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Spiritual Warfare Passage Analysis

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The spiritual warfare passage represents the church as facing intense attack by the devil and his powers of evil. Paul uses an extended metaphor of a soldier who puts on the appropriate pieces of amour to heighten this image. In this case the solider puts on a belt, a breastplate, footgear, a shield and a helmet, and then takes up a sword. Arnold says that “the main point of this imagery is that Christianity should be understood as warfare and believers should prepare for this warfare just as any soldier would prepare for battle.”
- Survey of Passage and Context
Ancient thinkers often portrayed life or their work as a battle; in a world where virtually everyone knew about warfare, the image carried great weight. Paul draws on the particular …show more content…

In some parts of the world, Christians continue to visit other traditional religious practitioners because their new faith seems to lack power to confront the problems that their old faith addressed. Elsewhere, however, local Christians reading the Bible have recognized that God’s power is greater than that of its putative competitors and have learned to pray to God for their various needs.
- Concluding Comment
Our task is defensive, not offensive descried in Ephesians. We do not defeat Satan, but Christ. Our duty as outlined in Ephesians is to resist Satan, not to remove him. In spiritual warfare the battle is the Lord’s. At times, God simply commands His people to “stand still” and watch the Lord win the battle, without any human help. Here we wage the spiritual war, not in terms of grand battles and heroic actions, but in terms of simple faith as in the teachings of Paul in chapters 1-3 and in terms of our obedience to the commands of Paul as in chapters 4-6. …show more content…

God gives us all of the armor we need to defend ourselves. We are to have them on and be holding them and using them in spiritual warfare. It is our responsibility to have the armor of God on in order to be ready for attack. These weapons are more defensive weapons than offensive. The image provided by Paul shows a defensive position. It involves recognizing the separation of temptation and being prepared to face it.
In summary, there are two aspects in spiritual warfare which are the offensive and defensive ones. For the offensive part, demons are being casted out as shown in the passages in Mark and Acts. The deliverance ministry in the church practice this aspect. For all Christian, we should have the defensive aspect which is to put on the armour provides to us by God to defend ourselves against Satan.
Spiritual warfare is a war which must be waged by faith. It is a war that we need the strength and protection which God provides as in Ephesians 6. It is not a war to see which side will sin. As shown in Mark 5 and Acts 16. God always wins in spiritual

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