Finally, my brethren, be srong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6:10–11).
We have been looking, during several studies, at the various aspects of this great truth, the whole truth of the Bible, and have been trying to discover how it is used by the Holy Spirit to produce our sanctification. I do not claim that we have dealt with it in an exhaustive manner, we obviously have not, but I have been trying to take out and to select the greater, larger and more obvious principles. We come, now, to an essential aspect of this question of our sanctification through the truth, for no consideration of this doctrine would be adequate without including the teaching which we find stated so perfectly in Ephesians 6, starting especially at verse 10: ‘Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.’
Now we have seen that God has many ways of promoting our sanctification, which are all taught and enumerated in the word. We saw very clearly at one point that God can use circumstances, that at times he chastises us through them, all with the desire and object of increasing our sanctification. In exactly the same way, it is perfectly clear from the teaching of the Scriptures that God uses even the activity of the devil and his powers to promote our sanctification, which is why we must of necessity look at it. Here is the teaching, which is so plain and clear, that we ‘wrestle not [only or merely] against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places [in the heavenlies]’ (v. 12).
But before we come to analyse this in detail, I feel constrained to ask why it is that this aspect of the truth is so little stressed in our day and generation? It is one of those aspects of truth that is neglected and almost forgotten. Furthermore, I am not here referring to those who are outside the church, nor to those who hold so-called liberal views of the Bible and its teaching, I am referring to those who regard themselves as evangelical Christians. Why is it that we have neglected this? I am constrained to ask that question because you cannot read the Bible without finding teaching about the devil everywhere. Indeed, I would not hesitate to go so far as to say that without this, one cannot understand the Bible at all. It is no use just saying that you believe in sanctification and in a positive act of salvation. We need to know what we are to be delivered from and we do not begin to understand that until we really see and grasp this aspect of the teaching. The Bible is not only an outline of the way of salvation; it contains the only teaching that we have concerning the cause of our fall and of our trouble. The Bible shows us that the activity of the devil and his hosts is the whole cause of man’s troubles: and yet we so frequently neglect this teaching. When we look at the world in the light of this teaching we see that the activity of the devil is a major factor in the whole life of mankind.
But, to put the argument at its strongest, is it not something we see so clearly in the earthly life of our Lord himself? Our Lord, while he was here in this world, was struggling and fighting against these powers. The biblical view of life in this world is that it is a mighty, spiritual conflict, and even the Son of God himself when he was here in the flesh was involved in this. We all think of his temptation in the wilderness, and we are reminded also of how the devil came back to him in the Garden of Gethsemane and upon the cross itself. There was a mighty battle going on, a tremendous spiritual conflict. We can feel the tension as we read the accounts. Then, when we come to the lives of the apostles, we find exactly the same thing. The apostle Paul always gives the impression that he knew something about this battle against these powers and forces. We wrestle and struggle against them, he says, for this is the thing with which we are confronted: we are not merely up against man but infinitely more important are these tremendous spiritual powers that are arrayed against us.
In other words, it does seem to me that we cannot really read our New Testament without being conscious of this spiritual tension, this spiritual conflict, that is going on. That is why these men prayed so much, and, perhaps, we pray so little, because somehow or other we have forgotten this spiritual conflict in the midst of which our whole life is set. Indeed, when you read the history of God’s people throughout the centuries you will find that they testify to the same thing. We all remember the famous story of Martin Luther. One afternoon in his study he was so conscious of the presence of the devil that he took hold of his inkpot and hurled it at him. I do not think that that speaks to us modern Christians as it should. Are we aware of that? Do we know anything about that when we tend to dismiss Luther as almost being a psychopath? Is it imagination? But it is the testimony of all God’s people, especially those who have been concerned about knowing God most intimately, those who have striven after holiness, those who have worked out their salvation with fear and trembling. They all testify to the same thing, to this trouble in the spiritual realm, this conflict, this battle.
So, therefore, we must of necessity face the question as to why we so seldom hear about this, and why it is preached about so infrequently. Why, too, do we speak about it so infrequently in conversation with Christian people and as we give our testimonies to one another? I have little hesitation in answering that question. I feel that the main explanation is a false doctrine of sanctification which makes sanctification appear quite simple and easy. We think that we have only one thing to do, then all will be well, and we will live this easy life ever afterwards. But the result is that we hear nothing about this wrestling ‘not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers’. We have been taught a doctrine which gives the impression that any sense of tension or struggle in any respect is wrong and false; that we all ought to be always at ease and perfectly happy. Of course, we all understand the desire to be happy, but whether we should desire ease is another matter. However, the point I am making is that surely that view of sanctification inevitably conflicts with this particular aspect of the truth that we are considering together here.
