Earlier today, on January 15, 2024, Peter Mead put out a post entitled “Is Our View of Satan Too Small?” I highly recommend that you read this small blog post. You can find it via this link:
What I want to do in this post is expound a bit on his main point and one of the passages he used to back up his point, 2 Corinthians 10:3-6. Before reading this article, read his post. This won’t make sense unless you do.
3For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.
Paul wrote these words to a church that was being tempted to be totally caught up with external appearances. False Apostles came into the church in Corinth and boasted that they had special spiritual experiences that made them appear mighty and superior to Paul, and therefore superior to his message, which was of course the truth of the Gospel. They said “’His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account’” (2 Corinthians 10:10).
And so, Paul writes these few verses to clarify the fundamental issue: it is the unseen spiritual realm with which we have to deal primarily. “You want to see battlements and forces of good and evil set against one another? You want to see where the real battle is? Your looking,” says Paul, “in the wrong area entirely.”
So, where does Paul tell the Corinthian church to look? Not at the flesh – the outward appearances, the boastful words of the false super-apostles. He tells us to look at what God is doing in the spiritual realms. “The type of weapons we have,” says Paul, “are spiritual weapons.” And these types of weapons are not generic spiritual weapons. These have divine power. Fleshly weapons have human power – their effect is limited to the strength of the one who wields them. Not so with these spiritual weapons – their effect is through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Christian’s strength isn’t in the power of his own arms or in the world, but in God (Colossians 1:29).
What is destroyed by these spiritual weapons made mighty by God? “Strongholds.” These strongholds aren’t merely bothered by these weapons, but are demolished by them. And this work is not for Paul alone but applies to the true Apostles of the true Gospel, as well as anyone who proclaims the Gospel with them in the power of Christ.
It is a common thing to do today to restrict the influence of Satan to the realm of personal temptation, or speak of him having some vague influence over “the spirit of the age.” But we must have a clearer, more precise vision. This warfare, Paul says, is about destroying “arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.” That concern, above everything else, is where Paul’s mind would go to when someone said, “spiritual warfare.” I wonder if our minds do the same?
If we were wondering how this warfare was fought, or what the nature of these “arguments” and “lofty opinions” were, Paul immediately gives us the answer. In fighting this warfare in daily battle, “we take every thought captive to obey Christ.” It is against thought-systems that we have to fight against, because the devil constructs thought-systems to maintain his control over the world. He is, after all, “the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). He makes “the course of this world” what it is and makes sure humans are “following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”
It is incredible that the systems which do this best – communism, fascism, technocracy, tyranny of all kinds, and mob-ruled democracy, to name a few – are left unattributed to the devil.
In the past, Christians seemed ready to recognize the malevolence of hedonism or materialism as it confronted our worldview in the so-called “Christian West”, or even the evils of totalitarian regimes in the East. But today, too many Christians seem happy to play along with and believe the best about media-driven narratives concerning identity politics, critical theories, social justice, weather worship, globalist agendas, neo-communist ideologies, uncontrolled immigration and encroaching violent religion. Are we sure that we should ‘believe the best’ and ‘affirm the good’ in all the ideas swirling around and in all the layers of authority setting themselves up over us?[1]
Surely these systems should at least come to mind when people use the phrase “spiritual warfare?” The ideologies of Paul’s day, which were like what we see today, were what Paul openly condemned as being of the devil (Colossians 2:16-23; 1 Timothy 4:1-5). Why are we as Christians today so reticent to do the same?
All thoughts are to be taken captive to Christ. We have a positive vision for the world – a vision with Christ at the center, the devil as the Enemy, sin as the problem, and the power of God in Christ by His Spirit as the only solution. We are not amongst those Critical Theorists of this age who only seek to tear down and destroy. We see the world as lost and in need of a Savior – and we see all things held together by Christ and organized into intelligible reality by Him. We reject the world view that says reality is held together by power dynamics of the oppressed and the oppressors. Instead we turn to the Truth revealed in God’s Word to define our reality.
This enemy of Critical Theory, out of all the thought-systems we have to deal with today – surely this one we can call out as demonic? We must. We must remain steadfast in our obedience to the Gospel, being ready to engage those who promote the thought-systems of the Devil, and call others back to Christ who are drifting into those thought-systems.
[1] Peter Mead, Is Our View of Satan Too Small?” https://biblicalpreaching.net/2024/01/15/is-our-view-of-satan-too-small/
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