Please share your thoughts, questions or feedback in the comments section below! And if you would like to read more from Olatunde on this or similar subjects be sure to check out his book “The Mind of Christ” …which sports an excellent cover designed by yours truly!

JM

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If someone were to ask me, I’d have to say that one of the best the best depictions of the devil I’ve seen in film is “The Devil’s Advocate.”   Of course “best” assumes a standard, and that standard is Scripture along with our experience as Christians.  The Scripture reveals him, and our experience confirms what it reveals. Given this basic premise, I believe Devil’s Advocate succeeds in an accurate depiction of Satan in three main ways:

1.  The Devil is a lawyer! -  As the accuser/slanderer (which is the literal meaning of the Hebrew word “ha’satan”), I see a solid connection.  Scripture often portrays life as a court–with witnesses, God as judge, Christ and the Spirit as our “defense attorneys/advocates/counselors/Paraclete,” and Satan as the prosecuting attorney.  Job Chapters 1-2 are good examples.  God is like Job’s defense attorney, defending Job’s blamelessness.  Satan is like a prosecuting attorney, accusing Job of fearing God only for what Job gets from God.  The angels (who are called “the sons of God” in this passage,) are the witnesses.

Another example is found in Zechariah 3:1-5

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.

The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not  this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”

Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.”

Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you.”

Then I said, “Put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by.

Here we find God (the Angel of the Lord) as Judge, Satan as the accuser, or prosecutor, of Joshua, and Joshua as the accused.  Note, in the situation with Job, Satan brought a charge against an “innocent” man.  But in this situation, Joshua appears to indeed be guilty, as shown in the symbolism of his filthy clothes.  Note again, the Lord rebukes Satan and his accusations because He, in our language or cultural understanding, is granting Joshua forgiveness, or what we would know as “immunity.”

If a criminal commits a federal crime, or a crime against the government, he may very well face the death penalty.  But the president can grant the criminal immunity, or a pardon.  This does not mean the criminal is innocent of the charges.  Quite the opposite.  But it does mean that the charges are forgiven, and the criminal regains his status as a citizen as though the never committed the crime.  And the crime cannot be brought against him again.  If it is, then the courts will thoroughly reject the charge because of the immunity or pardon that was granted.

In this way, the LORD “rebukes” Satan, like a judge would “overrule” a prosecuting attorney if he brought up a charge that the courts had cleared.

The state of believers is like the state of Joshua the priest in the passage from Zechariah.  The believer was indeed guilty of crimes against the kingdom of God.  In a Kingdom, this charge is even more serious than in a democracy, in that the king is the legislator, judge, and executioner, and his word is law.  As it is written concerning every man and woman:

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.  –Romans 1:32 

Our only “plea” is guilty; our only defense is “the blood of Jesus,” as it is also written:

“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;  they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.  -Revelation 12:11-12

The language in the passage is a mixture of the more familiar courtroom language used today (accusation, testimony) and less familiar priestly language (the blood of the Lamb).  God is the Creator, and thus the King, Legislator, Judge, and Executioner–the “righteous judge of all the earth” (Psalms 7:11, Genesis 18:15) .

Yet He is also the Supreme Ultimate Being, the One who is like no other, the Source and Sustenance of every breath we breathe and the blood that flows through our veins, as it is written, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28.

In Genesis chapter 2, after God created Adam, God warned Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that the day he ate of it, he would “surely die.”  Notice, The Giver of Life warns the creature that his life would be taken.  In other words, the death penalty was the penalty of disobedience.

Adam and his wife Eve sinned.  They attempted to cover the shame of their nakedness with fig leaves, but God killed an animal and covered them.  Later in scripture, we see the significance of what God did with Adam and Eve by killing this animal and covering Adam and Eve.  God would later require His people to sacrifice innocent animals to die for their sins.  The blood of the innocent animal would take the place of the blood of the human being.  This is the priestly language we spoke of earlier.

This idea of sacrifice seems understood in times past and in many cultures.  The concept of appeasing a deity’s wrath through the sacrifice of an innocent child or “virgin” is understood in history and mythology.  This is the concept of Jesus being “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”  (See John 1:29)  Instead of many innocent animals dying for many sins over and over again, the Lord Jesus was THE sacrifice for ALL sin once and for all.

In the courtroom language of today, this would be like a father who is a judge sentencing his youngest son to death for committing a crime for which the penalty is death.  The judge’s firstborn son is the defense attorney, and the judge’s wife, the criminal’s mother, is the assistant defense attorney.  The youngest is clearly guilty and deserving the death penalty.  The firstborn, with his mother, request a meeting in the judge’s chamber with the prosecutor.  The father, firstborn, and mother show the prosecutor that there is nothing in the law or constitution against an innocent person voluntarily taking the death penalty for someone who is guilty.  As much as the prosecutor would like to object, the law does not forbid it.  So the father allows the firstborn to take a lethal injection for the second born.

Now, let’s connect all of this back to Devil’s Advocate.

Kevin Lomax, the talented lawyer portrayed by Keanu Reaves, was indeed guilty of all the things John Milton/Satan accused him.  The Devil (portrayed by Al Pacino) made his case exceedingly well, as we shall explore.  Kevin could do nothing but admit guilt.

But from there, he should have gone before God, the righteous judge, and admitted his guilt, just as he did to John Milton/Satan.  Having confessed his sin, Lomax could then “plead the blood of Jesus,” which simply means he accepts the Lord Jesus’ death on his behalf (instead of  *spoiler alert!* shooting himself in the head, as in the movie!)  Any other plea and the devil wins his case, just as he did so eloquently at the end of the movie, which leads to the next key…