Satan is probably the "star of the morning"

Satan is probably the “star of the morning” who desired to be like God.

The Bible doesn’t give plain specific details regarding such things as Satan’s pre-fall history, or when and how Satan and his angel followers sinned and fell from grace. It’s an instance of the fact that the Bible provides all the information we need to know to be rightly related to God but doesn’t answer every possible question we may ask.

Two passages probably, but not definitely, give insight into Satan’s early history. The first is Isaiah 14:12-17. It speaks of the “star of the morning,” who has fallen from heaven. If the verses are taken literally, an angel is in view. This is both because the Bible frequently refers to angels as “stars,” and because the scene is in heaven.

The “star of the morning” desired to be like God and was cast from heaven because of the sin of pride. Isaiah says he created havoc on earth but would eventually be thrust into the pit. All this well fits with other Biblical teaching about Satan.

The second passage is Ezekiel 28:11-19. It’s a prophecy against the “king of Tyre,” which is probably a symbolic designation of Satan as the true power behind the pagan nation of Tyre. This “king” is described in terms that taken literally couldn’t possibly refer to a human. He had the “seal of perfection” when created. Like the “star of the morning” in Isaiah, he was in heaven, on the “holy mountain of God.” He had the high position of being the “anointed cherub who covers” God (cherubim are angels).

Though the “king of Tyre” was “blameless” when he was created, he became prideful, like the “star of the morning.” He was “filled with violence” and cast out of heaven. Like the Isaiah passage, all this well fits with other passages that specifically name Satan as the subject.

I believe both passages describe Satan; the reader is encouraged to study them and arrive at his or her own conclusions. Still, these passages won’t be further considered in our study because neither specifically names Satan as the subject. Out of an abundance of caution I’ll offer as authoritative relative to Satan only passages which clearly reference him.

Even discounting both the Isaiah and Ezekiel passages doesn’t leave us completely in the dark regarding when and how Satan first sinned. We know he sinned before deceiving Eve in the Garden of Eden. He had already fallen from grace before that encounter–he was described from the beginning as “crafty,” and his deceit was sophisticated.

Recall that after God created Adam He put him in the garden and made a command:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”(Gen. 2:16-17)

The following exchange between Satan and Eve was sometime later:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1–5)

Satan’s response was a lie in two ways. First, it was a lie about the result of eating the fruit, for just as God warned, Adam and Eve died spiritually the moment they ate the forbidden fruit. Second, he was calling God a liar. This lie wasn’t the first sin of the “crafty” serpent, Satan. He already had evil in his heart when he approached Eve.

Though we don’t know precisely when Satan fell from grace, practically speaking it’s a moot point. That’s because we can be confident, from the Garden of Eden conversation, that Satan was already a deceiver before the creation of the earth. The world has never known Satan other than as a fallen angel. In the Garden of Eden he successfully worked to break the perfect bond between God and Adam and Eve. He continues his efforts against God and His people to this day.

How did Satan first sin? The Apostle Paul tells us in his first letter to Timothy, his helper and fellow evangelist. In 1 Timothy 3:1-10 Paul gives Timothy the attributes needed by overseers and deacons in the church. He notes that an overseer shouldn’t be a new convert, “or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.” Satan’s first sin was conceit, an overblown sense of self-importance. To use a synonym, Satan’s first sin was pride.

“Evil” is any thought or action contrary to God’s moral law. God says that He alone, the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists, is worthy of glory. Pride, an unwarranted sense of self-importance, is evil because it denies that truth. Pride glorifies the creature, not the creator. Pride is a particularly pernicious sin because the prideful pair self-glorification with self-sufficiency, a denial of their dependency on God for all things. This ultimately manifests as a futile attempt to elevate oneself above God, to be one’s own god.

From everything the Bible says about Satan, it’s clear that pride was not only his first sin, but is also the sin that drives everything he does. Satan isn’t satisfied with being a creature subject to God’s sovereignty. He wants to live the lie he told to Eve, to “be like God.” He wants to be free of God, free to establish his own kingdom, free to be his own “god.” He’s consumed with the sin of pride, the bizarre idea, also held by the bulk of humanity, that somehow a created being has something to be proud of, something that didn’t come from God.