The Counterfeit Narrative
Satan’s Strategy to Lure us Away from God (And How That Changed our Lives Forever)
“If you don’t know how your temptation enemy attacks you, then you are far more likely to be taken advantage of.” -Bruce Wilkinson, Overcoming Temptation.
Satan’s Counterfeit Narrative
In Genesis 1-2, God revealed the truth that human beings are created in the image of God, formed for community, and called to live out God’s purpose for their lives. And then he released human beings to multiply throughout the world and rule as his representatives on Earth. The key to all of that was Adam and Eve’s willingness to join their lives to the ultimate story that God was writing. And for a time, everything was going as God intended — God was there, dwelling among his people, who were joined in fellowship with one another as they pursued God’s will together.
But then, in Genesis 3, the serpent showed up with a different story to tell. He had his own counterfeit narrative about who people are, why they’re here, and where they should fit in. In his story, people supplanted God as the main characters. It no longer mattered what God wanted; since Adam and Eve were the main characters in the narrative, they deserved to get everything they wanted.
This counterfeit narrative was apparently quite persuasive. Adam and Eve chose to listen to his lies instead of God’s truth, and the rest, as they say, is history. So how was Satan able to convince Adam and Eve to abandon their principles so quickly? Let’s take a closer look.
Satan’s Strategy in the Garden
Satan loves to make false promises. He loves to plant seeds of doubt about God’s word or even contradict it outright. And he tries to disparage God’s motives by portraying him as jealous, controlling, and unreasonable. His strategy is to trying to slander God’s character and confuse us about God’s voice so that his counterfeit narrative will seem more reasonable or appealing by comparison.
Here are a few examples of each of these strategies:
Seeds of Doubt — “Did God Really say? You will not certainly die!” (Genesis 3:1, 4)
Disparaging God’s Motives — “For God knows… your eyes will be opened.”
False Promises — “You will be like God.” (Genesis 3:5)
Satan uses these tactics with expert skill to craft a counterfeit narrative that causes people to feel good about abandoning God. He doesn’t just convince them to do something wrong — he convinces them that they are justified in doing so.
In his book Overcoming Temptation, Bruce Wilkinson compares our enemy, the devil, to a fisherman who knows the perfect bait for each kind of fish he’s trying to catch. Satan knows which desires to appeal to, how to entice us, and the perfect combination of lies, justifications, and rationalizations that will persuade us to take the bait. But Wilkinson is not the first to use this analogy. The Puritan preacher Thomas Watson once said, “Satan loves to fish in the troubled waters of a discontented heart.”
What Wilkinson and Watson are getting at is that Satan knows how to capitalize on our sense of longing for something more. God has already told us that he knows what we need and is committed to satisfying the desires of our hearts (Psalm 37:4; 145:16). But Satan was able to convince Adam and Eve that something was missing that God would never provide. He caused them to doubt God’s willingness or ability to meet all of those needs, and then presented himself as the only one who could truly satisfy them.
He replaced God’s plan, purpose, and design with a twisted narrative full of half-truths and empty promises. And in doing so, he took Adam and Eve captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:26). And because Adam and Eve bought into that story, sin entered the world (Romans 5:12) and fundamentally changed humanity’s relationship with God and with one another.
The Consequences of Sin
Several of the immediate consequences of sin involved a departure from the way Adam and Eve were designed to live:
They were made to be in a relationship with God, but now they wanted to hide.
They were made to have perfect intimacy with each other, but now they wanted to cover themselves up.
They were made to feel safe in the presence of their creator, but now they were afraid.
But beyond those emotional and relational changes, there was also divine judgment. God emerged and pronounced judgement on the serpent, the man, and the woman — cursing the serpent and the ground that Adam would work, and promising pain and relational strife for the woman. But the most significant thing that changed was that Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden; that is to say, they were removed from the presence of God.
Man and woman, created in the image of God and designed to dwell in his presence forever, were now separated from him because of their sin. God’s ultimate desire is to dwell with his people forever, but he can’t do that because of our sin. For God to get what he wants, he has to come up with a way to overcome the damaging effects of sin and reconcile his people back to himself.
And what are those damaging effects of sin? The Bible describes them in several ways, drawing on various analogies that help us understand the damage sin does to our relationship with God and others:
It separates us from God — Isaiah 59:2, so we need to be reunited.
It makes us guilty — Leviticus 5:14-19, so we need to be forgiven.
It takes us captive —Romans 6:15-18, so we need to be set free.
And it creates hostility — Galatians 5:19-20. So we need to be reconciled with each other and with God.
Looking Ahead: God Makes a Way
A key teaching of the Bible is that none of that healing, reconciliation or restoration will be possible through human effort alone. We as humans must confess and repent of our sins, but we will never be able to do enough good deeds to repair the damage we caused or earn our way back to the Garden.
Our only hope is for God to make a way for us to come back home. And thankfully, God did make a way by sending Jesus into the world.
Te rest of the Bible tells the story of how God implemented his plan to overcome the power of sin, reverse its damaging effects, and restore us to the life we were created to live. And that plan culminates with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Sin separates us from God, but Jesus restores us to him through his death on the cross.
Sin makes us guilty, but Jesus paid the price for our sins by shedding his blood.
Sin takes us captive, but Jesus sets us free by overcoming the grave.
And even though sin creates hostility, Jesus is our peace.