Matins Devotion: September 15, 2025
The devil is cunning and crafty, but he is not wise. Which is to say, he knows how to lure you into temptation. He knows how to put violence and hatred, lies and viciousness into the hearts of corrupt and even-more-corruptible sinners. But he doesn’t know that he can’t defeat God. In the fog of his perpetual war against the God of Righteousness, Satan can’t see that God is going to take his greatest outbursts of rage and use them to conquer the serpent.
So the accuser who once tried to stop Jesus from going to cross and being the Savior of the world in our Lord’s desert temptation just can’t help himself as Jesus gets closer to Calvary. The serpent who wanted to prevent our Lord from dying for the sins of the world doesn’t have the wisdom to keep Jesus far away from Calvary. Instead, Satan fills the chief priests, the scribes, and Pharisees with hatred toward Christ. He worms his way into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus. He puts his venom on the tongues of those who cry out for Pilate to release Barabbas instead of Jesus. In all of this, Satan uses his guile and cunning to lead our Lord to the cross where the nails are pierced into His hands and feet.
But when Jesus is pierced to that tree, it’s not just the flesh of God’s only Son that is pierced. It’s also the record of debts that stood against us. The demands of the law that we had not kept, the legal record declaring that we were unworthy to enter the kingdom of God, Jesus nailed it to the cross as He was nailed to the cross. With His dying breath and with the crimson ink that leaked from His hands onto that bill, your Lord wrote “paid in full.”
Satan tried with all his might to destroy the Son of God. All he succeeded in doing was handing Jesus the weapons our Lord used to destroy him. So be at peace. Your crucified Lord rose from the grave, as will you. But the record of your debts did not and will not.
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