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Righteousness, Satan, Death and Resurrection

March 20, 2026

Wisdom 2:1a, 12-24 | John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30| Psalm 34:15-22

“Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of holiness, nor discerned the prize for blameless souls; for God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.”  The Wisdom of Solomon

Sometimes I find myself thinking of Lent and Easter as the Mystery Season. 

First there is Jesus, the Son of God incarnate who must die on Good Friday before His resurrection on Easter Sunday.  I cannot know the mind, — “the secret purposes” of God.  But somehow, I have come to accept the mysterious notion that I am expected to live into and through His human journey as well.  To deepen this mystery there are the words of the Wisdom writers that say I have been made “in the image of His own eternity”.

And, more mysteriously, Wisdom tells me that “through the devil’s envy death entered the world”.  Envy?  Why would anyone envy someone who is destined for death?  Especially the guy who brought it into my human world.  This envy thing is a new one on me. 

Was it Satan’s envy that caused him to tempt naïve humanity in the Garden of Eden?  “How can I be a Sinner before I’ve sinned?”  Am I not born in the image of God?

If I am made, “in the image of His own eternity”, the notion of “original” sin being in human nature makes no sense.  Yes, in yielding to temptation I have been tricked into becoming an unrighteous human being, a Sinner, and that I am now a prisoner of one or more of the seven deadly sins … and also condemned to die. 

OK, I am not a Sinner until I sin.  That makes sense.  But how do I get to be a righteous human again?  How do I regain my freedom from the prison of sin into which Satan … my eternal Adversary and the source and keeper of all evil … has tempted me?  How can I escape this captivity?  How can I re-enter the land of the righteous? 

Today’s Psalm asserts, to be free again, I must trust in God.  I must trust that God will forgive me, and in doing so I will be set free.  But I must actually believe He will.  I must not doubt God’s power to forgive me.  I must believe that he will be there to empower me with the strength to stand up to and successfully struggle with Satan’s evil envy. 

Now that leaves one more mystery.  The scary one.  The reality that I will inevitably die.

To understand this I must have faith that if I am made in the image of God’s Eternity, there must be something in my essential God given nature that is “eternal”.  Or at least potentially eternal.  And, if eternal, is it possible that I am a spiritual being?  If that is true, when I die, as a spiritual being, I will be returning to the reward that is His eternity. 

This must be why Satan … who was cast out from God’s eternity for succumbing to Envy and Pride … envies my mortal self.  Not a mystery now, because the devil was cast out of God’s eternity and can never return … not ever. 

Mike Cerullo