Identify the Foe

March 17

We could become quite beleaguered by the fact that there is a relentless foe who seeks our destruction. Just as the vigil against terrorism must be constant because there is an enemy who desires our total destruction in the natural realm, so is there a devourer whose goal is to bring about our spiritual undoing.

Arguably, the vitriolic hatred that motivates the terrorist springs from the source that has declared itself to be the enemy of God and the destroyer of all things good. How is the believer in Christ to view the ongoing ideological as well as spiritual warfare that engulfs our age?

The first step is to recognize exactly ‘who’ our enemy is. The second is to be equipped with the weapons with which to fight that enemy. Ephesians 6:11, 12 affords insight into both. Here we are told that our mortal foe is not “flesh and blood.” Though terrorists may hate us and seek our destruction, it is not the people who harbor the hatred and commit the evil deeds who are our enemy.

The true enemy is the evil one whose goal is to darken men’s souls and thereby wreak their destruction. If we don’t “wrestle with flesh and blood,” but against “principalities, powers, rulers of spiritual darkness,” then our ultimate defense must be in the spiritual realm where we are admonished to, “Put on the whole armor of God so we may stand against the wiles of the devil.”