Serving Zion
Seek First His Kingdom & Righteousness
The reason for 1 John 5:19 is, as you have said, the enmity is between a Christian man and Satan rather than human and God (if they have been born of God: 1 John 3:7-10, John 3:19-21)."I thought Satan was the ruler of the earth (in some sense)?"
What about Matthew 4:
"the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
It looks like the devil rules the kingdoms of the world - Jesus didn't disagree with the devil on that.
Whereas if Jesus had gone under the authority of Satan, then His disciples would have been limited by that subjection (eg: John 13:16, Proverbs 25:26). God's way was difficult and painful for Him, but it is the way of salvation, to give the final victory over the serpent (which became a dragon toward the end).
Seeing as you are looking at the spiritual sense of the word, consider Leviathan! God says it is a thing that we cannot tame .. and yet He is able to put a hook in it's jaw and lead it away. Such is the nature of the fallen: They cannot be reasoned with, and they can only be led by coercion (ie: not of love or of genuine goodwill, only of sensation).
Ephesians 2:1-2 also shows that while we were in the world (ie: fallen, enslaved by our passions so as to be so led about as with a hook in the jaw), it was the way of the world that ruled us (glamorising sin: eg. sex, drugs, rock'n'roll - fun and fancy things).
When we are born again, it is the love of the truth and the desire to do righteousness that motivates us (1 John 3:7-10), but then St. Paul also shows that there is a type of Christian that has become a "son of disobedience" - saying that they have not obeyed God's direction (Romans 6:16, John 14:15-16). He says that the spirit operating in them is the same spirit that is ruling the unregenerate, therefore they are not of The Holy Spirit. (That explains why the churches are not all showing the character of Christ).
St. John wrote that one who says he has come to know Him but does not keep His commandments, is a liar (ie: a son of the 'father of lies' - the devil - see 1 Timothy 4:1-2). In 1 John 2:22, he goes on to say that the one who lies that way, who does not yield to acknowledge what Jesus commands to them, they do not receive Jesus as Christ: they are an antichrist. When they say that they "confess with their mouth and believe in their hearts that Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead", what they really say is "Jesus will be Lord one day and God has taken Him away from us until the end" - that is the perspective that the doctrines of the antichrist spirit are teaching. We share teachings toward Matthew 18:20 though.
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