Furthermore, has it not happened because we have been concentrating upon only one aspect of sanctification and not upon the whole? We have been so concerned about a particular sin which tends to get us down that we have forgotten the principalities and powers. Consequently, we have regarded sanctification as something that gives us deliverance from one particular sin, as a kind of clinic to which we go to be delivered from that sin. We have been so constantly dwelling on that one aspect of sanctification and of the truth, that we have failed to remember these other aspects. We have forgotten the devil, the fight and the conflict, and have thereby tended to forget that we need the whole of the truth before our sanctification can be truly promoted. I do feel, therefore, that this is a vitally important matter. We often hear people talking about the ‘lost note’ in modern evangelism, and for myself I have no doubt that this is the note which has been lost. As a result, we have somehow or other lost this conception of the bigness and the mightiness of this Christian life, the fact that we are engaged in a struggle between the almighty God and this amazing power that is set against him, and that if we are truly Christian we, too, are partakers in the struggle.
So let us look at this. Obviously I cannot in one study hope to deal with it in the way it deserves. I am simply giving you some headings in order to show the big principles. So let us, first of all, look at the struggle. This is, we are told, the conflict ‘against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ We shall not go into detail about the words, because what matters is that we should have some understanding of what they represent. We are concerned about the devil; you know the names that are given to him – Satan, Beelzebub, the prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, the prince of this world, and so on.
And what do these names tell us? Once again, the first thing we must bear in mind is that the devil is a person. I have already emphasised the truth that the Holy Spirit is a Person because we tend to forget that and think of him as an influence; and it is exactly the same with the devil. We tend so much to think of the devil as just some general influence, or perhaps not even that, we merely explain his activity in psychological terms. But according to the Scriptures there is a person called the devil who is the ‘god of this world’, and the Bible teaches, too, that he was a very high, bright and powerful angelic being, created by God before the world was ever made, before man ever came into existence. But he raised himself against God and rebelled against him. He pitted himself against God. The implication is that it was his ambition, his desire, to be equal with God; he refused to subordinate himself to God or to acknowledge God as supreme. So he rebelled against God and persuaded other angels to agree with him, and there was this mighty fall in the angelic realm.
There is, therefore, a kingdom of Satan, a kingdom of the devil. He is the head of that kingdom and he has power and he has his emissaries. That is what is meant by ‘principalities, powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spiritual wickedness in high places.’ I shall not go into a detailed consideration of what ‘high places’ or ‘heavenlies’ mean; it does not matter as long as we know that there is a kingdom with all these forces and powers, of which the devil is the head, and that his ambition is to destroy the work of God; that he pits himself against the almighty God and all who belong to him, and that he is intent upon the destruction of all that God is and all that God has done.
The next thing that is emphasised is the greatness of the struggle, which is due very largely to the greatness of the devil’s power. That is why our neglect of the devil is so serious. It is also why the tendency of Christian people to laugh at the mention of the name of the devil is not only alarming, but is a manifestation of the grossest ignorance. The devil is not a joke. He is, according to the Scriptures, such a mighty power that he did not hesitate to pit himself against the Son of God and even appeared at one point to have triumphed. What is this greatness? Well, he is described as ‘a roaring lion ... seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Pet 5:8) – that is the devil. Our Lord himself referred to him as ‘the strong man armed’ whose ‘goods are at peace’ (Lk 11:22) – such is his power. He is altogether more powerful than man, more powerful than man even in a state of perfection, because he was too much for Adam and Eve. It was he who persuaded, and apparently with great ease, this man in a state of perfection. Indeed, he is even greater in power than the archangel Michael himself, because we read in the epistle of Jude that even the archangel ‘durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee’ (v. 9).
