Christian Pure

What Is Spiritual Warfare? What the Bible Says and How to Stand

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • Spiritual warfare is the Christian’s struggle against the devil and the powers of evil, in the armour God gives in Ephesians 6.
  • Paul’s word for our part is “stand”: the victory was won by Christ at the cross, and we hold the ground he has taken.
  • Christians have long named three enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil, and much of the fight is with our own desires.
  • Jesus fought the devil in the wilderness with Scripture, and he taught us to pray, “deliver us from evil.”
  • Not every hardship is a spiritual attack, and the Catholic Church insists that illness, especially psychological illness, is a matter for medicine.
  • Churches differ most sharply on whether a Christian can need deliverance: the Assemblies of God says no believer should be called possessed, while charismatic teachers such as Derek Prince say believers can be demonized in some areas.
  • No power can take a believer out of God’s hand, for “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”

Spiritual warfare is the Christian’s struggle against the devil and the powers of evil, fought with the armour God gives: truth, righteousness, faith, his word and prayer. Paul names the enemy plainly: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12). Read on in that chapter and one word keeps coming back. Paul tells us to put on the armour “that ye may be able…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (public domain), via BibleGateway: Matthew 4:1–11; 6:13; 26:41; Mark 5:15; 9:29; Luke 8:35; 10:17–20; 22:31–32; John 10:10; 17:15; Acts 19:13–16; Romans 8:38–39; 12:21; 16:20; 1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Corinthians 10:3–5; 11:14; Galatians 5:17; Ephesians 4:26–27; 6:11–18; Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14–15; James 1:14; 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8–9; 1 John 3:8; 4:4; Revelation 12:10.
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1667–1673 (sacramentals and exorcism), vatican.va; 2012–2016 (holiness and spiritual battle), vatican.va; 2846–2854 (“lead us not into temptation” and “deliver us from evil”), vatican.va.
  • The Westminster Larger Catechism, questions 105 and 195, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, opc.org; The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 20, opc.org.
  • Orthodox Church in America, Baptism (order of service, 2012), oca.org.
  • “Unseen Warfare – St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain,” Orthodox America vol. I no. 5, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, roca.org.
  • The Methodist Church in Britain, “Exorcism (1976),” statement to the Conference of 1976, methodist.org.uk.
  • Assemblies of God (USA), “Can Born-Again Believers be Demon Possessed?” position paper approved by the General Presbytery, May 1972, archived copy of ag.org.
  • Derek Prince, “Jesus and Demons,” radio teaching, Derek Prince Ministries, derekprince.com.
  • Stephen Hunt, “Deliverance: The Evolution of a Doctrine,” Themelios 21, no. 1, The Gospel Coalition: on classical Pentecostal and charismatic teaching about deliverance, and on Derek Prince and Peter Wagner.

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