Can Satan Make Me Do Something I Don’t Want to Do?

Question: Can the devil tempt a born-again Christian into doing something they do not want to do?

Answer: Temptation is, by definition, an enticement to do something wrong. So yes, the devil not only can entice us to do wrong, but, in fact, is looking for every opportunity to do just that. Will he entice us to do something we don’t want to do? Yes, if it serves to get us to disobey God.

Of course, there are some things we don’t want to do that he doesn’t want us to do either. We may not want to serve God in the face of difficulty or danger, and Satan would be perfectly fine with us not serving God in such circumstances or any circumstances.

Perhaps your question is really, can the devil make us do something wrong even when we don’t want to. And the answer to that question is no. He cannot make us do anything. He can lie to us, seek to persuade us to do wrong things, and even create pressure for us to do wrong. But we must choose to either believe his lies, follow his persuasion, or yield to his pressure. Even if there were not a devil, we are capable of choosing to do evil. Our desire to be our own god is the same desire Satan is following and so, we are, in one sense, quite on the same wavelength as he is.

There are some people who have so fully yielded to Satan that they seem to lose control of their lives (see the case of the man in Mark 5:1-20), and children who somehow come under Satan’s influence might also be subject to his control (Matthew 17:14-20). This is what is sometimes called “possession.” The demon seems to have the ability and freedom to operate through the body of the host he infects. But even here there is a person there who can will for these demons to depart and who can be delivered.

Paul describes (Ephesians 2:1-4) three influences to evil in our lives: Satan (the prince of the power of the air), the world (our coporate desire to be our own gods expressed in encouragement to one another to follow this instinct), and the flesh (our own inner yearning to be god and trust ourselves rather than Him). On the day when Jesus establishes his millennial kingdom on earth (Revelation 20), he will greatly minimize the world’s influence (all people starting out will be believers) and he will banish Satan for a thousand years, and yet, at the end of that period, when Satan is released, there will be people ready to follow him in a military campaign against Jesus.

That is how crazy sinful we are without the devil’s or the world’s input. We don’t even need the temptation of Satan to do evil.