We contest not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities (Ephesians 6). This means the grand principles of the fallen world, ruled by evil personalities, and the everyday demons we all encounter all the time.
Which might sound strange as maybe you don’t encounter many demons, but my pastoral experience would suggest otherwise. I’m not going to write a manual for casting out demons but it’s a not uncommon part of pastoral ministry.
Interestingly though, I’ve been in a church which was majorly into this; it saw a lot of demonic opposition and many cast out. I’ve been in churches which just deal with them when they come up. It might sound like the first is facing opposition because they’re really at the sharp edge and should be emulated, but I think that’s the wrong reading. Instead, in normal pastoral ministry they come up and you deal with them, but they love attention because it takes the attention away from Jesus. Ministries or churches focused on demons have usually got things out of kilter.
My point in this post is different. Most spiritual warfare is not casting out demons. Most spiritual warfare is ordinary things. The vast majority of times I’ve dealt with demons they cause a scene if you confront them, but if you gently lead the person to forgiveness or repentance (as appropriate depending on the situation) the demon leaves quietly. These are our weapons: forgiveness and repentance.
Which is because they are the way of Jesus.
Spiritual warfare looks like forgiving your enemies, like repenting of your sin, like loving your spouse and your friends. It looks like preaching the gospel and taking the sacraments. It looks like loving your neighbours. It looks like the fruit of the spirit. It looks like prayer.
We fight the demons by these weapons, we fight them by being Christians.
Which is to say that whether you think about the evil powers or not, you do the same thing. You consider Jesus, worship him, and follow him.
There may occasionally be a place for other kinds of ‘spiritual warfare’ but I’d encourage you to be sceptical of them when you encounter them. Instead, be a Christian.
This not only wars against those powers which attempt to hitch themselves to our shadows in our own sin and as we’re sinned against, but also against the grand powers that shape the communities and societies in which we live. We may need to do more than this to reshape our communities after Jesus, but the mainstay of our warfare will be being Christians.
To take an egregious example: is abortion evil and demonic? Yes, as a national industry, I think it’s hard for any Christian to argue otherwise. Would changing that—which seems very unlikely in the UK, if we’re honest—require some sort of political action? Undoubtedly, but it also requires the ground level ‘spiritual warfare’ of loving our neighbours, forgiving our enemies, and praying. If we build communities that welcome unwanted children and young mothers, that’s a vital part of the picture too. I’m not trying to set these against each other, and I don’t think many people disagree, we would need all those things.
In more ‘spiritual’ seeming examples, it’s the same. There may be grander actions required occasionally, but communities of the Spirit who repent and forgive are vital too.
Photo by Gioele Fazzeri on Unsplash
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