What is spiritual warfare?

Question 08121.

Spiritual warfare is not an optional interest for unusually dramatic Christians. It is the reality every believer already lives inside, whether or not they have a vocabulary for it, and the only question is whether we will fight with the equipment God supplied or with something we invented.

A great deal of what circulates under this heading owes more to a particular ministry culture than to the New Testament, and some of it is doing real harm. So let me work through what Scripture actually teaches, what it never teaches, and what this looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.

The Reality of the Conflict

Paul states it without hedging in Ephesians 6:12. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

The word he chooses for wrestle is pale, which describes hand to hand struggle rather than distant bombardment. Spiritual warfare in the New Testament is close, personal and sustained, and it is conducted against intelligent opposition rather than impersonal circumstance.

That verse also tells us something about our default instincts. Paul says the fight is not against flesh and blood, which is exactly what we assume it is when the difficulty has a name and a face. The person opposing you in the church meeting is not the enemy, however much they behave like one, and treating them as such means fighting the wrong war entirely.

Where Spiritual Warfare Is Actually Fought

If you read the New Testament looking for the location of spiritual warfare, you will find it in the mind and the will rather than in the atmosphere. Paul speaks of taking every thought captive to obey Christ and of destroying arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God.

That is warfare vocabulary applied to ideas. The strongholds Paul has in view are patterns of thinking, and the demolition work is done by truth. Romans tells us not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewal of the mind, which sounds like discipleship and is in fact combat.

This is why the enemy’s chief weapon is deception rather than force. He cannot compel a believer, but he can suggest, insinuate, accuse and misrepresent, and he has had a very long time to practise. Spiritual warfare is therefore mostly a battle over what you believe to be true at three in the morning.

The Armour and Its Shape

Ephesians 6 gives us the standard equipment, and the striking thing about the list is how ordinary it is. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the readiness given by the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.

Every item is either something God has given us in Christ or something we already know we ought to be doing. There is nothing exotic, nothing requiring a technique, and nothing available only to the advanced. The newest believer in your church has the full kit.

Notice too the balance. Five defensive items and one offensive, and the offensive weapon is Scripture. That proportion tells you a great deal about the shape of spiritual warfare as Paul understood it. We are holding ground rather than storming citadels.

The Verb Is Stand

Four times in that passage Paul uses the language of standing. Stand against the schemes of the devil. Withstand in the evil day. Having done all, to stand. Stand therefore. The Greek histemi is a defensive posture, and the repetition is not accidental.

That is not passivity. Anyone who has held a position under sustained pressure knows how much effort standing requires. But it is a very different picture from the one presented in much popular teaching, where believers advance against enemy territory, tear down principalities and take cities for God.

Paul’s aim for the Ephesians is that they should still be on their feet when the day is over. Spiritual warfare, in his account, succeeds when the believer has not been moved.

Resisting and Submitting

James gives the other essential text. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. The order of those two sentences is everything, and it is regularly reversed in practice.

Resistance that is not grounded in submission to God has no authority behind it. The sons of Sceva discovered this in Acts 19 when they attempted to use the name of Jesus as a formula without belonging to Him, and the outcome was humiliating. Authority in spiritual warfare is derived, never inherent.

Peter says much the same, telling us to resist the devil firm in our faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by the brotherhood throughout the world. That last phrase is worth noticing. Part of standing firm is knowing you are not the only one under pressure.

What Scripture Never Tells Us to Do

Here is where I part company with a good deal of contemporary teaching. The New Testament never instructs believers to bind Satan, to rebuke territorial spirits, to identify and name the ruling principality over a city, to engage in spiritual mapping, or to break generational curses through ritual.

These practices are widespread and sincerely held, and they are absent from Scripture. Paul spent years in Ephesus, a city saturated with magic and the cult of Artemis, and his letter to that church tells them to stand in armour rather than to confront the powers over the city. That is a remarkable omission if the modern approach were correct.

Jude goes further and warns about those who presume to pronounce judgement on the glorious ones, contrasting them with Michael who would not take that tone with the devil. Spiritual warfare conducted by issuing commands to powers we cannot see is not a biblical practice, and I would rather stay within what we have been given.

The Territorial Question

Daniel 10 is the passage always cited in support of strategic-level warfare, and it deserves a careful hearing. An angelic messenger is delayed twenty-one days by the prince of the kingdom of Persia until Michael comes to help, and the prince of Greece is mentioned as coming next.

I accept that this indicates spiritual conflict at the level of nations, and I think it is reasonable to conclude that some angelic beings have regional responsibilities, with Israel’s position under Michael being distinctive given her place in God’s purposes.

But look at what Daniel was doing while this occurred. He was mourning, fasting and praying, and he did not know any of it was happening until he was told. The conflict was conducted entirely between angels. Daniel issued no commands and named no powers. If this passage is our model for spiritual warfare, it teaches persistent prayer rather than strategic confrontation. See my answer on praying against principalities over cities.

Prayer as the Real Weapon

It is often missed that Paul’s armour passage does not end with the sword. It ends with prayer, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication, keeping alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

That is the atmosphere in which the armour is worn. Not a technique, not a formula, not a declaration, but the sustained dependence of a believer who knows the fight is beyond them. Paul then asks for prayer for himself, that words may be given him to declare the gospel boldly, which tells us what he thought the objective was.

Spiritual warfare aimed at anything other than the advance of the gospel and the holiness of God’s people has lost its purpose. We are not fighting to clear the air. We are fighting so that people hear and believe and stand.

The Ordinary Battleground

Most of the actual fighting is unglamorous. It happens when you choose to forgive someone who has not apologised, because Paul says we forgive so that we may not be outwitted by Satan. It happens when you refuse the second look, close the laptop, or tell the truth when a lie would be easier.

