The Unholy Trinity: Part One—The Devil
Trinity Sunday
June 6, 2004
 
	As we rejoice on this Trinity Sunday that the three persons of the Triune God 
have planned the salvation of our souls, we might also keep in mind that there is an 
Unholy Trinity of enemies that war against our souls. For the next three Sundays we will 
consider the members of the Unholy Trinity and how they attack us.
	The first member of the Unholy Trinity is Satan. Now mention the word “Satan” 
today and a lot of people will probably still remember Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” 
character on Saturday Night Live and they will think of Satan as some bogeyman that 
overimaginative people have dreamed up. Or they will think of Satan as being nowhere 
near as terrible or as prominent as the Church Lady had believed. They think of Satan in 
the way he’s portrayed in cartoons—horns, pitchfork, what almost appear to be red 
pajamas, and a mischievous streak. Others don’t think of a particular being named Satan 
at all, using the word “devil” only in the sense that they would say we all have “a bit of 
the devil” in us. They might even use the word “devilish” to describe people’s smiles and 
personalities in a complimentary way.
	When it comes to Satan/the devil, the world today has by and large fallen into one 
of the errors that C.S. Lewis warned against in his introduction to “The Screwtape 
Letters”—the error of disbelieving in his existence.
	Well, make no mistake about it. The devil exists. The Bible says very clearly and 
in numerous places that the devil exists as an actual being. 
	So since the devil is real and since the Holy Spirit has seen fit to mention him 
many times in the Bible, we would do well this morning to see what God has to say about 
this first member of the Unholy Trinity.
	The Bible tells us that the devil is a fallen angel. The fact that he is a fallen angel 
gives us some indication of his power. But let’s get right to where the devil’s real 
power—and therefore his greatest threat to us—lies. Although as angel he has great 
power and although the instances of demon possession in the Bible are but just one 
example of the greatness of that power--as can be seen in the demon possessed man Jesus 
encountered who lived among the tombs and was able to break the chains of those who 
tried to subdue him, nevertheless the real power of the Devil that Jesus warns us about is 
not his power demonstrated in physical might, but the murder that he carries out another 
way, saying, “There is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for 
he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
	There is the greatest danger that the devil presents to you and me—not a 
powerful, obviously intimidating physical threat to our temporary bodies, but a lying, 
deceptively unintimidating threat to something of far more value than those temporary 
bodies—our eternal souls.
	 The lies started at the beginning with Adam and Eve. He came to Eve in the form 
of a serpent and he said, “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the 
garden?’” (Genesis 3:1). It was a lie—God hadn’t in fact said any such thing—but 
perhaps there was enough there to make Eve begin to ask the same question--“Did God 
really say…”—about the one tree from which he had forbidden them to eat—the Tree of 
the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Perhaps it was enough to get Eve to start to think to 
herself, “Well, I suppose that’s technically what his words said—but as I think about it 
some more, I wonder if perhaps he didn’t really mean something a little different. Maybe 
he just meant that we shouldn’t gorge ourselves on it. Or maybe he just meant that we 
should eat from it only once in a while.” 
	Today the devil comes to you and says, “Did God really say that you couldn’t 
even look at someone else lustfully? Isn’t it more likely that God meant that looking was 
OK—just so long as you make sure it doesn’t lead to touching?” And his lie sounds 
pretty good to us—pretty sensible, pretty truthful.
	Although a similar seed of doubt had already been planted in Eve, she responded 
by saying that God had said that there was one tree from which God had forbidden them 
to eat—and that if they did eat of that tree, they would die. At this point the devil moved 
from merely planting doubt to being the Father of Lies, for he said/lied, “You will not 
surely die.” (Genesis 3:4) And it probably made good sense to Eve. After all, what was 
really so bad about eating from one tree? They ate from many other trees and survived. 
Why should this one be any different? Besides, she had been created with an appetite for 
food—so wouldn’t it only be natural—life-affirming, really—to indulge that appetite?
