What Is Spiritual Warfare?

“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

— Colossians 2:15 (ESV)

If you want to understand spiritual warfare, you have to begin where the Bible begins — not with the enemy, but with the Victor. Much of what is taught on this subject today opens with the devil: his hierarchies, his strategies, his territories — and leaves the believer with more fear than faith. The New Testament does the opposite. Before Paul names a single hostile power, he spends whole chapters showing Christ raised and enthroned above them all (Ephesians 1:20–21), and the believer seated together with him (Ephesians 2:6).

The war is real. There is a dark kingdom with a real prince (Ephesians 2:2). But the gospel never presents this war as a contest whose outcome hangs in doubt: it presents a conflict with an enemy already disarmed at the cross. That difference changes everything — how you pray, how you resist, and even where you keep your joy.

What is spiritual warfare according to the Bible?

The definition does not need inventing; Paul wrote it:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

— Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

Spiritual warfare, then, is the real, unseen conflict of the believer — and of the church — with organized spiritual powers of evil under the devil. Paul names them in four phrases: rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of this darkness, spiritual forces of evil. He builds no taxonomy and draws no org chart of the demonic; he names the reality and moves straight to what the believer must do. We will do the same.

And notice the first thing the verse denies: this wrestle is not against flesh and blood. Your spouse is not the enemy. Your neighbor, your boss, the relative who wounded you — people, never. Whoever turns spiritual warfare into war against people has already lost the apostle’s map. People are those for whom Christ died; the powers are something else, and the fight is with them.

Where is this war fought? The heavenly places

One Greek phrase carries the whole letter to the Ephesians: ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις (en tois epouraniois, from epouranios, Strong’s G2032), “in the heavenly places.” It appears five times in Ephesians — and in this form, in no other letter of Paul. The five are not scattered at random; they are an argument, and the order is the doctrine.

Read the order slowly, because the heart of everything is there. Blessed in the heavenly places (1:3). Christ enthroned in the heavenly places (1:20–21). We ourselves seated with him in the heavenly places (2:6). The church proclaiming God’s wisdom to the powers in the heavenly places (3:10). And only then — after four chapters of throne — the wrestle in the heavenly places (6:12). Paul shows no one the battlefield who has not first seen the throne.

From victory, not toward it

When Paul describes the power God worked in Christ, he reaches for a word of sheer altitude: God seated him ὑπεράνω (hyperanō), “far above,” all rule and authority and power and dominion (Ephesians 1:21) — the very vocabulary chapter 6 will use for the enemy. The powers you wrestle already have Christ enthroned over them. And the cross was no disguised defeat but the public disarming of those powers: Colossians 2:15 says he put them to open shame, triumphing over them. From that finished triumph flows everything this series teaches.

So the believer does not fight toward victory, like a climber straining for a summit; he fights from victory, like one seated beside the King who already won it (Ephesians 2:6). This is the inversion that separates the Bible’s teaching from so much sensationalism: not one verse commands the believer to conquer the heavenly places, because God has already seated him there.

Now one clarification that honesty requires. Being seated with Christ does not mean the believer no longer faces sickness or death. Scripture is sober: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27, ESV); “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26, ESV) — destroyed, future tense; and death is swallowed up in victory when the mortal puts on immortality, at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:54). Anyone who teaches that Christ’s victory exempts the believer from dying, or that sickness is impossible for the one who believes, is moving God’s calendar forward — and laying guilt on the sick along the way. Our ministry confesses plainly in its Statement of Faith that God heals today and that the believer who has not yet been healed is not at fault. Seated with Christ, yes; exempt from the human condition, not yet. The victory is his, and it is certain; its consummation has a date, and God keeps it.

What is the struggle like?

Paul chooses his word for the fight with care: πάλη (palē, Strong’s G3823) — wrestling, the grappling match in which each contender grips the other and the winner is the one who pins his opponent down. The New Testament uses this word exactly once, here, in Ephesians 6:12. Paul had siege vocabulary available, artillery-at-a-distance words; he chose close grappling. Spiritual warfare is not a distant spectacle in the clouds: it is close, personal, daily.

And where does that grip tighten? Paul answers in another letter:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,”

— 2 Corinthians 10:3–5 (ESV)

Watch Paul define his own terms. The “strongholds” (ὀχυρώματα, ochurōmata, Strong’s G3794 — another word the New Testament uses only here) are not castles in the air: they are arguments (λογισμούς, logismous, Strong’s G3053), reasonings, lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God. The primary battlefield of this war is the mind — what you believe about God, about yourself, about your situation. The lie is the enemy’s weapon of choice; that is why truth is the first piece of God’s armor, and why the daily combat looks less like an exorcism film and more like this: temptation that whispers, discouragement that settles in, accusation that replays your past, division that splits brothers. That is where the fighting happens. And there, God’s weapons have divine power.

What must the believer do? Stand firm

When Paul finally reaches the combat, he gives four commands in five verses, and all four are one posture: στῆναι (stēnai) — to stand (Ephesians 6:11); ἀντιστῆναι… στῆναι — to withstand… to stand (6:13); στῆτε — stand therefore (6:14). Not one verb of ascent, assault, or territorial advance. The ground was taken at the cross; Christ’s soldier is ordered not to yield it.

