One of the questions that arises as we read the gospels is to what extent the evil one knew God's plan to save the world through the suffering and death of Jesus. Many interpreters assume that Satan was fully aware of what God was doing in Christ. For this reason, they also interpret cer­tain events in the gospels as Satan's attempts to seduce the Christ away from the path of the cross.

One of these events is described in Matthew 16. In this chapter we find the well-known rebuke of Peter. Why did our Lord call Peter "Satan"? The answer is that Peter was resisting Christ's proclamation of the cross. Jesus had just told his disciples that they were heading to Jerusalem but it wouldn't be, as Peter imagined, for coronation. Jerusalem would bring not a crown but a cross.

Clearly, Jesus sees a satanic influ­ence at work in Peter's resistance to the way of the cross. As they engage with this point of the narrative, interpret­ers often assume that Satan is work­ing through Peter to tempt Jesus away from the path of suffering and death on the cross because Satan knew that this event would be his undoing.

Is that assumption correct? Did Satan really know God's plan of sal­vation? Did he understand that the cross would be an atoning sacrifice through which Christ would liberate the people of God who were in bond­age to the devil?

To get some more biblical per­spective on this matter, let's call to mind Luke 22:3 where we read that "Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve." This bit of information leads to a ques­tion. If Satan knew that Christ's arrest would lead to the cross and if he knew that the cross would be God's victory over sin and evil, why would he direct Judas to be­tray Jesus? Would Satan on the one hand use Peter in an attempt to pre­vent Christ from going to the cross, while on the other hand use Judas to accomplish the opposite? That would make for an incoherent devil, and while the Bible informs us that the evil one is deceitful, there's no evidence of him being illogical.

If we are right in thinking that Satan did not know of God's plan to save the world through the cross, why does Jesus call Peter "Satan" in Matthew 16:23? The answer must lie in Peter's concept of the Kingdom of God. Peter was thinking about the Kingdom of God in crassly materialistic categories, as if it were just one more of the many kingdoms of this world. Jesus sees Peter's whole concept of the Kingdom as coming straight from the devil. It's from the flesh and not from the Spirit.

Now someone might suppose that the evil one would have known about the way of the cross from the Old Testament. Don't the Scriptures speak about a suffering Saviour? Doesn't the devil know the Scrip­tures? It's true that the devil does know the Bible. He could quote it in his dialogue with Jesus. And yet there is a depth to the Word of God which can be known only by faith and only through the Spirit.

We can go further with this thought. Being thoroughly evil, can the devil even understand the concept of sacrificial love? Can he com­prehend the Saviour's love for sin­ners, a love so great that he would lay down his life for them as a sacri­fice for sin? Love is entirely foreign to the mind of the evil one and so it would seem unlikely that he could grasp that Christ would defeat him through an act of love.

Through the direct influence of Satan, then, Jesus was eventually put to death on the cross. It looked like a victory for the power of dark­ness. In reality, however, the cross was Christ's victory over Satan. By dying for sinners Jesus destroyed the claim of the devil over sinners. He took away the devil's power to accuse and condemn.

We today know so much more than Satan knew. We know God's amazing plan of salvation. We know the depths of divine love which sent Jesus to the cross. Let us therefore live joyfully in the light of his vic­tory over sin, Satan, and death.