Objection: God Has Satan on a Leash and Only Permits Him to Do Certain Things to You
To hear some talk, they think that there is a new spiritual company, GodSatanCo, and that God and Satan have now become partners to bring about personal growth in your life. To put it bluntly, this objection could be stated simply as “God Uses Satan.” This is one of the worst lies ever unleashed on the Church.
This is similar to what a famous preacher of old wrote, that God “does make use of evil so that it may bring forth good.”
According to this line of thinking, Satan is only allowed to do the things to you that God decides to let him do, but he is barred from doing anything more drastic. In others words, your Heavenly Father sets the suffering level that is just right for you so that you grow the most. And He supposedly uses what Satan does for your good.
This is just another religious hogwash argument that deceives people into accepting the works of Satan in their lives, because they think that whatever Satan is doing, he’s on God’s leash and so God “let” him do it. I’ve even seen a website that recommends that when you are attacked by a demon, you should pray to God for wisdom to understand why God allowed that demon to afflict you. The Bible’s much better advice is for you to command it to be gone in the name of Jesus (Mark 16:17)!
Will you tell the relatives of someone who was cut down in the prime of life by cancer or one of Satan’s other inventions that God explicitly gave Satan permission to kill that loved one? This “leash” thinking would indicate that if God “allowed” Satan to do it, it was OK with Him for some unknown reason. So what exactly would be the limit on what God allows Satan to do? Satan gets wars going so that sometimes millions of people die. How long do you think that leash is?
The real God has never partnered with Satan since he fell. Satan is the “enemy” and the “adversary,” not God’s “partner” or “instrument.” Satan is here because Adam admitted him to the planet. He has had the right to be here ever since. It is NOT because God approves of what Satan does or that He wants to “use” what Satan does. God gave the earth to man. When man allowed Satan in, God had to honor that choice.
The real Jesus has no use for Satan and his works. He went around doing good, healing those whom Satan oppressed (Acts 10:38). He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). Rather than accepting the works of the devil as something that God was OK with because Satan was on a leash, Jesus went around undoing what Satan had done. He said that a certain child of Abraham “ought to be” loosed from the bondage that a Satan-sent “spirit of infirmity” had caused (Luke 13:11-16). You are a child of Abraham too (Galatians 3:7, Galatians 3:29), so you “ought to be” loosed from Satan’s bondage too! How can God and Satan be working together when everything Jesus did was about releasing people from Satan’s dominion and his evil works?
What about Job? Can you point to ANYTHING good that resulted in Job’s life from what Satan did to him? Was all of that torment designed to build Job up and make him mighty in God? It certainly didn’t have that effect. The longer Job suffered, the farther he got off the mark, railing at God for things that God didn’t do. And the longer people today are sick, the crankier and more miserable they tend to get. There is no benefit.
Besides, Satan has already proved his track record of DISOBEYING the will of God. Why would God entrust ANY part of His work in His Church to an unreliable renegade? Scripture warns us about depending upon unreliable people (Proverbs 25:19: “Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint.”). God would be ignoring His own counsel if he partnered with an unreliable fallen angel.
If God were using Satan to build you up, He would owe Satan a reward throughout eternity, not punishment. The fact that the devil will be tormented day and night in the lake of fire shows that God will punish him for what he did to us. This proves that Satan did nothing but sin against God rather than partner with Him. All his deeds are acts of rebellion against God’s divine purpose, not cooperation with God’s divine purpose.
“Yes,” someone might say, “but if God didn’t have Satan on a leash, he could just do anything he wanted. He could rob, destroy and kill everyone. So OBVIOUSLY there has to be a divine leash.” But this is not a leash that varies from person to person at God’s supposed whim. God Himself is on a leash the way Satan is because God gave MAN control of the earth. Neither God not Satan has the right to just barge into the earth and do things without man’s permission. Did YOU give Satan permission to move on the earth by giving you a sickness? If not, his action is ILLEGAL and you can stop him in his tracks. YOU are the one who is supposed to put him on a leash, not God! On this fallen earth, “the god of this world” has the right to TRY to tempt you to sin and TRY to make you sick. And YOU have the right to stop him!
So now you might wonder, if man had this authority all along, why couldn’t Old Testament people, particularly Job, just run him off and stop his works? Man, back then, did not have a covenant with God that allowed him to do that. We do have such a covenant. Actually, Adam had the ability to run the devil off before he fell, but he failed to use his authority. After he fell, he was in the same fallen “sin condition” as Satan. Man lost his ability to engage Satan and win until our new and better covenant was inaugurated by Jesus’ blood.
Satan is the one who wants to keep YOU on a leash, but you can break all his leashes through your authority in Christ! Rather than you having to obey him, he now has to obey YOU! The introduction of the New Covenant changed everything.