The Truth about Spiritual Warfare

How do Christians faithfully engage in spiritual battles? An increasing number of Christians in America are turning to a “logic of domination,” but pastor & author Malcolm Foley reminds us that looking to Jesus’ suffering on the cross and victory in the Resurrection correctly positions our spiritual battles.

This excerpt comes from An Afternoon with the Holy Post at the Exiles in Babylon Conference 2025. The whole conversation between Kaitlyn Schiess, Malcolm Foley, and Latasha Morrison is now available to watch on Holy Post Plus (holypost.com/plus).

Malcolm: How do we engage in spiritual battle? Is that what you're asking?

Kaitlyn: Yeah. Defeat the devil for us, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Well see, the good news is that Jesus already did it.

Kaitlyn: I knew you were gonna say that!

Malcolm: In the garden of Gethsemane, something that has struck me is that Jesus goes to prayer knowing what's about to happen. Satan and all of the forces of evil are about to marshal everything that they have against him. So, one of the things that blows my mind the most about the Incarnation is that suffering and death were not a part of God's experience, yet he not only makes himself subject to them, but he actually endures them. When I think about myself, if there are things that I don't have to suffer, I'm not going to do it. I don't want it. And so, Jesus is on his face before the Lord because he is about to experience something that he has never experienced before and that is so profoundly contrary to everything that he is and everything that he's ever known. And yet he comes out of that with sweat and blood and stress, but also “not my will but yours be done.”

That is, “I love these people and I want to share everything that I have with these people. I'm going to do whatever it takes to do that.” And then he goes to the cross and he faces all of those forces, and they exhaust themselves on him, and he dies, and he still wins. The fact that he gets up is a declaration of victory over all of those things.

We have to be reminded that he won at the cross. Thus, these powers and principalities are powerless, but they want to convince us that they still have all this power. They want to convince us in this intervening time that they can still win. Which is to say that the battle that the powers and principalities are fighting with us is a war of attrition. They win when we lose our vigilance.

In the way that spiritual warfare is framed in Ephesians six, when we're told that we're not up against flesh and blood but against the powers and principalities, and then we're given the armor of God, it's really interesting that our role is not to advance, but our role is to stand. It's really interesting that the way that battle is framed throughout the scriptures is not the people fighting, it's God fighting for his people, and when the people fail, it's when they fight for themselves. That's failure.

Similarly, if we were to devote our entire lives to building the Seven Mountains Mandate, which is to claim that because Jesus won we ought to be ruling these seven spheres of influence in partnership with him, we give ourselves to the logic of Babylon, which is the logic of domination. It tells you that the only way for you to win is for you to be in charge. And this was the people's issue in first Samuel eight when the people asked the Lord for a king. They said, “We want a king like everybody else, we want an army like everybody else; we see that going on everywhere around us and we want that too.” And God lets them have it, but we're told in Hosea that he gives them a king out of anger because what they have done is they have rejected the rule of God. They've rejected their mission, which is to be a people who are ruled by God in the midst of the kingdoms of the world. A people who bear witness to the fact that life doesn't have to look the way the world tells you that life has to look. Our day-to-day interactions don't have to be ruled by domination and exploitation, but there’s another way of living.

And so, if there is one thing that the powers and principalities want to convince us of, it’s that the only way to win is to use their tools. And in the gospel as Christ enacts the greatest victory of all time in the resurrection, he does so by dying.

And he calls to his people, saying, “If you want to be united to me, be baptized into my death, so that you can be raised in my resurrection.” And the only way that that can get deep into the souls of people is if the stakes of the battle are narrated in the way that they actually are.

I was telling my church about this this past Sunday, that you have the beasts in Revelation, and some people think that you can tame this beast. I told these people that the beast from the sea in Revelation 13 is the demonically empowered state with all of its military and economic might, and it's backed up by a propaganda machine. This is just the way that empires work. And when you understand that and see America as one of these beasts, you understand that beasts do beasty things and they'll continue to do beasty things. So, yes, whatever political power I have, I'm going to marshal for the benefit of those who are powerless and needy, but I also want to understand that any victories that I might win in that space are going to be proximate and likely short-lived, because beasts are gonna do beasty things. But until Jesus returns, in the midst of it we are supposed to build communities where the beast does not have power. Because Christ is there. Because Christ rules in those spaces.

And then that is not a judgment on the world, but it's an invitation to it. It's an invitation to them to see, “look, there's another way of living.” And it's going to be hard because you're going to be told that the way the world works is all these other ways. That’s why we have to constantly be reminded by the Word that Christ has won and that’s why we are supposed to be communities that consistently bear witness to the fact that Christ has won.