"The Enemy" is not just Satan: balancing and broadening our spiritual warfare theology
Too often our spiritual warfare theology is only about Satan and his demons. Who is God's "enemy" and why does it matter?
This “Cut for Time” post is material that didn’t fully make it into the final version of my sermon, “This Means War.”
Common in the evangelical parlance is a preacher’s warning of “the Enemy.” We are told that this demonic being is lurking and ready to take us out. The Enemy is here to “steal, kill, and destroy,” and will be constantly lying, constantly tempting, and constantly working to destroy our faith in Jesus Christ.
And these preachers are right.
Except they don’t go far enough.
When most Christians today refer to “the Enemy,” they are referring to a fallen angelic being often called “Satan.” In other words, “the Enemy” remains only a proper noun with a personal history and identity. And this is all we are warned about, for the most part.
And again, this is certainly true, but it’s not the whole truth.
Satan, or “the Accuser,” or “the Adversary” (his names are legion, after all) is the fallen angelic being responsible for the tempting of Jesus Christ and the temptations and harassment of many Christians today. The devil is real and wreaking havoc on our world as the prince of the power of the air.
But he’s not the only danger and certainly not the only enemy of God. God has an enemy, but he also has enemies. Satan is not the only one God opposes. God hates death (Ezekiel 18:32, 33:11, 1 Timothy 2:4-6), God is opposed to the proud (Psalm 138:6, Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5), and loathes sin (Proverbs 6:16-19, Psalm 5:4, Zechariah 8:17).
God’s enemies are Satan, sin, and death. And where might those show up? The three “categories” of spiritual warfare in the history of the church are helpful here: the world, the flesh, and the devil. These are the primary means by which we experience the great enemies of God. I have defined them this way:
The devil (Satan): the fallen angelic being(s) working against the will of God (2 Corinthians 4:1-6)
The world (sin): our fractured surrounding culture and individual/collective life events (1 John 2:16)
The flesh (death): our mortal persuasion to trust that which is not God (Romans 8:8-11)
It may be interesting to note the enemies being a person (Satan), a place (the sinful world), and a thing (mortal, expiring flesh). All of these—and rarely just one—are at play when we face temptation, despair, discouragement, and doubt. All of these wage war on us and all of them are the enemies sowing weeds into God’s field (Matthew 13:24-30). All of these pull us away from the heart of God and into destructive thoughts, actions, and relationships that are of no benefit.
When Paul describes the “battle” or “struggle” we face as Christians that is not against “flesh and blood,” he says it is, rather, “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Sounds like more enemies than just “Satan.” Sounds like a whole host of problems we cannot defeat.
The truth is, Satan is a dangerous enemy, but he’s just one of the enemies. A balanced vision of the world, the flesh, and the devil, will give us a more healthy and wholistic approach—and also one that leads us with greater desperation to the cross. Consider the balance of these three are interplaying with each other in various forms and ways like this:
This is as messy as it feels to me on a daily basis.
Is it the devil luring me towards anger or just my flesh? Maybe both…and maybe also “the world” and its celebration of strong-headed alpha males. Probably how my dad raised me is involved too. Probably so are demons.
Is it really “the world” or “the culture” that is at fault for all the issues of day from violent videos to pornography to irreverent jokes? Maybe. It’s probably also our flesh that likes all that stuff and also Satan’s own manipulation (what Paul called the devil’s methodia or “schemes”) in our lives to help us feel good about it all. It’s probably that messy.
You see where I’m going. An unhealthy and unhelpful picture of spiritual warfare usually overemphasizes one of these three areas.
When you overemphasize, “the devil,” you usually abdicate responsibility and say things like “the devil made me do it” and discount your own poor decision-making (flesh) with “the enemy is working against me.” Sometimes that’s true. But also some times we are stupid and make bad decisions and that’s just it.
When you overemphasize, “the world,” everything is the fault of “the culture” and “worldliness.” Every problem in all of our life becomes “out there.” It’s the President, or our spouse, or our roommate, or “the economy” or some form of culture that has us upset. It’s usually a lot more factors than that. No matter how you feel about the government, I’m pretty sure the world, the flesh, and the devil are at work in there. All of “the powers” are behind all those in power.
When you overemphasize, “the flesh,” you get bad, degrading theology that starts in Genesis 3 instead of Genesis 1. You’re not an image bearer, you’re a dirty sinner who can’t do anything right and you’re lucky God saved you because most of your life is your fault. The truth is, none of your life is entirely your fault. You were born into a world you did not choose with a devil you never knew existed until you came to know Christ.
Everything is a bit more complicated and a lot more dangerous than our own capacity can carry. It’s almost as if…wait a second…it’s almost as if we need salvation?
This humiliating and surprising realization is the final reason this balanced theology matters: we need to see just how grave our situation actually is. There is nothing we can do about it. We are helpless against the enemies of God. Paul would tell us,
1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
-Ephesians 2:1-3
It’s all there: the world, the flesh, and the devil acting as agents of our own demise. The image here is one of defeat. Dead people don’t live again.
What is it about modern Christian preaching that so freely grants us the opportunity to save ourselves? The popular sermons of the day sound like yelling at a dead body to get up and exercise. Bad spiritual warfare theology that just emphasizes one of these three enemies usually comes with “tactics” for how to “fight the flesh” or “flee the devil” or “wage war on the culture.” It’s all battle tactics for what we might do.
But as Lynn Cohick says, “There is no talk among the apostles of defeating the devil or subduing the lion, for they are well aware that this enemy can be conquered only by God.”1 Which is why Paul’s instruction to the Ephesians is to take on armor the Messiah Jesus already took on “by his own hand.” Paul’s inspiration in Ephesians 6 is clearly Isaiah 59, where the Lord,
15 …looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no one,
he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm achieved salvation for him,
and his own righteousness sustained him.
17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head…-Isaiah 59:15-17
Christ is the only one to get us out of this mess. Our only hope is to (again, in Paul’s words) “put on Christ.” The way Christians fight such impossible enemies is to dress ourselves in the One who defeated them through his surprising death.
When we see just how bad the situation we’re in, how overwhelming the battle is that we face, we are brought to full dependence for the Lord Jesus to save us—and only him. We can flee the devil, we can wage war on the flesh, we can escape the world. It works for a little while. But we can’t defeat any of them—and we certainly can’t defeat all of them. Only Christ is our hope. Any offer of salvation that allows for human effort to achieve it is not the vision of Isaiah. The Great Rescue from heaven comes only from God in Christ.
Lynn H. Cohick, The Letter to the Ephesians, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse et al., New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 411–412
Great stuff! I originally ran into this categorization through Jon Thompson in his book Deliverance. He pulled from a longer history I didn’t know about of using these three to define spiritual warfare.