The Wiles of the Devil

“Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11, KJV)

The word translated “wiles” is the Greek methodeia – the root of our English word “method.” Paul is telling us something important: the devil is not a random force of chaos. He has methods. He has schemes. He has a playbook.

And here is the sobering part: he wants to run those plays on you.

The Greatest Trick

The French poet Charles Baudelaire observed that the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist. More than a century later, that trick is still working. Many people – including some who sit in church pews – think of Satan as a cartoon character with horns and a pitchfork, a relic of medieval imagination, a metaphor at best.

Jesus did not think so. Speaking to His opponents, He said,

“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44)

According to the Son of God, the devil is real, the devil is a murderer, and the devil is a liar.

Scripture gives him many names, and each one is a window into his character. He is,

“the great dragon…the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12:9)

Dragon. Serpent. Devil (slanderer). Satan (adversary). Deceiver. These are not flattering titles, and they were not meant to be.

Now, no one would fault a general for studying the enemy’s tactics before a battle. Armies send out scouts. Coaches watch film of their opponents. Paul himself said of Satan that “we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11). If we are going to resist the devil, we need to know how he works. So let us scout the adversary. What does Satan want to do to us? The answer can be summed up in five words that all rhyme – and all wound.

Satan Wants to Confuse Us

His first recorded words in Scripture are a question designed to muddy clear water:

“Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)

God’s command to Adam and Eve had been simple and unmistakable. One tree was off limits. That was all. But “the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field,” and his craftiness took the form of confusion. By the time he finished talking, Eve was rethinking what God had said, what God had meant, and whether God could be trusted.

He still works this way. He wants us to believe that God’s commands are hard to understand, or unreasonable, or open to endless reinterpretation. He loves the phrase, “Well, that’s just your interpretation.” He delights when plain Bible teaching gets buried under a fog of “scholars disagree,” God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33) – but Satan certainly is.

Satan Wants to Excuse Us

Confusion was only half of the serpent’s work in Eden. Once Eve’s confidence in God’s word was shaken, he moved to step two: “You surely will not die!” (Genesis 3:4). In other words: go ahead – the consequences will not really come. He excused in advance the very sin he had just encouraged.

This may be his most popular method today. Everybody does it. It’s not hurting anyone. God wants me to be happy. I was born this way. I’ll make it right later. Satan is a tireless defense attorney for sin, always ready with a reason why this particular disobedience in this particular case does not really count. But the wages of sin is still death (Romans 6:23), no matter how eloquent the excuse.

Satan Wants to Amuse Us

While Moses tarried on Mount Sinai receiving the law of God, the people grew restless at the foot of the mountain. They made a golden calf, and then, “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play” (Exodus 32:6). Forty days earlier they had heard the voice of God from the mountain; now they were dancing around an idol. They had traded worship for entertainment.

Satan does not always need to make us wicked. Sometimes he only needs to keep us busy having fun. Paul warned Timothy that the last days would produce people who are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4), and he wept over those whose “god is their belly… with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19). A Christian who is too entertained to pray, too busy to study, and too distracted to serve has been just as effectively neutralized as one who has fallen into open sin. Amusement is one of the quietest weapons in the devil’s arsenal – and one of the most effective in our age of endless screens and ceaseless diversions.

Satan Wants to Abuse Us

When subtlety fails, Satan is perfectly willing to use a sledgehammer. Consider Job. With God’s permission but Satan’s malice, Job lost his livestock, his servants, his ten children, and finally his health – all in the devil’s attempt to break his faith (Job 1-2). Satan had no reservations about any of it. That is how he works.

He wanted to do the same to Peter. Jesus warned him,

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31-32).

Sifting wheat is violent work – shaking, beating, tossing. That is what Satan wanted to do to Peter, and it is what he wants to do to us. Peter never forgot the warning. Years later he wrote,

“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8)

Lions do not negotiate with their prey.

Satan Wants to Accuse Us

The name “devil” (diabolos) means slanderer, and Revelation calls him

“the accuser of our brethren … he who accuses them before our God day and night.” (Revelation 12:10)

Accusation is his native tongue.

His servants accused Jesus. The chief priests “kept trying to obtain false witness against Jesus, so that they might put Him to death” (Matthew 26:59) – and when the truth would not convict Him, they settled for lies. His servants accused Paul, stirring up mobs and dragging innocent men before the authorities (Acts 17:5-7). And he accuses us still – to God, to others, and perhaps most painfully, to ourselves. How many Christians have been paralyzed by the whisper, “You call yourself a Christian? After what you did? God could never use you.” When the accusation drives us to repentance, that is the work of the Spirit. When it drives us to despair, that is the work of the accuser.

What He Is Really After

Confuse. Excuse. Amuse. Abuse. Accuse. Five methods, but only one goal – and Peter named it: the devil is “seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He is not playing games. He confuses in order to devour. He excuses in order to devour. He amuses, abuses, and accuses in order to devour. Every wile is in service of that single appetite.

What God Wants to Do for Us

If the article ended there, it would be a frightening article indeed. But Peter does not end there, and neither does God.

“But resist him, firm in your faith… After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” (1 Peter 5:9-10)

Satan wants to devour us; God wants to establish us. Satan wants to destroy us; God wants to save us.

And God has made resistance possible. “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Peter adds that if we diligently practice the qualities of Christ, “you will never fall,” and an entrance into the eternal kingdom “will be richly provided” (2 Peter 1:10-11). The devil is powerful, but he is not all-powerful. He is crafty, but he is not irresistible. He could not hold Job. He could not keep Peter. He could not defeat Christ. And with God’s help, he cannot defeat us.

Picture yourself standing in a completely dark room at night. Now picture striking a single match. What power does the darkness have to resist the light? None at all. Darkness cannot push back against light; it can only flee from it. So it is with Satan and God. The darkness, however vast, has no power over the light.

Martin Luther – a man who felt the devil’s assaults as keenly as anyone – put it this way in his great hymn:

A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great,
And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

On earth, perhaps not. But our fortress is not of this earth. The ancient foe has his wiles – but we are not ignorant of them, we are armed against them, and the battle belongs to the Lord.

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GROW magazine | July 2026 PDF
a work of the Limestone Church of Christ
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