That is something of the power that is opposed to us; such is the struggle in which we are involved. The moment we belong to God and his Christ we are engaged in this struggle. Before that, we belonged to the kingdom of darkness – we were part of the goods he keeps at peace. We also see something of his power as we read the book of Job. He is one who is able to wander to and fro in the earth (Job 1:7). In Job chapter 1 he has power even over the winds and the very elements. In Hebrews he is described as the one who ‘had the power of death’ (Heb 2:14). I am saying all these things so that we may have some conception of his power. Paul describes him in Ephesians 2:2 as ‘the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’. Then in 2 Corinthians 4:4 the Apostle does not hesitate to say that if men and women do not believe the gospel of the glorious God, there is only one reason for it, it is that their minds have been blinded by ‘the god of this world’.
Such, then, is something of this terrible power of the devil and his emissaries and forces. He is set against God and his work, and God’s people and all that they have, and he is intent upon our destruction. He will do anything he can to hinder our sanctification, to bring us again out of the kingdom of God, and back into his own kingdom. That is what he is concerned about, and he rules in the world, and in the flesh, attacking us from the outside in this violent manner. Nothing is so important, therefore, as that we should know something of his power and of his methods, and that is the thing that Paul is concerned about here in Ephesians 6.
And then, in addition to his strength, we must also emphasise his subtlety. The Apostle speaks of the ‘wiles of the devil’. I wonder if you have ever stopped to think about them? Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2:11: ‘We are not ignorant of his devices.’ I am afraid that one of our greatest troubles is that we are ignorant of them. We do not seem to know enough about his subtlety, which is why he so often fools us. Consider these statements: ‘As the serpent,’ says Paul again, ‘beguiled Eve’ (2 Cor 11:3) – read Genesis 3 and watch him doing it. He comes as a friend, as one who is interested in us, someone whose supreme concern is our well-being and our success. In short, he beguiles us. Why, says Paul, he can transform himself into an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). He can come, as it were, as an advocate of the gospel, as one who is interested in evangelism. He proposes methods to us that are so much better than the biblical ones!
So if he can do all that, it is not surprising that we may be ignorant of his devices; that is why in 2 Corinthians 2 Paul is emphasising the kind of conflict in which we are engaged. The devil is not someone who comes in an openly evil manner, as someone who is obviously opposed to God. No, rather, he came to our Lord in this way: If you are the Son of God, why do you not feed yourself? If you are the Son of God, why do you not rely on his promises and cast yourself down from this pinnacle and give the glory to the greatness of God? You say you are interested in the kingdoms of this world, I will give you all that if you will bow down and worship me. The devil seems to be concerned about the evangelism of God’s kingdom – he comes as an angel of light. So are we aware of his wiles? Are we on guard? Are we watching? That is the exhortation of the Scriptures: ‘Watch ye, stand fast in the faith’ (1 Cor 16:13). You must watch and pray. We find these exhortations everywhere, because of this spiritual conflict, and yet how infrequently we talk about it, how infrequently we look out for it in our daily lives and in our spiritual activities. The subtlety of it all!
But let us go a step further, let us be more practical and come down to details. In what ways does he manifest this power and this subtlety? This is a great theme, even though at this point we shall only be dealing with it briefly. Here we come to this whole realm where so many seem to find it difficult to differentiate between the psychological, the physical and the spiritual; but let us confine ourselves to the answer to that question given by Paul in Ephesians 6. The only way to deal with him is to put on the whole armour of God. Paul is not content with stating that in general, so he divides it into its component parts in order that we may follow the lines along which the devil comes. There he is opposed to us in all his subtlety and his malignity. He throws these darts at us, these fiery arrows which, when they strike an object, burst into flame.
What are these innuendoes, these things that he is throwing at us as God’s people? Well, here are some of them. Firstly, there are doubts – I mean by that, doubts about the faith, about the gospel, uncertainty about it with respect to ourselves, doubts as to whether we are saved. Now I know that large numbers of Christian people today testify that ever since they were converted they have never been tempted to doubt. I wonder whether that fits into this passage? If you read the lives of some of the greatest saints you will find that the devil has tried to persuade them to doubt not only their own salvation, but the gospel itself. We must be careful and examine once more the type of belief and teaching which seems to exclude doubts entirely. In view of the adversary by whom we are confronted does it not savour rather of the psychological than of the spiritual? He insinuates the doubts; it is he who throws the fiery darts.