It happens when you get up on a dark morning and read Scripture that does not feel alive, and pray prayers that seem to reach the ceiling. It happens when you keep going to church while feeling nothing, and when you serve someone who will never thank you.

That is spiritual warfare as the New Testament describes it, and the reason it does not feel dramatic is that the enemy prefers his defeats to go unnoticed. A believer who forgives an old injury has done more damage to the kingdom of darkness than a hundred people shouting at the sky.

Guarding Against Two Errors

The first error is dismissal. Treating this entire subject as a hangover from a pre-scientific age leaves believers unarmed and disagreeing with Jesus, who spoke of the enemy plainly and often. Paul’s instruction to put on armour makes no sense if there is nothing to defend against.

The second error is obsession. Christians who see spiritual warfare in every difficulty become anxious, superstitious and strangely irresponsible, since a demon can always be blamed for what the flesh has done. I have watched this become a way of avoiding repentance rather than pursuing it.

Scripture holds the middle without any strain. The enemy is real, limited, defeated and dangerous. Take him seriously, refuse to be preoccupied with him, and keep your attention on Christ, which is where every New Testament passage on the subject eventually points.

Fighting Together

One further observation about the armour passage. Every command in it is plural. Paul is not equipping an individual for solitary combat but a church for a shared stand, and the final instruction is to make supplication for all the saints.

That matters enormously in practice. Isolated Christians are the easiest targets, and the enemy’s most effective work is often simply persuading a believer to withdraw. Discouragement, offence, embarrassment about a struggle, a slow drift out of fellowship, and then a person standing alone who was never meant to.

So a substantial part of spiritual warfare is turning up, staying connected, confessing to another believer, and praying for people whose battles you cannot see. The church is not a support service for the fight. It is the formation in which the fight is conducted.

When You Are Losing

Let me say something to the believer who has read all this and feels defeated anyway. Scripture assumes there will be evil days. Paul says to take up the armour that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, which means he expected some days to be worse than others.

Standing does not mean feeling strong. It means still being there when the pressure lifts. If all you have managed this month is to keep praying badly and keep turning up, that is not failure in spiritual warfare. That is exactly what Paul told you to do.

And when you have fallen, the response is not despair but confession, because we have an advocate with the Father. The accuser will tell you that failure disqualifies you. He is a liar by trade, and 1 John 1:9 is a better authority than he is.

The Victory That Has Already Been Won

Everything I have written rests on something that happened outside us and before us. Colossians 2:15 says that at the cross God disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in Him. The image is of a Roman triumph, with defeated enemies paraded through the streets.

Hebrews adds that Jesus shared in flesh and blood so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, and 1 John says the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil. The decisive engagement is over.

That changes the character of spiritual warfare completely. We are not fighting for a victory but from one, and the outcome of the campaign was never in question. What remains is resistance during the enemy’s retreat, conducted by people who already belong to the winning side and cannot be removed from it.

Discerning What You Are Facing

A practical difficulty remains. How do you know whether a given trouble is spiritual attack, ordinary providence, the consequences of your own choices, or an illness that needs treating? Scripture does not give us a diagnostic chart, and anyone who offers one is going beyond the text.

What it gives instead is a set of responses that are appropriate whatever the cause. Confess sin. Pray. Read Scripture. Stay in fellowship. Seek proper help for physical and mental illness. Forgive. Those are right in every case, which mercifully removes much of the pressure to diagnose correctly before acting.

I would add one caution. If you find yourself attributing to spiritual warfare things that are plainly the result of exhaustion, conflict you have caused, or a condition a doctor could treat, that is not discernment. It is avoidance wearing spiritual clothing. My answer on how to know if you are under spiritual attack goes into this further.

Teaching This to a Church

Pastors carry a particular responsibility here, because a congregation will largely believe what it is taught on this subject and has few tools for checking. If spiritual warfare is preached as technique, people will practise technique. If it is preached as Ephesians 6, they will put on armour.

My own approach in preaching is to keep the subject tied to its texts and to keep the proportion the New Testament keeps. The epistles mention the enemy regularly and briefly, and then return at once to Christ. A ministry where the demonic occupies more airtime than the Saviour has drifted, whatever its doctrinal statement says.

I would also want a congregation to know what we do not do and why. Saying plainly that we will not bind territorial spirits or hunt for generational curses, and showing from Scripture why, protects people from the disappointment and the guilt that those practices eventually produce. See my answer on generational curses.

So, now what?

Put on the armour, which mostly means paying attention to things you already know. Is there truth you are avoiding? Sin you are excusing? Scripture you are not reading? Forgiveness you are withholding? Those are the gaps in the line, and the enemy is an experienced tactician.

Then pray, and pray with others, and keep praying for the gospel to advance, because that is what Paul asked for at the end of the passage. Do not go looking for a fight in the heavenly places that you were never assigned. Stand where God has put you.

Spiritual warfare is won by ordinary believers doing ordinary obedience with extraordinary persistence. Where has the line been bending in your life lately, and what would it take to hold it this week?

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Ephesians 6:10-11 (ESV)

For Further Study

For further study, Ephesians 6 repays slow reading alongside a good commentary, and Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology and Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology both place the believer’s conflict within a dispensational framework that keeps the emphasis on position in Christ rather than technique. J. Dwight Pentecost’s Designed to be Like Him is helpful on the practical outworking, and Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology surveys the wider theological questions fairly. Among older writers, William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour remains the fullest treatment ever written of Ephesians 6, and it is striking how little of the modern apparatus of deliverance appears in it. Read any contemporary book on this subject with the passage open beside you, and ask of every practice recommended whether the apostles ever did it.