The Foundation for Understanding Spiritual Warfare

Last week, my article described why I started studying spiritual warfare more than 30 years ago. What began then as a need to deal with my own personal upbringing issues soon became something else: a deeper love of studying God’s Word. I wanted to know more about what the Bible says about spiritual warfare, and I looked for it from Genesis to Revelation. What I learned since has become a foundational understanding for me: the Bible, while it addresses the reality of spiritual warfare, is not a book about the devil; it’s a book about God.

Think about it with me. The Bible starts with these words: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1), and it ends with these words: “He who testifies about these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with everyone. Amen” (Rev 22:20-21). The book of Ephesians—the book that includes the familiar warfare passage about the armor of God in chapter 6—also begins with God and ends with God.

Indeed, the very armor passage where Paul warns believers about the battle against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12) focuses on God rather than the devil. Note what Paul tells the Ephesians before he speaks about the spiritual battle: “Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph 6:10-11).

Yes, Paul wants the believers to know about the schemes of the devil. Before he ever takes them there, though, he points out that their strength comes from the Lord, their might is His might, and even the armor they wear is not their armor—it’s God’s armor. Paul reinforces the idea again and again that although the battle is real, the victory is ours because the battle is not ours in the first place—it’s God’s. This last issue is so important, in fact, that I will write another article about it in the weeks to come.

Here’s the point I want us to consider today: recognizing spiritual warfare is not about knowing the devil and his schemes well; it’s about knowing God so well that we recognize the enemy when he shows up. It’s about knowing the truth so well that we know when the liar makes his appearance. It’s about turning our attention to the eternal when the world and the enemy dangle temporary pleasures in front of us.

Maybe an illustration will help here. When I was in seventh grade (a long, long time ago . . .), our class took a trip from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Washington, D.C. There, we visited the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where we stood in a balcony and watched in fascination as employees spent time handling, looking at, rubbing, and even smelling dollar bills. They held bills up to light and peered through them. They crinkled them and then smoothed them out again on their desks. They rubbed them on sheets of white paper to see if any ink came off. Those events happened decades ago, but they obviously caught my attention back then.

When we asked our guide what these employees were doing, here’s what she told us: “They’re getting to know the real money because they’re being trained to recognize counterfeit stuff.” The employees were to know the real money so well that they quickly recognized the fake when it showed up. I assume that the counterfeit dollars they discovered were few, but they nevertheless “hung out with the real stuff” all the time so they would not miss the counterfeits that showed up.

That’s the way we deal with spiritual warfare: we hang out with God all the time so we know when the enemy shows up. How important that is for us to know when we realize that the one the Bible calls, among other names, Satan, the liar, the tempter, the devil, the murderer, the serpent, the adversary, the dragon, and the accuser is out to devour us!

Practically, then, what does this truth mean for us today?

1.      We must be genuine followers of Christ if we want to walk in spiritual victory. It is not possible to wear the full armor of God (Eph 6:10-17) without knowing God in the first place. Both our position in Jesus and our practice of faithful living as believers grant us what we need for victory.

2.      We cannot live in victory apart from knowing God’s Word. His Word is truth, and it is that truth that sets us free (John 8:32). If we choose to ignore His Word, we simply cannot know well the truth that counters the evil one’s voice. That’s one reason why I wrote for this site this post about Bible reading: “10 Things I’ve Learned about Bible Reading + My Bible Reading Strategy.”

3.      Prayer is not an optional discipline if we want to walk in victory. At its essence, prayer is about relationship. Because God loves us and we love Him, we should naturally want to talk with Him on a regular basis—not only when we’re facing a problem. We should so regularly talk with God at an intimate level that any internal “conversation” we have with the devil during temptation simply feels amiss. Again, I refer you to my series of articles on prayer on this site, beginning with this quiz to evaluate your prayer life.

4.      “We” is a critical pronoun if we want to walk in victory, as God never designed us to fight these battles alone. Most of us are still vulnerable enough to the counterfeit that we need others to help us keep our focus on the only true God. We need each other—the church—because isolation and aloneness only make us more open to hanging out with evil too long.

I pray this week will be victory for you.