Have we forgotten the devil?
The great Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote about this very issue:
I am certain that one of the main causes of the ill state of the Church today is the fact that the devil is being forgotten. All is attributed to us; we have all become so psychological in our attitude and thinking. We are ignorant of this great objective fact, that being, the existence of the devil, the adversary, the accuser, and his “fiery darts”.1
I’m inclined to agree with his assertion. The last couple of months, I’ve been reflecting on Ephesians 6. According to Paul, we are presently fighting an invisible battle. It is one which requires a level of spiritual readiness in wartime.
I am not certain the root cause of this spiritual amnesia concerning our foe. Perhaps we are too sophisticated now to believe in such superstitious things. Nevertheless, Paul is correct; the devil is real.
This is a personal devil. I do not mean personal in the sense of your very own devil or a private devil that belongs just to you. He is personal in the sense that he has a personality. He is a real person. This devil is not an anthropomorphism for feelings, emotions, or psychology. The devil is not some metaphor for karma or coincidence or conflict. Though, he may very likely use any of the above in his schemes against you. He is the accuser of the brethren, the liar, a roaring lion who prowls about seeking whom he may devour.
He’s also not alone. In verse 12 of this chapter, Paul claims we fight “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.” Demonic forces sound old fashioned. It feels a bit superstitious. Yet, we must not allow our modern biases to soften this text. The devil is real, and he commands a host of enemies intent to destroy.
And, Paul does more than out the enemy’s identity here in this passage. He provides crucial intel for our battle. We are keyed in to the devil’s schemes in order to stand against him and his forces waging war on Christ’s church. Paul is clear: our enemy is not flesh and blood, but he is active and powerful, and he is a master of misdirection.
Your enemy is not flesh and blood
Your enemy is not flesh and blood. Paul could not be more clear about this in verse 12. So, the Bible tells us we are not fighting against people.
Why? Because the struggle is not this-wordly.
- If our struggle was social, Paul would have us put on social armor.
- If our struggle was intellectual, he would have us put on enlightenment armor.
- If our struggle was political, he would have us put on political armor.
- If our struggle was physical, he would have us put on physical armor.
In this passage, Paul calls us to none of those things. He calls us to take up the spiritual armor of God against a personal enemy and his legion of forces. People are not the enemy. Society at large is not the enemy. Other political parties, or the people in them, are not the enemy. It is so easy to get this mixed up today.
Scott Pace, our provost at Southeastern, asks the question: “Are you more bothered by lost people or burdened for them?” Especially in a world that is antagonistic to the people of God, we can treat lost people as our enemy instead of seeing them as they really are: hostages of the enemy, enslaved and blinded by their sin. When we see them as they truly are, and we realize who the real enemy is, we discover we are on a rescue mission. God wants to set those captives free, just like He’s done for you and me.
But, Your Enemy is Active and He is Powerful
Your enemy is not flesh and blood, but your enemy is active, and he is powerful. We can be so trained in on the wrong enemy today that we stay mired in conflict over all kinds of things. We bury down in the trenches for some kind of culture war. Firing our shots at the wrong targets. All the while, the real enemy has us in his sites off to the side, and he’s picking us off.
Week after week, we sit silent not sharing the gospel message with friends, coworkers, family, neighbors, acquaintances, or the person in the grocery store. The enemy is picking us off. We cannot go a week without reading another article about someone in ministry leadership, or hearing another story of someone in one of our churches who committed moral failure. The enemy is picking us off.
He’s destroying our churches. He’s destroying our families. He’s destroying our lives. He’s destroying our witness and our ability to testify to the gospel of Christ. He’s doing it from the inside. He is active and he is powerful. And he’s prowling around seeking to destroy us, and we’ve got our eyes on his decoy. Paul declares here in Ephesians 6, we must know the enemy.
And, He is a Master of Misdirection
Our enemy schemes. This enemy is quite skilled at misdirection. The smoke screen comes in many forms, two of which I’ll mention here. First, this enemy is easy to underestimate.
Underestimating your enemy is dangerous. On the sports field, that leads to an upset. Teams get too confident, and they don’t prepare. They rest in their own ability, they are unconcerned about learning the other team’s plays. On the battlefield, underestimating your enemy is one way to get yourself killed. We are tempted that we do not need our full compliment of arms. But there are few worse ideas than bringing a knife to a gun fight.
In Acts 19 we see one example of some itinerant Jewish exorcists (I didn’t know that was a job until I read it in Acts) who make the mistake of battling demons without fully understanding the power needed to do so. They leave that encounter running away, physically beaten up, and not wearing any pants. You can go look it up. It actually happened in Ephesus, the same place Paul is writing this letter to. Perhaps his audience remembered the incident.
If underestimating you enemy is dangerous, misidentifying your enemy is worse. When you misidentify your enemy, you aim at targets that are not your enemy and leave yourself defenseless to your real enemy. It is a very dangerous place to be. This is likely our more common mistake today.
We must realize demons will use whatever tactics go unnoticed. Causing us to feel as though demonic forces are an outmoded superstition, a relic that no longer applies, is a convenient way to go unnoticed. The issue may not be that they are no longer active, but that we have lost our eyes to see. As Lloyd-Jones notes, a crucial tactic of evil spiritual forces would be to cause us to forget the devil and to think our enemy was other people instead of the demonic forces themselves.
In our invisible battle with this dangerous enemy and his dark, spiritual forces, Paul gives his reader great comfort. We are given God’s very own armor so that we may stand. In order to stand, we cannot take our eyes off the enemy. We must remember who we are fighting at all times.
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Martyn Lloyd Jones, The Christian Warfare, An Exposition of Ephesians 6:10–13 (Banner of Truth, 1976), 292. ↩