And then there are all the types and kinds of fear, not only about our own salvation or a wrong fear of God and a fear of death, but sometimes a fear of the physical aspect of death. Then perhaps one of his favourite methods is to produce a state of introspection and morbidity. We all know what is meant by introspection – it is self-examination carried out to a point at which it ceases to be beneficial, so that instead of examining yourself in a spiritual way to see whether you are in the faith or not and looking to Christ, you spend the whole of your time looking into yourself, examining the blackness of your own heart. You become such an expert in your own deficiencies, in the blackness of your own condition and the blackness of your own soul, that you drop down into the depths. That is no longer self-examination, but introspection, and it leads, of course, to this state of morbidity in which you are so aware of your own unworthiness and sinfulness that it becomes a cloud which hides the face of your Saviour. It almost seems to do away with Calvary and you are persuaded that nothing can save you. You are so aware of your sin and your blackness that you tend to allow yourself to see nothing else and it obscures the gospel.
How often we prove, by our conduct and behaviour, the truth of the Bible; we always oscillate between extremes. One is the condition in which we never examine ourselves at all. We say we must always look at Christ and not at ourselves; but the Scripture tells us to look at ourselves. We are so objective and we have forgotten the devil. We are not aware of the spiritual conflict at all, we are perfectly happy all the day long and nothing whatsoever troubles us. Then we go right from that to the other extreme, in which we are down in the depths of introspection and morbidity, which is also always produced by the devil. The devil as an angel of light comes and says, ‘The Scriptures tell you to examine yourself, so you must do so.’ Then he starts us on the process which we have just seen and he does it to such a degree that the end of it is spiritual depression of which there is a great deal in these days. (I do not think, however, that there is as much as there once was, and I am even prepared to say that that is a bad thing. I prefer spiritual depression to that superficial glibness which is not even aware of the process, but both are wrong.) It is not that he has made you cease to be a Christian; but he has made you a miserable one, and because of that you are a bad recommendation to the gospel. He fills you with such a concern about yourself that you have no time to think about anybody else. You cannot forget yourself, you are always down in the depths, and it is all the work of these principalities and powers. It is a part of the method of the devil as an angel of light.
But he does not even stop at that. How many of God’s greatest saints have testified to the fact that they have been attacked by blasphemous thoughts entering their minds? Where have they come from? They are fiery darts thrown by the devil. Do you know anything about these? Have you been on your knees praying to God, and then found that the most horrible blasphemous thoughts have come to you? They have come from the devil. He not only hurls doubts, he even puts these vile, awful thoughts into your mind. Then there are temptations – he is the merest tyro in this matter who thinks he has once and for all finished with certain temptations; because they may come back to you at any moment, the devil will see to that. And we must realise here the importance of differentiating between temptation and sin. To be tempted does not mean you have committed an act of sin. The devil can subject the greatest saint to some of the grossest temptations to sin even after years of growth in the Christian life. It is the devil who does it, not the man himself. The devil hurls it at him – it is, once more, the fiery darts of the wicked one.
And on top of it all – and I must mention it because it is to be stressed in this passage – what does the Apostle mean in Ephesians 6:13 by ‘the evil day’? I think he means that over and above all these things we have been looking at, there are special occasions when the devil seems to be let loose and comes upon us in all the might of his ferocity. Job knew something about that. But let me put it to you in the words of a great hymn written in the eighteenth century by the saintly John Newton – he says it all perfectly. I do not know that it is in a single modern hymnary belonging to any denomination – such are the times in which we live – and to find it we must go to the Gadsby Hymnbook!
I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace
Might more of His salvation know
And seek more earnestly His face,
‘Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer,
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.
I hoped that in some favor’d hour,
At once He’d answer my request,
And by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest.
Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart,
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yea more, with His own hand He seem’d
Intent to aggravate my woe
Cross’d all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourd and laid me low.
Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?
It is in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith,
These inward trials I employ,
From self and pride to set thee free;
And brake thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st seek thy all in Me.
