The Other Side of Spiritual Warfare

There is much discussion in sermons and books on the subject of spiritual warfare. When the phrase is used the first things that come to mind are the devil and demons sneaking around doing bad things to us, or maybe motivating non-Christians to mistreat us, or maybe even orchestrating tragic circumstances. While all these may be a huge part of spiritual warfare there are two other sides of the spiritual warfare cube that are not talked about much, but we must understand if we're going to persevere and win the battles we will most certainly face as we do God's work.

The first "Other Side" I want to address is the side where "Christians" are used by the enemy. Christians that are well-meaning, but very misguided.

We don't hear to often about this, but the reality is that Christians can oppose us. Fellow Christians can be the tool of the enemy against us. We see this exemplified in the book of Acts where the circumcised brothers (Christians) were coming against the Apostle Paul and his ministry to the uncircumcised brothers (Christians).

Not only did they not like that Paul was reaching out to them with the Gospel, but once that ministry was accepted and approved, the circumcised believers had the expectation that these new uncircumcised believers would get circumcised and when Paul taught against it, these circumcised believers got all nasty with Paul.

We see Paul teaching us in 2Timothy (in Vs 10 & 14 we see that Paul is writing about Christians) 22Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 23Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Note Vs 26 "the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will."