Spiritual Warfare: What This Church Actually Teaches

The church is on a spiritual battleground — and the fight is won not by charging the enemy, but by drawing near to Christ.

You Are in a War, Whether You Feel It or Not

One of the most dangerous tendencies a Christian can have is forgetting there is a fight. As one pastor put it: 'I still have these very annoying blind spots, these very annoying tendencies. And one of those tendencies is to forget that I have an enemy who's trying to hurt me, to forget that I'm actually in a fight.' ^[1] Weddings, babies, potlucks, Bible studies, seemingly normal Sundays — all of it can quietly convince you that the church is living in peacetime. It isn't. ^[1]

The Scriptures are clear that this is not a recent development. 'All people are by nature living under the power of Satan' — and even those raised by the power of God 'continue to live in mortal bodies in a creation subject to futility, opposed by the world, the flesh, and the devil.' ^[SF] The whole of 1 John was written to a little church 'under attack — not simply by their own sin, but by the world, the flesh, and the devil. And he was trying to mess with the object of their faith and their expectations about the outcome of their faith.' ^[5] That is what he does in every Christian life and in every church. ^[5]

Three Enemies, One Battlefield

Classical Christian theology has always named three enemies of the gospel: 'the world, the flesh, and the devil.' ^[10] These three are not merely metaphors. They are distinct, coordinated threats — and the Bible treats them that way. The enemy without is the devil. The enemy within is the flesh. And the world is the cultural atmosphere that reinforces both. ^[10]

The devil, specifically, works as an accuser, a deceiver, and a strategist. In John 8:44, Jesus identifies him as one who 'does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies.' ^[9] His strategies are not random — they are studied. He finds people 'when they're weary and tired,' pivots that weariness into despair, offers an easier alternative that 'seems to hold out promise,' and convinces them that suffering is unnecessary. ^[8] He wants to 'lull us asleep,' 'lull us into prayerlessness,' and 'cut us off from the supply lines.' ^[11] Good desires can even become openings — 'your desires for good things can still lead you to make bad decisions,' and 'create like an opening for the world, the flesh, and the devil to lead you down other trails.' ^[6]

The Main Job Is to Stand — Not to Charge

Here is where a great deal of popular teaching on spiritual warfare goes sideways. There is a version of this doctrine that pictures the Christian on offense — hunting demons, cataloguing spiritual genealogies, staging dramatic confrontations. The Bible does not teach that. 'We're not charging hell with a water pistol. We're not looking for Satan. Satan's looking for us. And what we're supposed to do in the Bible is simply stand firm, resist, hold out.' ^[2]

Almost every New Testament passage on spiritual warfare makes the same move: resist. James 4:7 — 'resist the devil.' 1 Peter 5:8 — 'resist him firm in your faith.' Ephesians 6:10 — 'be strong in the Lord, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.' ^[2] The pattern is not assault — it is endurance. It is holding ground. The Statement of Faith frames this same way: 'fixing our eyes on Jesus, we endure in faith and abound in hope.' ^[SF]

This does not mean the fight is easy. 'You have insufficient power to fight off spiritual warfare.' ^[2] The disciples found this out when they tried to cast out a demon and couldn't — and Jesus told them, 'These kind only come out through prayer and fasting.' ^[2] You don't have what it takes on your own. That's the point. That's why the call is not to muster more willpower, but to attach yourself more firmly to spiritual power.

Christ Has Already Won — and That Is the Whole Story

Before there was an atonement theory, before the church had worked out all its soteriology, there was a promise. Genesis 3:15 — 'the very first gospel promise. And that is not a promise that is explicitly about saving anyone's soul. It's explicitly about crushing a snake. The first gospel promise is actually just Jesus's victory over Satan.' ^[6] The Christus Victor theme runs from that first word in the garden all the way to the book of Revelation.

The cross was a battlefield. 'The Bible does in fact depict the cross as a battlefield where Christ's obedience undoes Satan's claim over humanity.' ^[7] When Adam and Eve ate with the serpent in Genesis 3, it carried 'this sense of almost like a dark evil Lord's table with Satan presiding over it and they're participating in his covenant of death.' ^[7] Christ's death and resurrection reverse that — and the Statement of Faith declares it plainly: 'raised by the power of God, Christ triumphed over sin, death, and Satan, and as the exalted Lord he empowers his people to be victorious over sin and Satan.' ^[SF] That victory is already secured. The war is won. The fighting we do now is not to achieve that outcome — it is to hold the ground of what Christ has already accomplished.

How the Fight Is Actually Fought

Strip away everything exotic about spiritual warfare, and here is the bottom line: 'Fundamentally, spiritual warfare is fought in this way. You draw near to Jesus Christ. That's it. That's it. That's how we fight. We draw near to Jesus Christ. The rest is just details.' ^[4] Pray without ceasing. Read the Scripture regularly. Meditate on the Scripture. Draw near to God's people. Confess your sin frequently. All of it is just the detail work of that one main thing. ^[4] James 4:7-8 says it simply: 'Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.' ^[4]

Prayer is not incidental to this. 'Consistent, devoted prayer is a matter of being prepared for battle. There's a real enemy and he wants to defeat us. He wants to thwart us.' ^[11] If he cannot tempt you to sin directly, he will 'overwhelm us with busyness, overwhelm us with a thousand pursuits that push prayer to the margins' — because that cuts you off from the supply lines just as effectively. ^[11] What fills that space is not neutral.

Beyond prayer, there are practical disciplines that build the kind of fortitude spiritual warfare requires: 'devotion, spending time with God on a regular basis'; 'gratitude — keeping a thankful heart'; taking care of yourself physically; 'fellowship with other believers'; 'thinking of others, loving others, looking to others' interests'; and 'making and keeping promises and commitments' — because integrity builds 'a bank of joy' and 'emotional fortitude, character fortitude' that holds up under pressure. ^[3] These are not self-help tactics. They are the ordinary means by which you stay close to the one who already won.

Assurance Does Not Remove the Fight — It Sustains You Through It

One of the devil's most effective strategies is to attack the object of your faith — to make you doubt whether any of this is real, whether it will hold, whether the outcome is actually secure. ^[1][5] That is exactly why the assurances of Scripture matter so much in the middle of the war. The Word of God 'assures us that we are his beloved children' ^[SF] — and that assurance is a weapon. It is what you return to when the enemy is working on your expectations.

But hear the full statement: 'such assurance does not remove the reality of suffering, sorrow, and persecution in this present age.' ^[SF] Spiritual warfare is real, the enemy is real, and the suffering is real. The hope is not that you will be removed from the fight — it is that 'a day is fast approaching when sin and sorrow will be no more.' ^[SF] You endure because the outcome is fixed. You stand firm because Christ is already seated at the right hand of the Father, and Psalm 110 says his enemies are already becoming his footstool. ^[4] The fight is real. The victory is certain. And those two things are both true at the same time.

This page synthesizes what Chris Oswald has preached on spiritual warfare at Providence Community Church. Every claim above traces to the cited sermons — follow any citation to read the full sermon, listen to the audio, and see the surrounding context. Minute marks are approximate, estimated from each sermon's transcript.