This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 13: Your Names Are Written in Heaven: Luke 10:20.

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The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Look, I have given you the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; nothing at all will harm you. However, don’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:17-20).

At first, it sounds like a buzzkill. Jesus has sent out seventy-two disciples to every town and place he is about to visit. He authorizes them to perform miracles and proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom. They are ecstatic when they return: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name” (Luke 10:17). 

After acknowledging the damage their spiritual offensive has done to Satan, Jesus seems to let the air out of the room. He tells his followers, “[D]on’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you” (v. 20). Say what?

But Jesus isn’t trying to harsh their mellow. Rather, he takes this opportunity, while they’re at a spiritual high point, to tell them true joy should not be grounded in missionary endeavors but in the ultimate gift of God: eternal life. “[R]ejoice that your names are written in heaven,” he tells them – and us. 

This is the only place in Scripture where the phrase, “your names are written in heaven” appears. Even so, this serves as another key biblical reference to divine books in which the names, words, and deeds of all people are kept. In this case, Jesus assures his followers that the recording of their names in heaven equates to everlasting life.

Let’s begin with a closer look at this passage. Then, we’ll explore in more detail what it means for believers to have our names written in heaven.

Sending seventy-two

The beginnings of Luke 9 and Luke 10 are similar. At the start of Luke 9, Jesus summons the twelve apostles, grants them authority over demons, and sends them out to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. They are to travel light, stay in homes that welcome them, and shake the dust off their feet when leaving communities that reject them. 

So, the twelve trek from village to village, proclaim the good news, and heal the sick. When they return, they report their victories to Jesus.

Now, at the beginning of Luke 10, we read that Jesus appoints “seventy-two others” – likely a group that excludes the twelve apostles – and sends them ahead of him in pairs to “every town and place where he himself was about to go” (v. 1). He tells these disciples to expect a great harvest of souls, yet they are to consider themselves “lambs among wolves” (v. 3). The evil one and his minions are sure to oppose them as they proclaim the kingdom of God. In other words, the Jesus they herald is the King of kings, and his kingdom is expanding to embrace them as the Lamb eliminates Satan’s home-court advantage.

Like the twelve apostles, the seventy-two are to travel light. Each pair is to seek food and shelter in the home of a “person of peace” (v. 6). The Lord’s instructions are simple: “Heal the sick who are there, and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you’” (v. 9). While many towns are expected to welcome them, others are sure to send them away, inviting a day of God’s wrath when it is “more tolerable for Sodom than for that town” (v. 12).

Jesus then issues a series of woes on the cities that reject him and his messengers:

Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will go down to Hades. Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:13-16).

As R. C. Sproul notes about this oracle:

The greater judgment comes with the greater light. The more light you have been given of the things of God, the more information you have been given about the kingdom of God, the more liable you are for your response to that message…. If you reject the Apostolic testimony, you reject the Christ who authorized it, and if you reject the Christ who authorized it, you reject the One who sent Christ – the Father.

Now, in Luke 10:17, the seventy-two return. We’re not told how long they’re gone, or the number of towns they visit. But their mission is completed, and the results far exceed their expectations. “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name,” they report exuberantly. Luke writes that the disciples return with “joy.” 

The Greek word translated “joy” is chara, and Luke employs it often. Trent Butler notes this is the same joy (chara) promised Zechariah at the birth of his son, John the Baptist (Luke 1:14). It’s the same joy announced to the shepherds at Christ’s birth (2:10); the same joy with which we should welcome God’s Word (8:13); the same joy heaven expresses when one sinner repents (15:7, 10); the same joy that news of Christ’s resurrection brings (24:41, 52); and, it’s the same rejoicing (chairo) the disciples are to exude in knowing they have eternal life (10:20).

Trent Butler writes, “The greatest source of joy has nothing to do with earthly events. The greatest joy comes in knowing your name is written in God’s heavenly book, that you are assured a place in his eternal kingdom.”

The disciples are sent to heal the sick and declare the kingdom. They seem surprised that demons submit to them in the name of Jesus. Perhaps their eyes are opened to the scope of Satan’s reach into the bodies of his subjects, tormenting not only their minds and spirits, but the earthly temples that house them. 