James gives the same instruction with an order that cannot be reversed:

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

— James 4:7 (ESV)

First submission to God; then resistance to the devil. The verb James uses (ἀνθίστημι, anthistēmi, Strong’s G436 — to take a stand against) is the verb of Ephesians 6:13 and the verb of Peter: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9, ESV). Three witnesses, one verb, one posture: firm, submitted to God, sober-minded and watchful — without panic, because the lion roars against those hidden in the Lion of Judah.

Ephesians itself brings this posture down to the kitchen table, commanding us to “give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27, ESV). The word is τόπος (topos) — place, ground. The enemy does not storm the believer’s life; he occupies the ground he is given, and Paul’s own example is as ordinary as anger kept warm overnight. And in Corinth, Paul fights this war with a weapon few preach: forgiveness — “so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Corinthians 2:11, ESV). A grudge is ceded ground; forgiveness takes it out of the enemy’s hands.

And the offensive weapons? Paul names the whole armor — truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation — and crowns it with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and with prayer (Ephesians 6:13–18). Every piece of that armor deserves its own study, and will have it in this series. And the praying life that carries the whole fight is something we have already walked through slowly in our guide “How to Start Praying” — if the war has found you without a praying life, begin there.

What about principalities over cities and nations?

The question comes quickly in any serious conversation on this subject: if there are powers with influence over regions and nations, should the believer address them by name to pull them down?

Look first at what the Bible does show. When Jesus ministered to people oppressed by spirits, he spoke to them directly and with authority, and they came out (Mark 9:25); Paul did the same at Philippi, in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 16:16–18). The seventy-two returned rejoicing that even the demons submitted, and the Lord confirmed the authority he had given them (Luke 10:17–19). All of that is real, and it is for the church today: delegated authority, in Jesus’ name, before a person present, in pastoral ministry and under prayer (Mark 9:29). That ministry belongs with a person — not on a web page; which is why you will find no procedures here.

But when Scripture opens the one window we have onto territorial conflict — Daniel 10 — the picture is different. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood the heavenly messenger twenty-one days, and Michael came to help him (Daniel 10:13). And Daniel? Daniel never knew, during those days, that the battle was happening; and he never once addressed the prince of Persia. His part was another:

“Then he said to me, ‘Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words.’”

— Daniel 10:12 (ESV)

Prayer and humbling before his God. Daniel’s words went up to the throne; heaven fought heaven’s war. And when Jude lets us watch the archangel Michael in dispute with the devil himself, the highest warrior in the created order “did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you’” (Jude 9, ESV). If Michael defers judgment to the Lord, the believer’s safe ground is the same: Scripture’s own word — “The Lord rebuke you” — and not a judgment pronounced in one’s own name.

Does that leave the church a spectator before the powers? Not at all. The church’s very existence proclaims the manifold wisdom of God “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10). And when God’s people come together — congregations, prayer groups, corporate altars — higher levels of this war are engaged together: so prayed the gathered church of Acts 4, with one voice and toward the throne, and the place where they met was shaken (Acts 4:24–31); so Jehoshaphat fasted with all Judah before the LORD, and God himself fought the battle (2 Chronicles 20). Together, and toward the throne: that is the direction of corporate combat everywhere in Scripture.

That is why these pages will hand you no formulas for “pulling down” principalities by name, no technique lists, no maps of demonic hierarchy. Not because the conflict is not real — it is — but because the posture Scripture prescribes is another: submit to God, resist the devil, stand firm, and stay — alone and together — before the throne in prayer, letting the enthroned King fight heaven’s battles.

The greater joy

When the seventy-two returned amazed at their authority over the spirits, Jesus corrected them tenderly, and that correction is the seal on this whole study:

“Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

— Luke 10:20 (ESV)

The center of the Christian life is not the devil defeated; it is the Father reached. A faith that orbits the war ends up watching the enemy more than the King — and that, too, is ceded ground. The war is real, but the war is not the story: the story is the cross where the powers were disarmed (Colossians 2:15), the throne where Christ sits above them (Ephesians 1:20–21), and a name — yours, if you are in Christ — written in heaven.

If you do not yet know this enthroned Christ, that is the first battle, and it is not yours to fight: he already fought it. We invite you to take the first step at Know Him. And if you are in the middle of a struggle today and want us to pray with you, write to us at ask for prayer: it would be an honor to stand with you, toward the throne.

You can pray right now, in your own words or with these: Lord Jesus: you triumphed at the cross over every rule and authority. Today I submit to God, I resist the devil, and I take the place you gave me — seated with you, standing firm, unafraid. Keep me in your victory. Amen.

Further study: Ephesians 6:10–18, ESV — Bible Gateway · Ephesians 6:12 interlinear · πάλη G3823 lexicon · ἐπουράνιος G2032 lexicon · ὀχύρωμα G3794 lexicon · Ephesians 1:21 interlinear · 2 Corinthians 10:4 interlinear

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