The Serpent's Playbook
Studying Satan's game plan to regain the upper hand
A video transcript of this article will be available soon on YouTube.
The following is a draft of the second chapter of a forthcoming League of Believers eBook titled Outwitted: How Christians Have Been Duped by the Enemy and What We Can Do to Wise Up. The first chapter can be found here.
What’s in a name?
It is not enough to merely name our enemies—“The world, the flesh, and the devil”— and speak of them in vague, spiritual generalities. This is because, according to Scripture, Satan and his demonic legions are not the impersonal forces of nature or science fiction, but rather persons with dispositions and habits that we must study and understand.1 This is all the more true given the fact that our enemies have been carefully studying us for millennia, as a stalking predator studies its prey (1 Peter 5:8).
That said, one of the benefits of “naming names” is that names and titles provide an etymological gateway into the nature of those who bear them.2 We have named our enemies and set our sights primarily on the unseen realm. Now, we must examine the personalities behind these names, describing their character and behavior.
We will start with the devil himself—and may the Lord rebuke him (Jude 1:9).
The adversary
The chief enemy of our souls is the one whom the Bible refers to as the satan (שָׂטָן), from which we derive the proper name “Satan,” meaning “adversary” or “opposer” (Job 1:6–12, 2:1–7; 1 Chronicles 21:1; Luke 22:31; 2 Corinthians 11:14; etc.).
Elsewhere, this same person3 is identified as “the devil” (e.g., 1 Peter 5:8) or “Lucifer” (Isaiah 14:12).4 Scripture also identifies Satan with the serpent who deceived Eve (Revelation 12:9; cf. Genesis 3:13; 1 Timothy 2:14), giving him the distinction of having personally tempted the first Adam in the Garden and the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13). Paradise was both lost and regained through confrontations with this primeval antagonist.
In short, Satan is our greatest and most formidable spiritual foe, the self-aggrandizing opponent of all that is called God and is worshipped (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4, 9), “the god of this age” who has “blinded the minds of unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4) and “taken them captive to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26), the “prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), the evil one who has the whole world under his control (1 John 5:19)5—an impressive rap sheet if there ever was one.
How has Satan gained such a pervasive influence over humanity and what tactics did he employ to do so? Was it though the sheer force of his personality, his overpowering might, or dazzling appearance? Actually, it was through none of these things, but rather through humanity itself, through our own weakness and gullibility, that Satan first deceived the world and gained access to its levers of power, levers that were initially entrusted to us (Genesis 1:28).
If we are to escape Satan’s deceptive snares we must first understand what they are and how he lays them. Then, once we are familiar with his playbook, we can mature in our understanding of good and evil (Hebrews 5:11–14; cf. Genesis 2:9, 17, 3:5, 22) and advance from defeat to defense to offense and, ultimately, to victory (1 John 2:14):
“I write to you, dear children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”
The prototype
The ultimate prototype of Satan’s playbook comes to us at the very beginning of history in the serpent’s temptation of Eve.6 Here, we find a step-by-step guide to Satan’s tried-and-true, go-to strategy for enticing us mortals into sin (Genesis 3:1–7):7
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?’
The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’’
‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
This brief passage contains a wealth of insights into Satan’s main modes of attack. For our purposes here we will focus on two of the more salient points.
Lying in the Garden
First, the major weapon in the “crafty”8 serpent’s arsenal is lies. Jesus understood this better than anyone, stating that the devil “is a liar and the father of lies” and that “there is no truth in him” (John 8:44). Satan is first and foremost the arch deceiver, “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Like a snake, Satan is wily, cunning, and resourceful in his deceptions. When duping us into doing his will, rather than God’s, he employs tremendous subtly, making mere sophistry appear utterly sophisticated.
To bring about the Fall of Man, Satan employed lies of all sorts, including elements of exaggeration, fabrication, misrepresentation, obfuscation, accusation, equivocation, half-truth, omission, and even outright denial. When it comes to deception, it’s all fare game to Satan.
For the Christian, this poses an obvious, almost tautological, problem, but one that is often missed, for “the problem with deception,” as the saying goes, “is that it is deceptive.” In other words, when we fall prey to Satan’s lies we are seldom fully aware of it. The genius of a good lie is its apparent truthfulness. This is only possible if the lie contains a substantial amount of truthful, or truth-adjacent, content.
