“We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world and spiritual agents

from the very headquarters of evil.”

(Ephesians 6:12 — Phillips)

Some of the most dangerous enemies of our country are secret agents who operate within the boundaries of our nation. Though unseen and unknown by the general public these secret service men and women of alien powers are actually here among us and constantly at work plotting and planning the undermining of our national strength, the overthrow of our free democratic way of life.

What do we do to meet this undercover threat to our national safety and personal security and well being? Do we organize in every city and town a larger police force? Do we station at every street corner a soldier from our standing army to stand sentinel duty 24 hours of every day? No. That would be no protection at all against our unseen, secret foes. What do we do? Why, the F. B. I. has organized a powerful counter-spy system, which also operates behind the scenes, out of sight, secretly, quietly, yet effectively restraining and destroying the evil of this sinister secret power that threatens us.

St. Paul and the early Christians were this much like the F. B. I.; they knew that some of the most deadly enemies of mankind were unseen, spiritual agents. To his recently converted friends at Ephesus, Paul wrote: “I expect that you have learned by now that our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.” (Phillips) “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Now when the Apostle Paul talks like this there are many folks who won’t follow him. “Just another example,” they say, “of the superstition of that pre-scientific age. Demonology, pure and simple. Sounds like some of that stuff the Salem witch trials were made of. I believe Paul was a good man and sincere and even inspired, but undoubtedly he was influenced by the superstitions of that primitive age. Everyone believed then that the universe was peopled with spirits, unseen powers, malevolent as well as benevolent. What we know to be the orderly working out of natural laws, those primitive minds attributed to the influence of spirits, unseen secret agents. No, I can’t follow Paul in his demonology and his belief in this business of our striving against ‘principalities, powers, and the special agents from the very headquarters of evil.’”

But whether the mature modern mind will accommodate itself to the Pauline figures of speech or not, surely even the most sophisticated sons of this scientific age will understand the deep truth underlying Paul’s phraseology. Whether we call it our peculiar personal temptations, or our past evil habits, or the lusts of the flesh, or the sexier side of our dispositions, or negative emotions, or sin, or Satan himself — whatever we call it — this much is surely clear to us all: there is an unseen, secret, active evil force at work within us and about us all the time. We’ve had our encounters. We realize the reality of the inner struggle.

And I, for one, have yet to see or hear a better way to describe this known reality in my own experiences than just as St. Paul does when he says to the Ephesian Christians that what we are up against are the secret spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil — or when he says to the Corinthian Christians that “our campaign is not in the visible sphere, nor are our weapons things we can handle: we fight to cast down imaginations, to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

This has been my personal experience. I’ve encountered wily, unscrupulous antagonists of my own better self, always listening in on my secret business, my hidden motives, my undercover activities, and doing all in their cunning, perverted power to wreck and ruin that better side of my soul that wants to be.

Dr. James Moffatt once wrote that: “as life goes on this truth is borne in upon us, namely that we are surrounded by strange hidden forces, harassed by unseen foes; that the more deliberately we try to live with a high aim in view the more surely we are battered and assaulted. The more we realize we are even now fellow citizens with the saints of the household of God, the more we find war and struggle to be our portion. The life that you and I have to live belongs only in part to this visible sphere. ‘The things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal.’ And as it is with the spiritual blessing, so is it with the spiritual forces that are against us.”

Yes, there are these secret, unseen agents from the very headquarters of evil always on the job. It would be the height of perverse folly on our part to say that just because we cannot see them they do not exist, and do nothing to protect ourselves from their ceaseless, destructive, undercover work.

But what can we do? St. Paul proposes counter-espionage. As there are special secret spiritual agents arrayed against us, so are there special agents of the soul for us. Call into action the whole hierarchy of heaven — the secret spiritual agents of light to rout the forces of darkness.

Here’s Paul’s advice in a word: “Be strong, my brethren, not in yourselves, but in the Lord, in the power of His boundless resource.” St. Paul was under no illusion about his ability to contend in his own strength alone with those secret sinister spiritual forces.

Suppose you receive one day in the mail a threatening letter. You are told to do thus and so — comply with the demands of some unseen evil power — buckle under, or encounter great personal harm to yourself or to your family — the sort of scenario we are always seeing on TV? What would we do if it happened to us? You don’t trust yourself to fight that unseen, threatening power alone. Why you don’t even know how to get hold of the invisible enemy. What do you do? Why, if you have a thimble full of brains you call in the F. B. I. and a counter-system of undercover men begin to operate. The unseen threatening power is hunted out, captured, and destroyed. You are saved.

A friend of mine in North Carolina once received through the mail such a threatening letter. It contained this message: “Put $3,000 in a manila envelope, and put the envelope with the money in it in the crotch of the lowest limb on the big gum tree in the vacant lot in front of your house by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning, or take the consequences. I can get at you or any member of your family to harm you in a hundred different ways.”

