inspired, inerrant Word of God. The truth is laid out here, as straightforward as God can make it. In today’s parlance, “Read my lips. I can’t make it any plainer!” So then, what part of this do we not believe? If we say we are believers, we must embrace this promise also, that if we resist the devil he will flee.

So how do we then resist the devil? What does that look like? First of all, we look to how our Lord resisted the devil. As Paul instructed us, we should be imitators of our Lord (1 Cor. 11:1). When Satan tried to turn Jesus away from trusting God, he distorted the meaning and purpose of Scripture, using verses as weapons of temptation against Jesus (Matt. 4:3–11). These efforts are examples of what Paul calls the “flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16). Satan, the master deceiver (John 8:44), was taking on the One who is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) and who is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). One wonders how the devil could think he could be successful against the Author of salvation (Heb. 2:10) and the Author and Perfector of faith (Heb. 12:2), who Himself was and is “the Word of God” (John 1:1–3, 14).

So with each abuse of Scripture thrown at Jesus, the Lord responded with Scripture rightly understood and applied. In the end, He dismissed Satan with “Go, Satan!” Or, as the NLT puts it, “Get out of here, Satan!” Resisting Satan requires that we know God’s Word and are ready to counter his temptations with rightly understood truth.

We need to fully arm ourselves so that his distortions do not hoodwink us:

Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil . . . take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. (Eph. 6:11, 13)

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith . . . (1 Peter 5:8–9a)

By faith, we call on the Lord to rebuke the devil, as did the archangel:

But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 9)

Lord, I commit to knowing Your Word so that I can stand firm against the devil.