1 Pet. 4:1-2 π 1 Pet. 5:8-9
Peter wrote,
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. ( 1 Pet. 5:8-9; top )
What can we glean from this description?
- The devil is not our friend - he is our enemy.
- He does not want to help us in any way - he wants to kill us and eat us for food (that is, use us as a means to further his war against Christ).
- He is neither idle nor passive - he is actively looking for victims.
- We are engaged, not in a mild arm-wrestling contest, but in a life and death struggle with eternal consequences.
- Since our sober, vigilant resistance against him is accomplished by our steadfast faith, we can infer that he always wants us to forsake our true faith and exchange it for something false.
- And experiencing his attacks against us in this regard makes us suffer, something which God uses to bring the power of sin in our lives to an end. (see 1 Pet. 4:1-2; top )
But there is something else here as well. In this passage, the devil is said to be a roaring male lion. In nature, the alpha-prime male lion walks around, roaring, making his presence known and being everything but a stalker of prey. Why? Because the male lion's pride, his cadre of female lionesses and subservient male lions, is lurking all around him waiting for some animal to remain too close or be too weak to escape their subtle, quiet stalkings and sudden, vicious assaults. The alpha-prime male lion has only one job: to distract the prey's attention away from the real threat. The real threat is the pride, the lesser males and the lionesses.
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