Spiritual Warfare 101Sýnishorn

How Warfare Works

Every great military commander knows that warfare is deception. Misleading your enemy is of crucial importance to winning battles. During World War II, both sides went to great lengths to deceive their opponents. Before the famous D-Day invasion, the Allies went so far as to create a fictional army supposedly commanded by their most famous commander, George Patton.

Even God keeps the devil guessing what His next step will be in the war of redemption in which we are still enmeshed. The demons could not figure out why Jesus was on earth in human form. They asked Him, “Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matt. 8:29 esv). Paul wrote, “If they had [known], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8), which implies that even the kingdom of darkness might have employed a different strategy if they had known what God was really up to.

At the heart of spiritual warfare, there is also deception. Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44), who masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) to deceive us in order to enslave us. Just like a hunter uses bait to deceive his prey into entering a trap, so the devil seduces, intimidates, and misleads us in the hope that we will fall into one of his traps.