Devilish dualism
Dualism is the idea that there are equal forces of good and evil at work in the universe – God and the devil. And it is very easy to slip into that way of thinking. After all, God is good and the devil is evil, utterly opposed to God and everything God wants or values. The devil is also, like God, a spiritual being. And he is also very powerful, far more powerful than we are. But we are never to think of him as anything like God’s equal.
Why not? For this simple reason: God is Creator and the devil is a creature. The opposite of Satan is not God, but the archangel Michael. This should be plain from the first time the devil, in the guise of a serpent, is introduced in the Bible: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1). Satan is a creature, made by God – one who has gone astray and rebelled against his Creator – yet still a creature who must answer to his Creator (which he is made to do a few verses later).
Satan is only free to go as far and to do as much as God allows him (just read the opening two chapters of Job). He may appear to us to be a very fierce lion (see 1 Peter 5:8), but God has him on a very tight rein. And the Bible looks forward to a day when “the devil … was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur” (Revelation 21:10). And who do you think will do the throwing?!