Spiritual Warfare and the Side of the Blessed Angels
“Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
We are living through an era of mounting conflict. The rhetoric, if you listen to either the left-leaning or right-leaning pundits, is almost identical. The other side wants to destroy freedom. They want to take away your rights. They are corrupt. They are liars. Each side’s evidence is different, carefully curated to make their point, but the message is the same. Those on the other side are evil.
Of course, forces of good and evil exist in the world, and they are waging a battle for every soul on the planet. But whose “side” they are on, in any given conflict, is often very difficult to discern. We invariably assume that whatever side we are on, it is the side of the blessed angels. Our opponents are thus necessarily in a pact with demonic powers set against God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all that is wholesome in the world. But is that scriptural? Is that “the truth that is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21)?
I was reflecting recently on the prophet Elisha. He lived in a time when one should have been able to pick out which earthly communities were “on the Lord’s side.” One side was God’s chosen nation that was rescued from slavery and given the promised land. The other sides were nations who worshiped false gods, like Baal, and waged war on God’s people. Easy, right?
And yet Elisha, like Paul, was “a minister … to the Gentiles” (Rom 15:16), the enemies of Israel. Through Elisha, God blessed Naaman, who led the armies of Aram that subjugated Israel, who captured and enslaved Israel’s people. When Naaman submitted to the Word of God through Elisha, he was healed of leprosy and became a follower of the God of Israel, while still commander of Aram (2 Ki 5:1-19). That should encourage all of us. If God were willing to heal and bring to faith that guy because God “so loved the world” (Jn 3:16), then He so loves us too. He is willing to heal us as we submit to Him.
And yet, after Naaman was healed, the armies of Aram, of whom Naaman was commander, continued harassing the people of God. In the next chapter we read, “The king of Aram was at war with Israel” (2 Ki 6:8). God’s people were still under attack again by a King who worshiped in the “temple of Rimmon” where Baal reigned. Though God converted the commander of Aram’s armies, Baal and his servants—demonic spirits and those they control—still had power to harass, even oppress the people of God.
And God still worked to save. God spoke to Elisha, and he “sent word to the king of Israel…. Time and again Elisha warned the king, so that he was on his guard” (2 Ki 6:9-10). That is what the Holy Spirit does in the life of a believer. God sends word, through relationships with other believers, through circumstances, sometimes directly, to warn us against traps laid for us by the enemy of our souls.
In this case, the King of Israel submitted to the Word of God. Elisha listened to God, and the king listened to Elisha. That made Elisha a threat to the forces harassing God’s people. And those forces attacked him. The same is true for us. When you begin to “hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law,” if you “turn unto the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul” (Deut 30:10 KJV), you will come under attack. And sometimes that attack will seem overwhelming.
The King of Aram “sent horses and chariots and a strong force” to Dothan where Elisha was staying. “They went by night and surrounded the city.” There was no escape. And when Elisha’s servant “got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. ‘Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?’ the servant asked” (2 Ki 6:15). The servant was naturally terrified, because he wasn’t seeing spiritually, with eyes of faith.
“‘Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them’” (2 Ki 6:16). What are you talking about, Elisha? There is no one here but enemies. This battle is impossible to win and it never seems to end. There is no way for us to have victory, not in this circumstance, not in this life. “And Elisha prayed, ‘Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Ki 6:17). He saw the army of God arrayed for him.
From the world’s perspective, this seemingly endless war between Aram and Israel was a simple geo-political conflict, like those that have gone on since the dawn of nations and kings. But there was more going on in the invisible realm than simply competing national interests to be chronicled and analyzed in secular history books. In fact, all battles that believers face, big and small, including those conflicts that rage among us in our governments and churches, have a spiritual component.
Whenever we face temptation of any kind, invisible maneuvers are going on in the spiritual realm beyond that extra cookie that looks so enticing, or that withering online response that will feel so satisfying. I am not trying to trivialize this; in fact, the opposite. As believers, we are in a spiritual battle every day of our lives. Forces are arrayed both against us and for us.
That does not mean that the “side” of the blessed angels is easily discerned in our earthly battles, at least not those on the big stages of domestic or international or ecclesial politics. God loved the King of Israel and Naaman. He loved Aram and Israel. He loves Russia and Ukraine. He loves Democrats and Republicans. He loves United Methodists and Global Methodists and every other kind of Methodist.
