6:11
There is a battle to be fought, living a faithful Christian life is difficult. So what are we to do? Hunker down and lie low? No way. We are to put on the full armour of God, we are to prepare to do battle. And who are we to do battle against? It is not against flesh and blood, but against the devil and his schemes. When we look at what has gone before, and when we look at what is coming up, we see that this battle is very down to earth. We think of the spiritual or supernatural and the material worlds as being poles apart. This is an unbiblical perspective and can lead to one of two errors. One is to go all “other worldly” and go into unreality. The other is to ignore the spiritual dimension altogether. Both of these approaches are unbiblical.
6:12
Right back in early chapter one we read about the “spiritual realms” or the “heavenly places”, and I said that this is the place of spiritual conflict, and we find that this verse says that is indeed so. For we are to take our stand against the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. We should also remember from chapter 1 that we have been given every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly realms. If we see “flesh and blood” as the real enemy we will be taking aim at the wrong target. At the same time we should look at all Bible teaching, and all of Paul’s teaching. This does not mean ignoring the human dimension, but that we take a holistic view of things, both the human and the spiritual dimensions.
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