	Today the devil hears God’s words which tell us that the sexually immoral and the 
greedy are on the list of people who will not enter the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 
6:9,10)—that is, they are on the list of people who will die forever in hell—and he says to 
us, “You will not surely die! God isn’t going to send everyone who ever lusted or anyone 
who ever felt a little jealous of someone else’s riches—God isn’t going to send those 
people to hell. God may send sexual predators and corporate embezzlers and common 
“stick ‘em up” thieves to hell, but you—people like you—you will not surely die!” And 
his lie sounds pretty good to us—pretty sensible, pretty truthful. And we like that it 
speaks of or at least implies what we would consider to be a basic difference between our 
lives and the lives of “sinners!”
	Now the devil was ready to go in for the kill. With one final lie he destroyed 
Eve’s relationship with God, saying “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be 
opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4). And that 
sounded really good to Eve—knowing good and evil. At the same time, it perhaps made 
Eve a little angry that God had been holding out on her—that God had been trying to 
keep her from this new experience, from this greater knowledge. She wanted what the 
devil was promising her, so she took the fruit and she ate it. How grateful Eve perhaps 
even felt as she bit into the fruit—grateful to this serpent for enlightening her.
	Today the devil goes for the kill with us, saying, “God doesn’t have your best 
interests in mind. He doesn’t want you to enjoy life. He doesn’t want you to have that 
itch scratched, and he doesn’t want you to have that bank account and that garage filled. 
Go for it. You want it, you should have it—hey, you deserve that new experience.” And 
as we look around and see all the other people who have it, we want what the devil is 
promising us, and we take the fruit and we eat it, grateful and eager for the opportunity.
	And now the devil couldn’t be happier. He’s taken God’s Word, twisted it, and 
lied about it—and by not only doing so, but also by getting you to act upon those lies, he 
has accomplished the other name Jesus gave him—“murderer” (John 8:44)—for he has 
gotten you to sin, and sin is very literally murder to your soul, for God himself has said 
that the wages of sin is death.
	You can see why when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he did not express fear that 
the devil was going to attack them with great feats of power, but rather with something 
far more insidious, far more hideous, far more dangerous. He wrote, “I am afraid that 
just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led 
astray…” (2 Corinthians 11:3)
	Eve had been led astray by the serpent’s cunning. She had been led astray by the 
first of the two main lies of the Father of Lies. It’s a lie you’ve heard countless times in 
your life—and unfortunately, it is also a lie that you have bought into countless times in 
your life. “This sin—if you really want to even call it that—is no big deal. Go ahead—it’s 
no big deal—you will not surely die.”
	But that is exactly where buying that lie leads us—to death. It led Eve to death, 
and it leads us also to death—death in hell. Believe it. The devil will try to tell you 
otherwise. The devil will try to keep giving you more forbidden fruit, continuing to lie to 
you, continuing to tell you that it’s no big deal, that you will not sure die. The devil is 
more than happy to continue feeding us the lie, to continue telling us what our itching 
ears want to hear anyway. Today he is gently filling up millions of lost souls, helping the 
forbidden fruit to taste sweet by telling them that this fruit is low in the carbohydrates of 
guilt, telling them that this fruit is judgment-free, telling them that there will be no day of 
reckoning when that fruit will hang off their guilty souls like so many carbohydrates. 
They’re happily believing the lie. 
	They’re refusing to believe that God hates sin, that God punishes sin—all sin—
and that he does so with death. They’re refusing to believe that they are stained with guilt 
before God and that that guilt will kill them eternally. The devil will likewise attempt to 
keep you from believing it, saying, “Did God really say…” But believe it—for God has 
surely said it—and deep down you know it.
	But once you believe that, be careful. Because once that realization has hit us, 
once we have come to the awful realization that we have been had, the awful realization 
that we have fallen for a stupid lie, the awful realization that the succulent-looking, 
forbidden fruit we are holding has turned into what it really was all along--a foul-tasting 
jam whose taste and whose stains we can’t wash away—once we come to those awful 
realizations, the friendly, helpful, enlightening devil that we knew will change into 
something entirely different. He will cease to—as Paul says, “masquerade as an angel of 
light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), and he will now turn into all those things that he always 
was in the first place. He will show himself to be the “roaring lion” (1 Peter 5:8) Peter 
described—and with whom Peter had been so intimately familiar. He will show himself 
as the “great dragon” (Revelation 12:9) John saw in the book of Revelation.
