Commenting on the Fall of Man, Owen Strachan (Reformed) wrote that:
The
woman’s Seed will not suffer defeat. But the woman’s Seed will indeed suffer
death. Though it will seem by all outward appearances that the plan of God fails
and that Satan defeats Jesus at the cross, Jesus will defeat Satan at the
cross. Then, three days later, Christ will rise to life, ushering the firstfruits
of new covenant humanity and establishing nothing less than a redeemed human
race, a Spirit-indwelt people whose own resurrection unto eschatological
glorification is secured and inaugurated by Christ.
All
this is glorious beyond measure. But it does not obscure the hard truth: while
Satan did not defeat Jesus, he did viciously and successfully strike him. Under
the providential working of God (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28), Satan as the instrument
of God’s purposes worked on numerous fronts to agitate for the crucifixion of
the Messiah. He penetrated Judas’s heart, a soft target if there ever was one,
for Judas craved worldly things. Through Judas’s agency, Satan led the
authorities to arrest, beat, try, and convict Christ. In terms of secondary
causation, the execution of Christ took place because of satanic activity. Said
more simply, in the end, the devil took Christ off the field. (Owen Strachan, The
Warrior Savior: A Theology of the Work of Christ [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing, 2024], 18)
