I recently read a devotional written by a well known evangelical Christian speaker who stated that at His death, Jesus “legally entered the regions of the damned and stripped Satan of everything. He took away all his armor. He took the keys to death and hell. He bound that strong man, looted his kingdom, and Colossians says He spoiled principalities and powers and made a show of them openly triumphing over them.” That Jesus then gave that victory to us. I know that Jesus descended into Hell, but I’ve never been able to find anything in the Bible to support the actions cited above. Could you possibly help me with this. I’m not sure that this speaker is correct?
I don’t think the Scriptures fully support this position. For example, having the keys to a place means you control who enters and exits. Satan has never had that power where death and hell are concerned, so he couldn’t have had the keys. They belong to God alone.
And while Satan’s powers were limited by the Lord’s death, Revelation 20:3 says he won’t actually be bound until the 2nd Coming.
Because of the cross, we’ve been given authority in the Lord’s name to resist Satan and make him leave us alone (James 4:7), and we have weapons with divine power to demolish his strongholds and reject his lies (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
But we’ve been warned to always be on the alert and keep ourselves fully protected against his attacks (Ephes. 6:10-18).
In the Lord’s name we can have victory over any enemy we choose to engage, but without engagement, there can be no victory.
We’re supposed to respect Satan as a powerful adversary (Jude 8-10) but we needn’t fear him because the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4).