	Now instead of soothingly disagreeing with you by reassuring you that you will 
not die, he violently agrees with you, telling you that you will die, die, die—and there’s 
nothing you can do about it. He may even suddenly get a “truthful” streak in him. Instead 
of saying, “Did God really say…” he will now say, “God said…” That is, “God said ‘The 
soul who sins is the one who will die.’ [He may even be only too happy to point you to 
the reference--Ezekiel 18:4.] You’ve sinned, so you will die, die, die!”
	He will heap on the guilt. He will tell you that “All have sinned and fall short of 
the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)—and he’ll be happy to run a bottom-of-the-screen 
ticker of all your sins through the TV screen of your mind—perhaps while replaying 
some particularly heinous or recent sin in slow motion, from every angle as a reminder of 
just how short you have fallen of the glory of God. You give him 30 minutes—he’ll give 
you hell.
	And there he is again—lying. This time he is telling the second of his two main 
lies. He has now replaced, “This sin is no big deal. You will not surely die,” and replaced 
it with “This sin is a huge deal. In fact, it’s such a big deal that you can never be 
forgiven.” Don’t be fooled by the fact that some of what he’s saying is the truth. Don’t be 
fooled by the fact that your sins are real, that God’s wrath over sin is real, don’t be fooled 
by the fact that he is quoting God himself when he reminds you that you have sinned and 
fall short of the glory of God. Even as he tells the truth, he is lying because he is 
withholding the whole truth from you. The prince of darkness, the father of lies is 
withholding from you the one who described himself as “the Truth”, the one who is the 
light of the world. In fact, he’s withholding from you the second half of that passage. 
Yes, God has said that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 
3:23)—but God then also immediately went on to say, “and [all] are justified [that is, 
declared not guilty] freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ 
Jesus.” (Romans 3:24)
	And with those God-given words of absolute truth, the devil ceases to have power 
over us. For with those words the devil’s threats of God’s punishment are gone—for 
Jesus has taken God’s punishment in our place when he suffered hell on the cross. With 
those words the devil’s threats of God’s judgment are gone—for God had judged us…not 
guilty—and if the devil tries to get you to doubt those words, show him a picture worth a 
thousand words and a thousand hymns of joy. Show him a picture of the empty tomb. 
There is nothing that frightens the devil more and leaves him more speechless than the 
fact that Jesus has risen—for that is the crowning assurance that the Jesus has done 
exactly what he came to do. John wrote, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to 
destroy the devil's work” (1 John 3:8). When Jesus defeated death and hell, he did just 
that—for the devil cannot hold us in fear any longer.
	But he will try—so you need to be ready for him. Be ready for him when he says 
that sin is no big deal. Tell him what God said about it in his Word. And be ready for him 
when he says that sin is such a big deal that even God can’t forgive you. Be ready for him 
when he tries to do what Paul warned about—when he tries to blind you so that you 
cannot see, so that you do not believe the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 
Corinthians 4:4), so that you do not believe that the gospel of forgiveness applies to 
someone like you. It’s an awful lie, a soul-destroying lie—and yet it is a lie that is easily 
defeated. 
	Martin Luther wrote, “I have read…that a man who could have no peace because 
of the devil made the sign of the cross on his chest and said: ‘The Word was made flesh,’ 
or, what amounts to the same thing: I am a Christian. Then the devil was defeated and 
chased away, and the man had peace. And I believe that this is true if the man spoke 
these words from a believing heart. One does not gain much ground against the devil 
with a lengthy disputation but with brief words and replies, such as: I am a Christian, of 
the same flesh and blood as is my Lord Christ, the Son of God. Settle your account with 
him. Then the devil does not stay long” (What Luther Says 1189). 
	Martin Luther also wrote in one of his hymns that although “this world’s prince 
may still scowl fierce as he will, he can harm us none” and that in fact, the devil and his 
lies are so weak that “one little word can fell him.” (Christian Worship: 200, verse 3).
	Martin Luther doesn’t say what that one word is, but there are any number of 
words of truth that will kill the Father of Lies—“finished”, “forgiven”, “redeemed”, 
“justified”, “Jesus”, “Savior”, “Christian.” 
	Go ahead. Use them all. Use them frequently. They’re the glorious truth. Amen.