Everything in revelation is personal.
It does no good at all to argue what God ought to do. The best we can hope for is to understand what He is doing and how He goes about it. Our hearts can know God directly and intimately, but our minds can only characterize Him and His ways.
In the broadest sense, the image of fallen humanity is that of wayward children. Our purpose is to serve Him. We were created to handle things in a certain way, and we have all departed from that. It means we have moved away from His shadow. Without that protection and guidance, we cannot be allowed to interfere with His work, so He keeps us busy.
By depicting Himself as an eastern potentate, a sort of desert nomad sheikh, God establishes certain expectations for us in dealing with Him. A sheikh would have his right-hand man; God has His Son for that. He also has a left-hand man, the role Satan plays for Him. The left-hand man is lower ranking, someone who is required to take up a job that no one really likes. We know that Satan was once in rebellion, and we can justly surmise that his current position in the divine court is the result of God’s enforcing hand on him.
When we see Satan in the Garden, he is not in rebellion any more. He’s already been reassigned to a nasty job, but it’s one he does exceptionally well. He is the internal affairs investigator, something like the court spy. He checks to see if various servants of the God are faithful. Satan is permitted to run sting operations, to deceive folks about their own calling and mission. If he succeeds in seducing them, he is permitted to make them his slaves. He consumes their blessings, at least in the sense of confiscating them.
This slavery is not a binary in-or-out, but is complex and nuanced. There are limits, in the sense that we might serve him in one area, but not in another. It’s also a matter of degree. That’s the situation for those with a sense of spiritual awareness.
There exists, of course, a majority of humanity with no spiritual awakening at all. Those sad souls are Satan’s property, as it were. They aren’t God’s children, though they could be. They are household slaves who have no idea what’s going on in the first place, and no stake in anything. They are herded like cattle and Satan is the cattle driver.
There are at any given time a bunch of people who relate to God as hired servants, allies who support His work but haven’t yet accepted His offer of family kinship. They are servants under a law covenant, but not adopted under a family covenant. They have some idea what’s going on, but still no inheritance in the final outcome. Their level of blessings is rather like token wages. They still belong to Satan, but gain somewhat more freedom because they have taken that first step of acknowledging God as their Lord, and His Word as their law. Their hearts are moved, but their spirits are not raised up to eternal life.
But every human soul in this world has demons. Their place in our lives may be quite restricted; that’s what happens when you embrace the agenda of revelation, and snuggle up to God as your Father. The fleshly nature belongs to Satan, but Satan doesn’t have much if we keep nailing that nature to the Cross. Or we may be lacking in our ardor for His will, and so the demons hang a little closer to us than we like.
The issue is taking back from Satan’s domain the territory of our lives. Not just kicking them out, but making sure the turf they held has been redeemed and occupied in serving God. The image is that your soul is the battlefield, and each new bit of territory we conquer in faith is something that God can then use. We have a distinct part to play in making that use happen, lest the demons return and things are even worse (Matthew 12:43-45; Luke 11:23-26). We must make an active and positive decision to fill that empty space with God’s business.
It serves no purpose to know all of this in theory if we are untouched by a sense of urgency in changing our own souls.
