CHRIST DEFEATS THE DEVIL WITH THE DEVIL’S ON WEAPON, MARTIN LUTHER:
God’s proper work … is “life, peace, and joy,” and the other fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. Yet in this the Lord “exalted his holy One” (Ps 4:3) and is “wonderful among all his saints” (Ps 68:35) that he destroyed the devil, not by a work of God but by a work of the devil himself. For this is the most glorious kind of victory, namely, to pierce the adversary with his own weapon and to slay him with his own sword. … For in this way God promotes and completes his work by means of an alien deed, and by his wonderful wisdom he compels the devil to work through death nothing else than life, so that in this way, while he acts most of all against the work of God, he acts for the work of God and against his own work with his own deed. For thus he worked death in Christ, but Christ completely swallowed up death in himself through the immortality of his divinity and rose again in glory. … Therefore just as in “the Author of salvation,” in “the holy of holies,” in Christ, our Head, death and all the works of the devil have been destroyed, so it will have to happen in each of his members. For just as Christ was at once mortal and an immortal person, he was indeed subject to death by reason of his humanity; but because his whole person could not be slain, it happened that death failed, and the devil succumbed in slaying him; and thus death was swallowed up in life. In this way the curse was swallowed up and conquered in the blessing, sorrow, and joy, and the other evils in the highest good. Thus now, too, it pleases our most gracious God to destroy death and the works of the devil in us through Christ. We Christians should learn, in order that we may die joyfully. For just as it is impossible for Christ, the Victor over death, to die again (cf. Rom 6:9), so it is impossible for one who believes in him to die; as Christ says in John. … For just as Christ, by reason of his union with immortal divinity, overcame death by dying, so the Christian, by reason of their union with the immortal Christ—which comes about through faith in him—also overcomes death by dying. And in this way God destroys the devil through the devil himself and accomplishes his own work by means of an alien work. This is what the world does not grasp.
Ronald K. Rittgers, editor Reformation Commentary on Scripture: New Testament XIII: Hebrews, James 41-42