The key, then, to Satan’s strategic advantage in deception lies not in its departure from the truth but in its proximity to it. The goal is to minimize the delta between reality and unreality while maximizing the damage that results from the difference. A seafaring vessel nudged slightly off course by subtle crosswinds can drift imperceptibly into uncharted waters, resulting in shipwreck (1 Timothy 1:19). Satan’s goal in all of his lies, or what Michael O’Fallon refers to as “fertile fallacies,”9 is to inject just enough falsehood into our thinking to render us manipulable, but not so much falsehood that he blows his cover, thereby triggering the alarm bells of our conscience and common sense.10
Because Satan’s most effective lies are those that most closely resemble the truth, they are also the lies that most often go unnoticed, even by the great majority of otherwise discerning Christians. This state of affairs can persist for years, decades, and even centuries. Lacking proper judgment (John 7:24), we remain blind to the very lies that are doing us the most damage (2 Corinthians 4:4).11 And even when, in the mercy of God, the occasional whistle-blowing prophet draws our attention to these blind spots, he is invariably dismissed as a misguided zealot, legalistic crank, or outright heretic—all according to Satan’s plan.
Like a good rat poison that consists mostly of nutritious food and only trace amounts of poison, Satan’s deadliest lies come to us dressed in the warm and fuzzy garb of nostalgic, old-time religion. His lies fly under our radar smuggled under layers of “fine-sounding arguments” (Colossians 2:4), pious spiritual platitudes that are foreign, and indeed contradictory, to the Scriptures.
How does one go about introducing a damnable heresy into the Church and actually succeed in getting the people to buy into it? One does it secretly, that’s how, without anyone so much as batting an eye (2 Peter 2:1):
“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.”
Imagine convincing Christians to deny Christ. Now what could be more devilish than that?
Missing the mark
Second, Satan aims his lies at three primary targets: 1) God’s word; 2) God’s character; and 3) our flesh. If sin is defined as “missing the mark” of God’s perfect righteousness (Romans 3:23), then these are the marks our enemy hits to accomplish this outcome.
The initial aim of Satan’s lies is to get us to question the obvious meaning of God’s will as expressed, for example, through commandments, adding ambiguity where none exists. He then leverages this doubt to coax us into second guessing God’s character, calling into question His good intentions for us. Finally, in the haze of our confusion, Satan moves in for the kill, appealing to our most irresistible fleshly cravings at the precise moment when we are least likely to resist them (Luke 4:1, 2, 13). The complete sequence, what we might call the “6 C’s of Sinning,”12 typically proceeds as follows:
Commandment: God clearly and unequivocally communicates His will to us.13
Comprehension: We understand God’s will and obey it in good faith, expecting blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.14
Conflict: We encounter some point of trial or temptation that tests our faith in God’s promises and threats.15
Confusion: Satan casts doubt on the meaning of God’s will, sowing confusion into our minds.
Contradiction: Satan then seizes on this confusion to introduce a lie that:
directly contradicts God’s stated will;
makes disobedience seem more desirable than obedience;
appeals to our baser creaturely instincts16 through flattery, false promises, etc.; and
implies that God is untrustworthy and acting in bad faith.
Corruption: We believe Satan’s lie and succumb to our immediate fleshly impulses by violating God’s will, thinking this to be the only way to obtain the good He would otherwise withhold from us.17
Satan’s various and sundry sinful stratagems nearly always boil down to some, if not all, of the preceding elements. Though much has changed on this planet since the Fall of Man in the Garden, Satan’s targets have changed very little and human nature has changed not a whit. Our flesh is still made of dirt, our feet of clay. The ancient serpent (Revelation 12:9) is still running the same old plays from the same old playbook. And it all begins with what seems to be a perfectly innocuous question: “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1).
As we have seen of late among a number of deeply dishonest social media “influencers,” “just asking questions” is not always as innocent as it seems. Often the intention of such questions is to undermine, rather than uphold, the truth, to muddy, rather than clear up, the waters. We know that there is no integrity in Satan’s questions because their goal is to advance a lie about God (Romans 1:25) rather than the truth. By humoring Satan’s loaded questions rather than rebuking them—say, with a hearty “Get thee behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10; Mark 8:33; etc.)—we are allowing ourselves to be enticed to sit alongside him as a fellow squatter on God’s judgment seat, assuming the rather flattering position of standing in judgment over God and His word rather than the other way around (John 12:48).
Though experience may indicate otherwise, nothing inside Satan’s lying bag of tricks need come as a surprise to the Christian. As Genesis reveals to us, serpents always speak with forked-tongues (Genesis 3:15). What they say is not what they mean and what they mean is not what they say. There is always an angle, a catch, a hidden agenda lying in wait behind their every word.