You see what he is saying? John Newton, having been converted from the terrible life he once lived, was now concerned about his sanctification, and he prayed to God that in one stroke he would cleanse his heart and deliver him from all sin, that he might enjoy peace and rest for ever afterwards. He asked the Lord to sanctify him, but what in fact happened to him was that he was given a view of himself and of the blackness and foulness of his own heart. Then hell was let loose upon him and he could not understand it. So he asked God why he was doing it, and that was the answer – God said that that was his way of sanctifying people. You have to have self crushed out and it is the only way. The ‘positive’ gospel will not do it and so you have to have hell let loose and you will be crushed to the ground. You will cry to me, says God, and then I will tell you that I have to smash you before I can reveal myself to you. Yes, God sometimes allows the devil to do as he did in the cases of Job and John Newton. Do you know anything of that sort of experience? If you read the lives of the greatest saints, you will find they all knew something about it. They never knew short cuts to sanctification, but they knew something about this. This is God’s way. Thus it is clear that God permits this and uses it to produce and promote our sanctification.
Lastly, how do we meet the struggle? How do we stand in such a condition? The answer is given perfectly here in Ephesians. The first thing is to realise that this is so, that this has happened. For if we do not realise that we are involved in this spiritual struggle, it means that we are so duped by Satan that we have not been aware that he is there. We know nothing about him as an angel of light. The second thing, obviously, is that the moment we realise this, we know at once that there is only one strength that is great enough to stand up to this, and that is the strength of the Lord: ‘Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might’ (v. 10). Nothing else can do it, for the devil is stronger even than the archangel, and who are we?
Therefore we must put on the whole armour of God, and the apostle Paul takes us through the parts. The first is truth. This means that the only way finally to stand in this day is to know the truth, the faith, to have a clear knowledge and understanding of the gospel – and that is why I have been going through it all in these studies. It is only as we have this whole armour that we stand – the whole gospel – sanctification is not one special doctrine, it is the whole doctrine, the holiness of God all the way through everything else. There must be no doubt or uncertainty as to the way of righteousness. We must rely entirely upon the finished work of Christ – justification by faith only. We must be absolutely clear about it because if we are not, the devil will get us. We must realise our utter dependence thus upon God and have a clear knowledge of the fact that we are no longer under the dominion of the devil. We must read Romans 6, we must study it and realise that though the devil attacks us, we are not under his dominion any longer, and how vital this is!
‘That wicked one,’ says John in 1 John 5:18, ‘toucheth him not,’ but though he cannot touch us, he can frighten us, he can throw his darts at us. But he will never get us back into his kingdom again; we have been taken out of it and are now under the dominion of the Son of God. Let us make certain of it, so that even when the devil attacks us, we can defy him to the face and say, ‘You cannot touch me!’ Though he is our adversary, though he comes as a roaring lion, we are to resist him and stand steadfast in the faith. So we must know the faith. If we neglect Christian doctrine, it just means that we are ignorant of the devil. For, ultimately, the way to defeat him and to master and defy him, is to stand in the doctrine, not a superficial Bible study but the great biblical doctrines. The more we know of them, the more we will be able to withstand the devil.
And then, in addition to all that, we need to be ‘shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace’. In other words, we need to be quick, we need to be subtle ourselves, because he is subtle. We must answer him and tell him that we can work as quickly as he can. It is a battle of wits. So have these sandals on your feet, says Paul, in order that you can move as quickly as he can. And the gospel enables us to do this. But even after all this is done, we need to remain on the offensive, we must, ‘take ... the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ and strike at the devil with the word. We must attack him, and when he comes we must strike him – that is the method. There is the essence of it, and we must work it out in detail. Then in verse 18 Paul adds ‘watching with all perseverance and supplication for all saints’ – we must always be watching and praying. Watch, stand fast in the faith, quit yourselves like men, be strong: that is it; the same truth is repeated everywhere – watchfulness, waiting for the subtlety. We must learn to discriminate, we must not believe in everything that appears to be good; everything that appears good is not of necessity of God. The devil is subtle, we must differentiate, we must be watchful and we are ever exhorted to do this.
Above all, Paul exhorts us to prayerfulness: living and dwelling in God’s presence, drinking in his life and being constantly built up in the faith. And so, in this way, in spite of the power and the malignity and the subtlety of the devil, we shall be able to stand; and even should an evil day come, when hell itself is let loose upon us, though we may not understand, we shall be able to stand in his might and in the power of his love, we shall overcome the enemy. O may the Lord God open our eyes to realise this aspect of our Christian life and warfare, because it is only as we realise something about it that our sanctification will proceed gloriously and we shall see that in every way God himself is sanctifying us.