How does God deal with evil powers? Let’s look at 2 biblical Images, connected to our passage in Ephesians 6, that I think will give us some insight into our questions.

1. Yahweh (God’s proper name) as the Divine Warrior

In Ephesians 6 we read about “the armor of God.”  Paul seems to have drawn from two main sources in order to create this masterful motivational speech.  First, he was in jail when he wrote this letter, so its likely that he would have seen some Roman soldiers wearing some body armor.  But more importantly, Paul draws upon passages in the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah for his armor metaphor.  When we read the bible and specifically the New Testament, there is something we have to keep in mind.

Its called: the Principle of First Mention.  Let’s think about a really easy example.  In John 1.1 it states: “In the beginning was the Word…”  “In the beginning” is a phrase that ought to make a light bulb flash in our minds.  Why?  Because, according to the Principle of First Mention, we need to ask ourselves: where else in the Bible does it say something similar? O… I know—Genesis!  So, whatever John is writing, we ought to read with the original “In the Beginning” story in mind!

In the same way, when we read this text in Ephesians, when it talks about God’s Armor; it’s pointing our attention to passages like this next one found in Isaiah 59.

15 Yes, truth is gone, and anyone who renounces evil is attacked.  The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice.  16 He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed.  So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him.  17 He put on righteousness as his body armor and placed the helmet of salvation on his head.  He clothed himself with a robe of vengeance and wrapped himself in a cloak of divine passion.  Isaiah 59.15-17

This is one of several passages in Isaiah that are the source of Paul’s Armor of God metaphor.  When God sees injustice, what does he do?  He fights for justice on the behalf of those who are oppressed.  He fights for the poor, the slave, the prisoner, the victims of all evil.  We were created by a Divine Spiritual Warrior and Paul is telling us that all of God’s weapons are at our disposal!

And take note: this is not a defensive stance.  We are to pursue the work of Evil in this world, and with God’s own armor or resources; we are to undo the work of Evil.  Many often approach this passage as a “stand” in a defensive posture, but for Paul, if we are going to take up God’s resources, we must use them to pursue and undo the works of the fallen powers!  God is willing to fight for the cause of justice… the church must take up God’s spiritual armor to do the same.

Here is a huge question: Are you in a place where you can see past the frustration of your life to see a bigger picture, where many are in a more difficult situation than your own?  Our world is one in which over a billion people have no access to clean water, where every seven seconds a child dies of hunger, where a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, where one hundred million children are denied basic education, where forty percent of people in our world lack basic sanitation, and where Americans spend more annually on trash bags than nearly half of the world does on all goods.[1] [Read more...]

Over the past week it has been interesting to see the kind of reactions folks have to discussing “spiritual warfare.”  There are three broad responses besides the “right ons!” and the “way to be academic and true to the spiritual realm!” type.

1) Abused post-Pentecostals who hear spiritual warfare and think “demon-under-every-bush.”

I want to assure you that if this is your situation, that I have never been part of a Pentecostal church.  I have been Mennonite Brethren most my life with a short time as a Baptist.  I am not of this ilk and am deeply saddened by situations like yours…

2) Skeptical of the supernatural realm and its active reality.

I also had a time when I was skeptical, but God since has experientially shown me in my own life that “if it happened in the New Testament, it can happen today.”  My charismatic experiences with the Holy Spirit and spiritual warfare, along with my exegetical studies of the Bible have convinced me of this.

3) Spiritual Warfare is only about personal situations and has nothing to do with institutions or systems of injustice.

In the following, I hope to demonstrate from a theological perspective that there is more to it than this…

There has been much discussion about what/ who the powers are and how they interact in the natural world.  Widespread confusion has been stemmed from the various interpretations of powers language.  This is because the texts about the powers, including this Ephesians 6, are ambiguous.  Lets attempt to discern an approach to the powers that is both practical and biblical.

The primary mode of understanding the language of the powers in modern evangelicalism has been to see them as been personal demonic tempters of the individual Christian.  How this actually is understood to affect daily life varies.  Many Christians have, by all practical means, dismissed the powers as being separate from most human affairs, with the exception of major acts of evil.  Others often portray themselves as being demon hunters behaving as if there is a “demon-under-every-bush.”[1] Whatever the case may be, the powers are often limited to the influence that they have on individuals; which I want to continue to affirm as part of but not the whole picture.

Another understanding of the language of powers would be the definition that has been put forth in the work of Walter Wink.  In his book, The Powers That Be, he describes the language of powers in the following fashion:

We might think of “demons” as the actual spirituality of systems and structures that have betrayed their divine vocations.  When an entire network of Powers becomes integrated around idolatrous values, we get what can be called the Domination System.  Do these entities possess actual metaphysical being, or are they the “corporate personality” or ethos of an institution or epoch, having no independent existence apart from their incarnation in a system?…   My main objection to personalizing demons is that by doing so, we give them a “body” or form separate from the physical and historical institutions through which we experience them.  I prefer, therefore, to regard them as the impersonal spiritual realities at the center of intuitional life.[2]

In the above statement, Wink determined [Read more...]