The only question is, what’s it going to take for us to finally wise up and stop falling for the lies?
Exposing the lies
Before moving on to our other enemies, the world and the flesh, what are some of Satan’s most common lies regarding God’s word, God’s character, and ourselves? Find out in the next installment of the League of Believers.
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Such studies must not be conducted with morbid curiosity, for the Bible forbids us from delving into “the deep things of Satan” (Revelation 2:24) through participation in the occult (1 Corinthians 10:20, 21). Rather, Scripture urges us to be inexperienced in evil and seasoned in righteousness (1 Corinthians 14:20).
This is why fallen angels have personal titles (Daniel 10:13; Ephesians 2:2; etc.) and often identified themselves by name to Christ and the Apostles during exorcisms (Mark 5:9; Luke 8:30; etc.).
Specifically, Satan is an angelic, spiritual person, rather than a divine, human, or physical person. Angels are created spirit beings, whereas humans are created beings with both spiritual (i.e., non-physical, soulish) and physical (i.e., bodily) components to their nature. By contrast, God is the only uncreated (i.e., eternal, divine) spirit being, setting Him apart from all created things, whether visible or invisible (Colossians 1:16).
Although not directly found in Scripture as a proper name, some claim that “Lucifer” can be derived from the titles “the shining one” or “morning star” (e.g., the King James/Authorized Version translation), linking Satan to the imagery of the fallen king of Babylon in Isaiah 14.
This why Jesus taught His disciples to pray to the Father “deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13).
And, by extension, her husband and head Adam. For more on this topic, see Chapter I “Man’s Original Sin” in The (Ef)feminization of the Church: How American Christianity Lost Its Way by Losing Its Manhood.
This passage, though one of the most tragic in all Scripture, is nothing short of a gift to us as “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve” (a phrase often used to describe humans in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicles). Because we share the same human nature as our first parents we are susceptible to the same temptations that they were. The upside of this is that when we inevitably face the same advances of the enemy that they faced, we can be better prepared to resist them by learning from the account of the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. It turns out that Satan, ever the pragmatist, tends to stick closely to what he knows works best.
Depending on the context, the Hebrew word translated here as “crafty,” arum (עָרוּם), can also be translated as “cunning,” “shrewd,” or even “sensible” and “prudent.”
According to O’Fallon (from “What Is A Fertile Fallacy?” published in Sovereign Nations):
“A fertile fallacy is a statement or idea that on the surface may seem to be true because of a spurious accusation or because of inherent biases of the receiver. Even though the accusation or statement lacks veracity, it is received as a ‘truth’ from those that wish it to be true and hence will have a life of its own until the fertile fallacy is dismantled. Plainly stated, a fertile fallacy can be understood as ‘a lie that has legs’ and will accomplish a manipulative function for the architect of the fallacy.”
Once our conscience and common sense are sufficiently degraded over time by sin (Romans 1:21; 1 Timothy 4:2; etc.), Satan can begin to tell us the real “whopper” lies (e.g., a man can become a women and vice versa, abortion is not only permissible, but virtuous, etc.) and, by that point, we will be too far gone to resist them.
For example, the most damaging lie of all is that Jesus is not Lord and has not come in the flesh (1 John 4:2, 3). Can you get any more diabolically blind than to personally witness Jesus perform miraculous good works and concluded that He performed them by the power of the devil (Matthew 12:24; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15; John 7:20, 8:48, 10:20, 21)?
Hat tip to the “7 C’s of History” from Answers in Genesis and Ken Ham for the inspiration for this schema.
See Exodus 20:1–17 (i.e., “Ten Commandments” or “Decalogue”) and similar.
Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28; etc.
During trials our flesh often causes us to focus on real or perceived deprivations in the moment rather than God’s abundant provision even in the midst of the trial and His promised blessings after we have endured it. Although God permits such temporary trials to refine and strengthen our faith, our flesh has no value for such things—it simply wants immediate, circumstantial relief as soon as possible at all costs.
Here, we have in mind what Scripture calls “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16, NIV), which the New Living Translation translates helpfully as “a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions.” As others have noted, it was precisely these desires and attitudes that the serpent appealed to in order to convince Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6):
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food [“the lust of the flesh”] and pleasing to the eye [“the lust of the eyes”], and also desirable for gaining wisdom [“the pride of life”], she took some and ate it.”
Ironically, it is this very settling for the immediate but fleeting pleasures of the lesser “good” (i.e., sin; Hebrews 11:25, 16, 17; etc.) that forfeits our eventual attainment of the true and lasting good.