What Is Spiritual Warfare?

What is Spiritual Warfare?

Spiritual warfare is the movement of conflict between our bodies, our flesh desires, that is to say our old nature that inhabits our bodies, and the new nature that we have received in the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit that we have accepted inside us does not agree with the desires of the flesh, which is, the sin that dwells in us. The new nature resists the works of the flesh, at the same time the old nature does not want us to obey the voice of the Holy Spirt which we newly accepted. So this arena of conflict revolves within us since we decide with our free will to accept and receive the eternal life, the life of Christ, in the Holy Spirit.  The new nature that we received makes us willfully and easily obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit in us. But if we find ourselves, after receiving the new nature, that we are still struggling to obey the voice of the Holy Spirit and take sides to obey the devil, this is a sign that shows us that we are bound by Satan’s spirit and bonds and we need to be dismantled from Satan’s bonds. We must know that the only way to resolve this conflict that is going inside us is by our own free will with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is our will that has accepted and received the Holy Spirit, so it must be the one who will decide at the time of the confrontation with the devil, which voice it will obey, the Holy Spirit’s or the devil’s. We must know that we are not like before, we have now accepted the new nature which gives us the power and the predominance over all the evil works. All what we have to do is that we do not  give in to the evil and tempting old voices that we were used to obey in the past. We must say NO to the devil’s evil and tempting voice. we  also have to develop this power that was given to us by the Holy Spirit, HOW? By obeying the commandments of Jesus through the voice of the Holy Spirit and disobeying the voice of the evil one and the lust of sin.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SIN THAT DWELLS IN ME?

St. Paul  in his epistle to the Romans chapter seven verse 20 says “Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” He continues to explain in verse 22 and 23 saying “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. we are born inheriting the tendency to sin and the wrong habits. This is because of our imitation to our parents and their wrong habits and attitudes, and the influence of all the evil spirits surrounding us, the social media, the TV, etc. All of this have affected our humanity since childhood and therefore have an impact on our experiences, our temperament and our habits. And as a result  we have become full of the wisdom of the world and the works and thoughts of the evil one. And this formed our behavior and the way we talk and how we deal with things and people around me. So consequently sin and all the wrong thoughts and intensions became inhabited inside us and we became owned by it.  And because of sin dwelling in us, we became unable to do anything good or profitable. The only cure to heal from this sick and corrupted nature is to accept and receive the new nature which is, the life of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.

Now you can ask a question, is it normal for us to enter into this conflict and this spiritual war after receiving the new nature?

The answer is yes, why? Because before we knew Christ and received His eternal life, which is the life of love, peace and joy, we were living with, and well adapted to sin that dwells in us, to the point that we did not feel that sin is killing us. We feel depression, anxiety, envy, hatred and confusion and we think that this is normal, and that this is how life is. We do not know anything else except this kind of living which we thought that is how it is. But when we knew Christ and His love to us and accepted Him God and Savior, His nature the new nature entered into our entity,  and so within us became two natures. The old sinful and corrupted nature and the new nature, the life of Jesus which we received in the Holy Spirit. So there became a conflict between the two natures. And here Satan wages a war with us against the new nature that we received. He begins to fight with us , by sending all kinds of trials and temptations, hoping that we lose the battle and surrender to him and to sin.  so the main goal of the devil, our enemy, is that we do not grow in the spiritual grace that we received. He does not want us to change and the new nature in us be manifested. Because our new nature condemns him and his works. The light in us condemns the darkness in him and his people.