Not
Flesh and Blood
Want your Christian friends to look at you
like you’re from Mars? Next time you pray together, pray against Satan, or
mention demons. For many, this will put you in the same camp as the Bible-thumping
fundamentalists. When someone trots out a prayer against dark spiritual forces
we involuntarily recall the excesses of those who see pitchforks behind every
ache, pain or lost parking space.
C. S. Lewis said this of the range of
attitudes about the satanic:
There are two equal and opposite errors
into which our race can fall about… devils. One is to disbelieve their
existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy
interest in them. [The devils] themselves are equally pleased by both errors,
and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
Many of us follow a third paradigm which
has elements of both extremes: We believe
Satan exists, but act as if he
didn’t.
Throughout
the bulk of its history the Church has taken the Biblical instruction on the matter
at face value. This came to an end around the time of the Enlightenment. According
to a survey in First Things, “the
last great theologian of the Western tradition for whom the Devil was at the
very center of reflection was Martin Luther.” With the rise of materialist
reductionism, many Christians put demons on the shelf with goblins, dragons and
unicorns.
The Bible, though, speaks clearly of the
existence of demons and Satan. In the Gospels, Jesus was tempted in the desert
by the Devil. In the parable of the Sower Jesus names Satan as God’s enemy who
steals the seed of the Gospel. In the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Satan
sows weeds, the sons of the evil one, in God’s field. Much of Jesus’ ministry, in
driving out demons, was on the spiritual front lines. Jesus instructed his
disciples to pray for delivery from the evil one, and he himself asked God,
“not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the
evil one” (Jn 17:15).
The rest of the New Testament paints just
as clear a picture of the attacks believers face: Satan blinds the eyes of
unbelievers (2 Cor 4:4) and misleads believers (2 Cor 10:3-5); he accuses the brethren
(Rev 12:10); he prowls about, bringing direct persecution to Christians (1 Pet
5:8-9; 12-13); and he seeks division within the church (Eph 4:26). In the
clearest passage on spiritual warfare Paul writes, “Our struggle is not against
flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the
heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12). Scripture describes a real enemy who seeks to tear
down God’s kingdom and its people.
The Bible is clear enough that we can’t
easily claim this as the ignorance of primitive first-century
The Lord offers to us arms for repelling
every kind of attack. It remains for us to apply them to use, and not leave
them hanging on the wall. To quicken our vigilance, he reminds us that we must
not only engage in open warfare, but that we have a crafty and insidious foe to
encounter, who frequently lies in ambush….
If Scripture is right about the battle
going on for and against the kingdom, we ought to train ourselves both in
spiritual warfare and, more importantly, in discernment. As a first step, consider
the following three things which we can all do now and which present little
risk of abuse or excess, but tremendous value if the spiritual battle is real.
First, we can pray against the enemy. In a
recent congregational prayer Pastor Fluit prayed against the evil one. Aside
from that, when was the last time you heard someone pray about Satan? At the
end of the “spiritual armor” passage Paul instructs the Ephesians to “pray in
the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this
in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (6:18). As
pointed out above, the Lord’s prayer calls us to pray against Satan. If we are
unsure whether the “god of this world” is at work, we have only to tell God. If
we pray with care and sensitivity, aware that most of us are inexpert at
identifying the enemy’s work, we risk nothing more than sidelong glances from fellow
Christians—and surely we are willing to stake our reputations to follow the
pattern of Scripture!
Second, we can show more grace to our
fellow believers when they aggravate us or seem to oppose the movement of the
Spirit—for the Bible suggests that even the wisest of us can each be misled or
provoked by Satan at times. Paul modeled this when he was quick to avoid
division with the Corinthians: “If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And
what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the
sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we
are not unaware of his schemes” (2 Cor 2:10-11). Calvin counseled,
Let us remember when the injurious treatment
of others provokes us to revenge [that this is no bodily struggle]. Our natural
disposition would lead us to direct all our exertions against the men
themselves; but this foolish desire will be restrained by the consideration
that the men who annoy us are nothing more than darts thrown by the hand of
Satan… To wrestle with flesh and blood
will not only be useless, but highly pernicious. We must go straight to the
enemy, who attacks and wounds us from his concealment—who slays before he
appears.
We needn’t see Satan hiding behind every
adversary; we should just be quick to forgive.
Third, let us respond to Satan as Jesus did
when tempted in the desert, with the word of God. (This will likely mean
committing verses to memory.) This will remind us that although Satan has some
freedom to harass the Church, “the one who is in you is greater than the one
who is in the world” (1 Jn 4:4). Of believers, 1 Jn 5:18 says, “the one who was
born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him.” Ultimately, we
rejoice that the victory belongs to Jesus: “…having disarmed the powers and
authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the
cross” (
~Tim Collins