The Devil Feared the Word Made Flesh

 

Faith in these words has been so powerful that it has overcome the world and the devil. Thus we read a story or legend that once upon a time, when this Gospel of John was being read from the beginning: In principio erat Verbum ("In the beginning was the Word"), the devil stood there motionlessly and listened till the words "And the Word was made flesh"; then he disappeared. Now whether this was invented or whether it actually happened, it at any rate is the truth that the devil must surely flee from the man who speaks these words from the heart in true faith. Otherwise the devil can very well put up with the fact that God's Son is the Light and Life of men and laughs in his heart because people do not accept this truth. 

Martin Luther

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AND, holds the Reformer, the devil sensed what the incarnation of the Son of God meant to him. When, in the seventh sermon of the series just referred to, Luther expounds John 1:14, he relates a popular legend to his effect.
 

Source: 

What Luther Says, p. 166 

Compiled by Ewald M. Plass