As a rule, Evangelicals are great defenders of the deity of Christ. Thats not something we mess around with, and anyone who might had better take carebe they Bart Ehrman or the Jehovahs Witness at your door!

But as we know, Christ was also a manthe God-man100 percent. Yet here in his humanity, Evangelical vigilance is less rigorous. Its very easy for us to give to Jesus of Nazareth what we might call a God-card so that in matters of the Holy Spiritthings like his power, insight, dependency, and spiritual formationhe is not quite like us. It goes something like: Well of course he knows Deuteronomy so well (to quote it 4 times to the Devil in the wilderness) He wrote it! The end of such thinking is we have a man who is really not much of a model for us of what it means to be human.

There are many avenues we could pursue in our exploration of Jesus God-card, or better, our handing it to him so that hes not a true model for us mere humans, but one Ill raise here is Jesus posture toward the Devil, the Accuser, and the Father of Lies. Was Jesus conflict with and triumph over the Devil during his ministry a Second-Person-of-the-Trinity thing (re: God-card), or was he showing us what human beings under the power of the Spirit do?

I want to suggest its the latter case on the grounds of what it means to be really human in the original creation story of Genesis. Now, really human is something were all still just working on in this divine project of our being conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29; Gal. 4:19). But the opening chapters of Genesis make it clear that human beings in Gods image, which Jesus as is well (Col. 1:15), were commissioned as Gods means of subduing evil, including taking out the Devil. The case is made by an old German theologian, Erich Sauer, in his book, The King of the Earth (Paternoster, 1962), and Ill mention some of his thoughts now.

1. The human vocation to rule and subdue the creation (Gen. 1:28) includes the putting down of something already hostile. Check out the commentaries on the kabash-word in this verse.

2. Keeping the Garden (Gen. 2:15) is language of Israels priesthood in its service to the tabernacle and temple. It included a protective, guarding function. Against what was Adam and Eve to protect the Garden?

3. The post-Fall promise of Gen. 3:15 is that the seed of the woman will ultimately crush the Serpents head. This is not innovation, but reiteration of the original vocation of Genesis 1:28 for humans to rule and subdue Gods Adversary.

4. The spiritual destiny of the created-order lies in the hands of the human couple (Rom. 8:19-25).

5. Pauls Second-Adam doctrine inextricably ties the God-man to the first Adam as leader of a new humanity in exploitation of every dimension of its callingthe Godward, the human-ward (social) and the creation-ward (physical and spiritual) dimensions.

The bottom line for this is that I think we need be open to see Jesus authority over the Devil and his demons as a fundamentally human traitno God-card. While demons and Satan are greater than us now in might and wisdom (2 Pet. 2:11), when we stand in the really human (full-image of God) strength of our champion, Jesus, we are to them what He is. So demons, like sin, dont rule us (Rom. 6:6). Quite the opposite! We rule them. We resist them. We stand against them like our fully human champion didby the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now this is not a clarion for conducting demon hunts, or to otherwise sensationalize spiritual warfare as is the case for some. Jesus and his apostles were wholly Gospel-focused. Yet they were not unaware of Satans schemes, and when the Enemy rose against them, they knew what it looked like and they took care of business.

So should we. It is our calling.