What was my friend to do? He had a large family. Some of them were young children. He had no idea as to the identity of this evil extortionist.

What did he do? Why, he took the letter to the local office of the F. B. I. They moved walkie-talkie equipment into his house. Under cover of darkness they stationed some of their agents, well hidden by shrubbery, in the vacant lot. At 9 o’clock sharp the next morning they sent my friend with the envelope containing the money to deposit it in the gum tree. All day long they waited. Nothing happened — until, just as darkness was falling, a shadowy figure of a man was seen stealthily creeping toward the gum tree. He raised a hand to seize the envelope and in the same instant four armed agents of the
F. B. I. closed in about him.

So is it also in the threatening and the defending of every human soul.

Did we in our own strength confide,

Cried Martin Luther,

Our striving would be losing.

 

For still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great,

And, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

 

Were not the right man on our side,

The man of God’s own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth His name,

From age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

In some old world gallery, says James Steward of Edinburgh, there hangs a famous painting which pictures the plight of harassed humanity caught in the toils of conniving evil. The figures on the canvas are Satan and Faust, playing at a game of chess. The stakes have been high. They play for Faust’s own soul. Move by move Faust has played into the Devil’s hand, and the painting shows that last crucial move in the game. Faust is checkmated, hopelessly checkmated, and a look of horrified helplessness covers his face, while on Satan’s evil countenance there is a look of crafty triumph and unholy glee.

For years the picture hung in the gallery and was viewed by all comers as a symbol of man’s hopelessness caught in the toils of an evil world. The wages of sin is death. Then one day there came a great master of the game of chess. He stood and studied the painting, especially the positions of the chess men remaining on the board. Suddenly he cried “It’s a lie! It’s a lie! The King and his knight have still another move!”

Hopelessly checkmated in the game of life by the sins of self and society, you and I are in despair before the spiritual forces of evil arrayed against us. We are lost and there is no apparent human way of escape or rescue for us. But there is another force outside the realm of simple human resources that can be counted upon. The King and his knight have still another move! “For God so loved a lost and unworthy world in which there was not loveliness, that He sent His own Son … While we were yet sinners Christ died for us … And Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame,” and on Calvary dealt the universal forces of evil a crippling, deadly blow. He broke the reigning power of sin. He led captivity captive. And He reigns forever as Lord of all spiritual powers above and below. And for us the way to safety and salvation from the secret unseen forces of evil arrayed against us, bent upon our doom, is not in reliance upon our own intelligent, cunning, and spiritual stamina, but on this powerful, benevolent, counter-espionage agent of Eternal God. “Be strong, not in yourselves, but in the Lord, and in the power of His boundless resource.”

Is there then nothing for us to do? Must we with folded hands wait for the Lord to crush the evil that assails our soul? No, that is not the will of God for His servants. “Put on the whole armor of God,” says St. Paul, “that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” It is God’s armor. He furnishes it. But we must put it on. We must willingly, eagerly take it. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, firmly standing in the gospel of peace, the helmet of salvation, the sword of God’s word, the shield of faith.

We are saved by God’s grace — His unmerited favor, freely given and operating by the power of His spirit in our lives. But there are certain “means of grace” furnished the Christian — definite channels, or instruments, through which God imparts His saving grace into our lives. These means of grace are commonly known as prayer, devotional reading and study of the scriptures, receiving the sacraments, coming to church for worship and fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, doing God’s will in our daily work. These are the means of grace, the channels through which God pours His powerful saving spiritual resources into our lives.

When the old Apostle urges us to put on the whole armor of God — he is counseling us to make use of those helps to the Christian life a merciful God has put all about us — so that His invincible spiritual power will encompass us and fortify our souls.

“The busiest of us can find a little time to lift up our hearts to God,” says William Gough, as he argues that the real saints are not the folks who manage things wonderfully well or perform miracles and are very different from you and me. Yet they are saints. Why? If you were to make a perfect world you would not make any more saints … Saints cannot be made perfect by things. The saints are the people who stand up as soldiers. I do not believe in any other kind of saints but the soldier saints, who put on the whole armor of God and amid the distractions, disappointments, and defeats of life stand up as soldiers, courageous and faithful in their constant use of the means of God’s grace.

When imprisoned in Konigsberg castle, General Giraud spent a whole year patiently weaving from scraps of string a rope 150 feet long to make his daring escape over the wall and down the steep cliff to safety and freedom and home to France.

It is by the patient, persistent practice of prayer, by daily and weekly faithfulness in use of the means of God’s grace that a way of escape is opened up to us from those unseen adversaries of the soul. To those who patiently, faithfully put on the whole armor of God — to these He gives the victory.