It was one of those days where I needed every minute to go as planned. So, of course, the dog escaped from the yard and went missing. Two frantic hours later, she was safely behind the fence. I, on the other hand, was nursing a wrenched shoulder and a broken phone screen from the fall I took while trying to track her down.
In my head, I replayed the kind words of a woman who had emailed me earlier that week: “How can I pray for you? I’m sure someone like you is a target of the Enemy on a regular basis.”
Someone like me. I admit that as I lay on the sidewalk, clutching my smashed phone and staring up at the tree branches, the phrase “not today, Satan” had drifted through my mind. Was this an attack of the Enemy?
In recent years, I’ve noticed more Christians bringing up the work of the Enemy in conversation. Usually, it goes something like this:
The Enemy wants to keep you from doing the will of God.
The Enemy doesn’t want you to walk in abundance.
The Enemy wants to take you down. Stand firm!
When we instinctually evoke the Enemy, we convey that each moment and momentary struggle falls within a great cosmic battle against an unseen adversary in the spiritual realm.
Such battles sound stirring and epic. They sound far more exciting than the daily slog to subdue my need for approval or deny my own evil desires. Because of this, we may be too eager to attribute to Satan what might be more accurately attributable to our sinful nature or our broken world.
To be sure, the Bible tells us that the spiritual realm is real and that our adversary the Devil prowls around seeking someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8). But Scripture doesn’t name just one enemy but three: the Devil, the world, and the flesh (1 John 2:15–1, Eph. 2:1–3).
In the battle for holiness, all three members of this unholy trinity deserve our attention. If we devote our focus to only one, we will almost certainly unwittingly succumb to the others.
And emphasis matters. Christians always want to read and apply Scripture preserving the emphases it establishes. Which of these three combatants does the Bible mention most often?
The New Testament Epistles mention attacks of “Satan,” “the devil,” “the evil one,” and “the enemy” several times, but worldliness, fleshly desires, and sins of the flesh show up everywhere—expounded in lists, contrasted to godliness, warned against constantly.
Scripture positions the world as our enemy when we desire to make this world our home—when we long to store up treasures here, indulge in pleasure here, seek human approval here—instead of embracing the delayed gratification of a heavenly reward. It is the temptation to blend in or to shine gloriously here on earth.
The idea of the flesh as our enemy includes any desire to simply indulge what feels good to us, with no reference to how that indulgence might impact our neighbors or subvert our worship of God. Some of its most common expressions in the Bible are sexual immorality, greed, envy, jealousy, gluttony, malice, gossip, and slander.
In one sense, these three enemies are interrelated. All temptation finds its origin story in the first lie of the Serpent in the Garden. The Bible does say that Satan can tempt us to sin and persecute the church. Yet prayer requests around being “under attack” often involve normal frustrations, rather than temptations or true persecution like the kind depicted in Acts or Revelation.
Nearly any inconvenient circumstance—a flat tire, canceled flight, strained muscle, fraud alert from the bank—can send us into speculation that Satan himself is trying to derail our day. Insofar as these occurrences can tempt us to sin, perhaps he is.
Interestingly, when life moves smoothly without disruption, we do not perceive ourselves to be under attack. We tend to think (despite Scripture clearly indicating otherwise) that a life without frustration indicates being in God’s will. But perhaps nothing poses a greater temptation to self-reliance and self-righteousness than a life free of challenge and filled with markers of success. Such a life is its own potent form of seduction.
There is a saying: “Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.” It means that we have a tendency to assume far more organization underlies any given threat or danger than is actually the case.
Given the New Testament’s relative emphasis on fleshly and worldly sources of temptation rather than supernatural ones, we might do well to embrace the wisdom of never attributing to Satan what can be attributed to our own fears, sins of omission, or just normal symptoms of life in a broken world.
Is Satan keeping me from getting my work done, or is it my lack of self-control? Is Satan sabotaging my marriage, or is it my selfishness? Is Satan stirring dissent in my church, or is Larry just kind of a jerk in member meetings? Am I under spiritual attack, or is this just the normal frustrations of life pressing on my own sinful tendencies?
It’s possible that a demonic presence is following me around, tempting me to worldliness or fleshly indulgence, or it may simply be, as James notes, that I am “dragged away by [my] own evil desire and enticed” (1:14).
Be careful not to bear false witness against the Devil. Because he would love that. He loves misattribution. He would love to hear us remember to pray against his schemes and forget to renounce worldliness or confess our sins. He would love to hear us pray a formula to bind the Enemy in Jesus’ name and dismiss the matter at hand with no thought for pursuing personal holiness.
Be careful to remember that the Devil is only one of three enemies to keep in view and that he’s not even close to being the headliner in the New Testament. Based on the relatively small emphasis he receives, it seems fair to conclude that the cross of Christ has, in fact, delivered on its promise to neutralize much of the spiritual threat he poses to the believer in everyday life.
For centuries, Christians recognized the power of the Cross and the impotence of Satan in their catechesis. In its very first question, the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 taught the Christian to recite, “He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.”
Do I believe today, as my spiritual forebears did, that I have been set free from the tyranny of the Devil? Because if I do, I will pull myself up off the pavement, dust the shards of glass off my phone screen, confess that bad word I said, acknowledge that I could have managed my schedule less tightly, and ask for patience to move through the rest of my day. I will take responsibility for my own role in a day gone sideways.
The daily slog toward holiness may not be as cinematic as an epic spiritual battle, but it is undeniably effective at its slow, transforming work.
I responded to that woman’s kind email with all the honesty I could muster: My enemy is me right now. And yes, I would covet your prayers. Next week, my enemy may be worldly approval or even spiritual attack. But more often than not, it’s just me getting in my own way, needing afresh the daily bread of God’s grace.
The world is our enemy because it offers us a false promise of the good life. The flesh is our enemy because we still succumb to its sinful habits, even as we are growing in our sanctification. The Devil is our enemy because the lie of self-rule is still as appealing as it was in the Garden. But we are those who have received Good News.
The Good News is that this world is passing away and Christ has overcome it. The good news is that our sinful desires can be put to death daily by the power of the Spirit (Col. 3:5). And the good news is that the Devil, already defeated at the Cross, flees when we simply resist. No epic battle required. Never underestimate daily faithfulness in small things.
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