Joshua 5 describes the story of God’s people, having just entered the land that God promised to them. To prepare themselves to approach the fortified city of Jericho, whose walls will collapse in the very next chapter, Joshua and all the men of Israel set themselves apart through circumcision. This was no minor praying the sinner’s prayer, mind you, or even getting baptized. And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you” (Josh 5:9). God’s people were forgiven for their idolatry, made new and clean before God. God had rescued them, sustained them in the desert, promised them land, and miraculously brought them into it. Now he claimed them as holy.
And yet, as “Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come’” (Josh 5:13-14). The commander of the army of the Lord (who is quite possibly the pre-incarnate Christ, the Word of God, who will one day be born in a manger in Bethlehem) is not for or against, either His own Holy consecrated people or their enemies. But He has come.
There is a spiritual component to all our battles, but here is the hard truth. God is for his servants, his children, and his enemies. He and His host fight for the abundant life of all creation, all His creatures. He fights for those who are in the moment fighting against Him. He even fights for us when we, for a “good cause,” give in to forces that bring death and align ourselves with His enemies by succumbing to gossip, wrath, arrogance, or deception.
Demons and angels fight for and against individuals on all sides of any conflict. Demonic spirits fight to sow chaos and malevolence and destroy the souls of as many as possible through anger and hate, lust and pride, greed and vanity. Blessed angels fight to convict, convert, save, and redeem all who are tempted away from love of God and neighbor, and love of enemy. If believers, in our zeal for a cause or nation or denomination, fall into pride or vanity or wrath, no matter how justified or righteous we feel, we are on the side of Baal.
Joshua’s response was exactly right. When he encountered the Lord’s commander, “Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and he said to him, ‘What do you command your servant, my lord?’” (Josh 5:14). As the King of Israel submitted to God’s Word through Elisha, Joshua submitted himself to the will of God in that moment. He didn’t submit himself to a cause or a nation or a people or a party. He submitted to the one who leads the armies of heaven.
God is not for us because we belong to a group or support a cause. He is not for us because we have membership in a particular denomination or “gave our lives to him” at some point in the past. God is for us when we yield to the commander of the hosts of heaven. He is ready to fight for us, in the midst of any trial or temptation, in the midst of any confusing earthly conflict nationally, internationally, or ecclesially. But we must listen to the Word of God and do what He tells us, taking up the weapons He commanded us to take up, and only those. He commanded, “deny yourselves and take up your cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23).
To do that takes faith, “the eyes of your heart … enlightened” (Eph 1:18), and holding on to the “assurance about what we do not see” (Heb 11:1). Without it, we battle “against flesh and blood” (Eph 6:12) and join ourselves to the wrong side. “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Mt 26:52). With faith, no matter what is brought against us, no matter how great or impossible the battle seems, no matter how long it goes on, we are not victims. We are not alone. We will have victory for our souls. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
Elisha and his servant experienced victory that day. Aram’s armies were struck blind, captured, and brought to the king of Israel. Verse 6:23 reads, “So the bands from Aram stopped raiding Israel’s territory.” But as dramatic as that deliverance was, it was temporary. Verse 6:24 (the very next verse!) reads, “Sometime later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria,” the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel.
A victory was won, but the war was not over. That is the reality of this spiritual battle, day by day. The Baals of this world are warring against God’s purposes. Spiritual dangers surround us, confusion or conflict rage on. They will continue to do so “until He comes in final victory.” But no matter what we endure in our earthly battles, “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword,” trial by trial, battle by battle, conflict by conflict, “in all these things we are more than conquerors,” but only “through him who loved us” (Rom 8:37).
The battle will not be easy, nor the “sides” easily discerned. There is fog in war. But as we face enemies of righteousness in the world and in ourselves, moment by moment, by faith we know the commander of the army of the Lord has come. And, as Paul reminds, “If God is for us, who can be against us” (Ro 8:31)? When we join His side, hear and submit to Him, loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us (Mt 5:44), He is available to warn and protect, and save us from the enemies of our souls: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.
He can bring victory even when submission to Him looks like defeat. The greatest spiritual battle to date, the beginning of the end of all conflict, all confusion, and chaos, saw its opening shots fired in a desert. The battle then continued in a garden, on a hill, and in hell itself. To the world its outcome looked like a loss. But on the third day, there was victory, the victory of resurrection and abundant life through the cross. That victory, invisible to the world, is present. The “commander of the army of the Lord” has “now come.”
When we hear and submit to Him, we are on the side of the blessed angels. We can’t lose, for “those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
Scott Kisker is Professor of the History of Christianity at United Theological Seminary.