Lesson 3: Our True Enemy

Ephesians 6:12-13
12 For 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.
13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

We need to recognize our true enemy. Much too often, and quite understandably, we see our enemy as the person who is in our face yelling at us about something we did not do. We see our enemy as the person who steals something from us, or who accuses us of doing something wrong. But Jesus specifically told us that we were to love our enemies – those enemies we can see and touch and hear (Matthew 5:43). But they are not our real enemy!

Our real enemy is described in verse 12 as rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, and spiritual forces in the heavenly places. Some might believe these words describe people in government or bosses in authority over us. This is not the case. Rather, these are ranks of the forces of darkness, of evil. In our national armies we have captains and majors, sergeants and colonels, generals and infantry. They are ranks of authority to show us that our armies are an intelligent and ordered unit with a single purpose and a plan for bringing that purpose to completion. An infantry-man does not tell a general the next step to be taken because the general has a greater information base than the infantry-man. The infantry-man may pass information up to the general, but only orders come back from the general to the infantry.


So it is with the army of evil too. It is an ordered and disciplined attack force. As we are going to see, the supernatural equipment that is mentioned here in Ephesians 6 is paralleling the military uniform and equipment of a Roman soldier. Paul is simply using an analogy here. This makes sense because Paul is observing his surroundings for this analogy because most scholars believe that Paul wrote the Book of Ephesians while imprisoned in Rome around 62 AD. He is surrounded by soldiers and that is what he sees. And so, we take a look at what the Roman soldier would have looked like and why Paul chose this analogy for the armor of God in regard to the daily spiritual battle we are in.

Today the devil has shot flaming arrows at you. Those arrows might be thoughts saying, `you will fail, you always do; or, I know it is wrong but go ahead and do it – God will forgive you; or, do not let them get away with that – make them pay.

Such thoughts will destroy you. The good news is that God has given us this armor to protect us, to fight back.

*What do you see in your life now that you recognize as spiritual warfare?