Often in the New Testament, we see Satan and evil spirits cause personal, physical harm. For example, Jesus heals a Gerasene man, sending a host of demons out of his body and into a herd of swine (Matt. 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39). Later, the Lord heals a woman “disabled by a spirit.” When the synagogue leader rebukes Jesus for healing the woman on the Sabbath, Jesus replies, “Satan has bound this woman, a daughter of Abraham, for eighteen years ​— ​shouldn’t she be untied from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” (see Luke 13:10-17). Satan and unclean spirits work in tandem to inflict all manner of sickness on the helpless citizens of the evil one’s rebel kingdom.

Fall from heaven

In response to the disciples’ report of their God-given authority over demons, Jesus remarks, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18). What does the Savior mean with these words? And when does the evil one fall? Is this a reference to Satan’s original rebellion, which likely occurred during the week of creation? Is it a consequence of God’s curse of the serpent after he enticed Adam and Eve to sin (Gen. 3:14-15)? Is it a preview of the war in heaven that John records in Revelation 12:7-12? 

While Jesus’s words may be tied in some way to these events, it appears more biblically faithful to understand Satan’s fall as occurring at the moment the Lord speaks. Jesus has come, as the incarnate Son of God, to invade Satan’s rebel kingdom. 

We see this in numerous places in the Gospels. For example, in Matthew 12, after the Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons by Beelzebul – that is, Satan, ruler of the demons – Jesus likens himself to one who has come to bind “the strong man” (Satan) and plunder his goods (see Matt. 12:22-32). A few chapters later, Jesus stands at the vortex of idolatry – the very gates of hades at the base of Mount Hermon – and picks a fight with the evil one (Matt. 16:13-20). 

Jesus’s carefully timed miracles – healing the sick, raising the dead, and casting out demons – demonstrate his authority over the evil one. And his sinless life, sacrificial and substitutionary death on the cross, burial, and resurrection conquer Satan, sin, and death on our behalf. 

So, in a very real sense, Jesus’s declaration, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning,” reveals that it’s the beginning of the end for “the accuser of our brothers and sisters” (Rev. 12:10). Like the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, or the island-by-island rout of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific from 1942-1945, Christ’s commissioning of his disciples to heal the sick and cast out demons doesn’t end the long war with Satan, but it marks the beginning of the end.

From the moment rebellion rises in his heart, Satan is a fugitive. He finds himself in an ever-shrinking field of freedom, with the hound of heaven in hot pursuit. Unable to return to the scene of the crime, where he once served as the Lord’s anointed guardian cherub (Ezek. 28:14), Satan battles God’s agents in the heavenlies and carries out a scorched-earth policy in the physical realm. Justice is closing in. Time is short. And the evil one rages against the inevitable day of his demise, when he’s cast into the lake of fire, a place God has specially prepared for him (Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10).

Like Luke, Paul comes to understand that God successfully “disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him [Jesus]” (Col. 2:15). Even the prospect of the cross brings Jesus joy, as the writer of Hebrews notes: “For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). Satan’s imminent defeat brings Jesus joy, and the disciples get a foretaste of God’s triumphant kingdom in the miracles they’re empowered to perform.

Jesus’s words in Luke 10:18, “I watched,” are in the imperfect tense and may be translated, “I was watching.” As one paraphrase puts it:

I was beholding Satan as lightning falling from heaven. I followed you on your mission, and watched its triumphs; while you were wondering at the subjection to you of devils in My name, a grander spectacle was opening to My view; sudden as the darting of lightning from heaven to earth, lo! Satan was beheld falling from heaven!

To the casual observer, a few itinerant preachers perform some miracles and proclaim a kingdom throughout the scattered villages of ancient Israel. But in their miracles – and especially in their message that the kingdom is here, and the King is about to visit your town – Jesus sees that Satan has suffered an irreversible defeat. 

Satan may continue to prowl the earth like a ravenous lion (1 Pet. 5:8), but he’s defanged and tethered on a short leash. He holds no sway in heaven, and his salad days on earth are coming to an end. His rebel kingdom is receding. His destiny in the lake of fire is assured. All that remains is God’s timing for the final battle. 

Next: Snakes and Scorpions