This excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan from High Street Press. Order your paperback, Kindle, or Audible copy here.

Scripture offers no clear answers as to when and how Satan originally falls – or even why a sovereign God permits the evil one’s rebellion and all its horrific consequences. Genesis 3 does not introduce us to the origin of evil, but reveals the presence of unexplained evil in the serpent. Adam and Eve are created innocent, and shortly thereafter the already-fallen serpent shows up. John Piper’s candid perplexity is a welcome perspective.

In response to a listener’s question about where Satan even got the desire to sin, Piper replies, in part: “As far as I can see, no explanation is offered in the Bible for how Satan became evil…. How could a perfectly good being – with a perfectly good will and a perfectly good heart – ever experience any imperfect impulse that would cause the will to move in the direction of sin? The answer is that nobody knows ….”

Piper goes on:

Here is what I do know. God is sovereign. Nothing comes to pass apart from his plan, which includes things he more or less causes directly – things he more or less permits indirectly. There is no doubt in my mind that Satan’s fall and all the redemptive plan of God for the glory of grace afterward were according to God’s eternal plan….

God can see to it that something comes to pass which he hates. This is what he did, for example, when he planned the crucifixion of Jesus, according to Acts 4:27-28. The murder of Jesus was sinful, and it was planned down to the detail by God.… I think the Bible leads us to believe that he is sovereign over all sin and that he never sins. That is what I believe the Bible teaches. 

John Piper

Can’t handle the truth

For reasons beyond our current understanding – and outside God’s revelation in Scripture – the Lord has chosen not to disclose the details of Satan’s rebellion and fall. Maybe, as Colonel Nathan Jessup proclaims during court-martial proceedings in A Few Good Men, we can’t handle the truth. Perhaps the Lord is saving this revelation for the day his adopted children see him face to face. Or, it’s possible God doesn’t want us dwelling so much on angelic rebellion as on our own sin – and our need of a Savior. 

Even so, the Bible offers subtle clues about the evil one’s rapacious nature and cosmic fall. These come in the form of simple truths, such as: 

First, Satan is a created being. God declared everything he made “very good indeed” (Gen. 1:31; cf. John 1:3; Col. 1:15-16). The creature we know as the evil one wasn’t always this way. He couldn’t be. Whether God created Satan and other heavenly beings prior to the six days of creation, or during the six days, is uncertain.

One writer notes: “We can deduce that Satan was created during creation week; since he was blameless, he was under God’s ‘very good’ proclamation at the end of day 6…. The logical inference [of Job 38 and Gen. 1] is that the angels were created on either day 1 or at least by day 3.” 

Second, God gave Satan wide latitude in his activities and entrusted him with great freedom. The evil one, like all holy and fallen angels, was given an opportunity to choose – an opportunity fueled by greater power and knowledge than humans possess. In addition, these heavenly beings operated in a sinless environment with no history of rebellion against God. This made their leap into sin bolder and more consequential.

Third, Satan consciously and willfully rebelled. It appears that pride played a key role, although where pride originated in a sinless environment is a mystery. The very fact that human beings are tempted in the garden of Eden to “be like God” may be the greatest clue as to the original sin of the tempter himself. 

Paul lends credence to Satan’s sin of pride as he warns Timothy against appointing an immature believer as an elder: “He must not be a new convert, or he might become conceited and incur the same condemnation as the devil” (1 Tim.3:6). The word “conceited” comes from the Greek verb typhoo and means “to possess with the fumes of conceit; to be demented with conceit, puffed up.” 

Perhaps jealousy also stoked Satan’s rebellion. Since God created the angelic host first, Satan may have bristled when God created Adam and Eve and entrusted them with expanding Eden across the face of the earth. When God placed limits on Adam and Eve’s freedom in the garden – instructing Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, under penalty of death (Gen. 2:17) – Satan saw his chance. If he could get the first humans to disobey God, they would suffer death, and that would be the end of humanity. 

Fourth, it appears Satan rebelled after the creation of the physical universe. There is some indication the entire angelic host celebrated this cosmic event (Job 38:7). But it’s certain that he rebelled before approaching Eve in the garden of Eden (Gen. 3:1). 

Finally, while God stripped Satan of his exalted heavenly position, the Lord has allowed the evil one to keep his intelligence, power, and cunning to use against human beings made as God’s imagers. At least for a while.

Like the ancient Roman power broker, Marcus Licinius Crassus, who fell from grace and died from an overdose of liquid gold his enemies poured down his throat, the anointed guardian cherub one day chokes on the sulfurous smoke of the lake of fire, where he is tormented night and day forever. We may know little about the evil one’s origin, and even less about the birth of sin, but God has numbered Satan’s days and decreed the end of his rule a certainty (Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10).

Next: The Serpent and the Dragon