Caught in the CROSS-Fire: Combatting the World, the Flesh, and the Devil

By Michael Kenneth Wilson

There are insidious forces threatening to shape people's lives in ways that may or may not meet with their approval and certainly do not meet with God's, the ultimate judge. Over many centuries it has been common to name these radical forces as "the world," "the flesh," and "the devil." This book deals with the nature and impact of these highly dangerous forces and what is involved in successfully countering them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 31, 2025
• ISBN: 9798385244515

Michael Kenneth Wilson

Michael Kenneth Wilson, now retired, has taught at various theological colleges for over thirty years, lecturing on the Bible, cross-cultural ministry, and a Christian understanding of Buddhism. With his family, he served in Pakistan for seven years. He is the author of The Lives of the Wise in an Anti-God World: Daniel 1–6 and also Changing Lanes, Crossing Cultures.

Book preview

Introduction

"There is a war between the rich and poor

A war between the man and the woman

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war

And the ones who say that there isn’t."

Leonard Cohen

Don’t mention the war." So says Basil Fawlty, the character immortalized by John Cleese in the sixth episode of the sitcom Fawlty Towers aired in 1975. This episode was called The Germans. The scene is a fictional hotel in Torquay, run by Basil Fawlty and his wife. At one point Basil has been knocked out and has just returned to the hotel from hospital, still concussed and confused. Thinking of his German guests Basil warns his staff, Don’t mention the war, but his own mind is so full of it that when he is speaking with his German guests he refers to the war in almost everything he says. When one of his guests begins to weep Fawlty blames his guests for starting it. When this is denied Fawlty responds, Yes you did, you invaded Poland. Fawlty then impersonates Adolf Hitler, doing his version of the goose-step, the marching style popularly associated with Hitler’s German troops. When Fawlty is knocked out again, following yet more expressions of his own mental disorder, one of the German guests asks, However did they win?

Don’t mention the war? Well, it’s actually a sign of mental disorder, of missing the bleeding obvious, if we can’t see that the whole world is at war. This is not imagination running wild. This is ultimate warfare and all people on earth are caught up in it, whether they like it or not. As for Christians, we find ourselves constantly under attack, ever battling evil in all its guises.

Chapter One

The Horror of War

In nuclear war, all men are cremated equal.

Dexter Gordon

War is horrific. On battlefields teenagers and youths in their twenties are blown to bits and maimed for life. Women and children are used as shields. Children are abducted and forced to become brutal, merciless soldiers. Terrorists behead victims slowly with knives and crucify children.

War is monstrous. War shatters the delusion that people are basically good and decent and able to live in harmony with all others. In war nice people become monsters. War exposes the immense evil of humankind and the impossibility of ever having a world at peace.

War is merciless. Civilian casualties are no longer collateral damage. Modern war targets civilian populations. Homes and families and population centers are intentionally destroyed. The dogs of war snap at the heels of traumatized people fleeing for their lives.

War is inevitable. There are no wars to end wars. As our Lord warned us, there will continue to be wars and rumors of wars until he returns in glory. The same human evil and confusion that causes people to fight each other in marriage, in families, in the workplace, and in the law courts is the same human evil and confusion that will pitch nations and ethnic peoples and religious groups against each other.

War and the Image of God

People are not only fallen creatures—sinful and confused. They continue to be those made in the image and likeness of God. This image has been massively damaged, but like the ruins of the Acropolis, there is that which still stands and gives us glimpses of the glory that once was. War is a theater in which not only horrendous human evil is projected onto the screen of human history. We also see extraordinary and profound displays of human sacrifice and nobility.

But war blows thick heavy clouds over the land and snuffs out the sun. Courage and compassion are but pinpricks of light amid oppressive darkness. Terror and dread fill people’s hearts—fear for ourselves and those we love.

War and Eternity

Jesus warned his disciples not to fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, he said, we are to fear the one, namely God, who can destroy both body and soul in hell.¹ Think of this together with Paul’s declaration that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.² The us here are the sons and daughters of God. But what these two complementary perspectives instill in us is the realization that the eternal trumps that which is here and now.

Take note! Terrifying wars that bring immense physical, emotional, and psychological suffering in their wake are dwarfed by the eternal damage to human souls inflicted in the war that has never ceased since evil first entered this now fallen world. Way back in 1661 William Gurnall rightly remarked that in comparison with this war, the most brutal war ever fought by people is but sport and child’s play.³

The carnage of this war is often invisible to the human eye. Where is the blood and gore? Where are the amputees and the horribly disfigured?

Because we do not see such things and do not see the reality which lies beyond the grave it is easy to assume that Christian talk of spiritual warfare is a case of let’s pretend. Is this a time for an honesty that admits that spiritual warfare is not so much a chilling reality as an extravagant use of the imagination to justify the perpetuation of the whole Christian enterprise, involving sheer speculation about the afterlife?

War and the Afterlife

So, then, much depends on how you answer one fundamental question: What will happen to us after we physically die?

There are of course a great many people who avoid the question and push it to the back of their minds, as though it were a matter no more serious than deferring payment of that not so important bill received in the mail. There are those who have persuaded themselves that when our bodies die we no longer continue to exist. There are Hindus and Buddhists who believe they will come back either to this world or another realm in some other form, whether human, animal, or something else altogether. There are those who confuse near-death experiences with what truly lies beyond death, so that some, for example, referring to experiences of seeing light and feeling love, reassure themselves that whatever lies beyond death is nothing to be feared and dreaded.

In modern pluralistic societies, especially in the West, the very exposure to different views and beliefs leads many to suppose that it’s just a matter of opinion. There is no right view. People are entitled to believe whatever they want to believe. Sometimes such thinking is tied to an underlying assumption that in the end nobody really knows what happens after death.

But plain common sense tells us that something happens to us after death. We can’t all be right. It is not opinion or viewpoint that determines what that something is. It will be what it will be. But what is that something? Is it possible to know?

Yes it is! We can know for certain that as the writer to the Hebrews states, after death comes judgment. We can be sure of this because it is based on something that happened in history—the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This is not religious dogma. This cannot be dismissed as just what Christians believe. No! This is as much an historical fact as the Battle of Hastings in 1066 or the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. If this is not an historical fact then the entire edifice of Christianity is a house of cards. As Paul declared in his letter to the Corinthians, if Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead then the faith of Christians is pointless and we are of all people most to be pitied.⁴

Jesus rose from the dead. Mock this claim if you will. But given the millions upon millions of people throughout history who have based their lives on this, at least give us the courtesy of using the same criteria to test the evidential basis for this claim as you would for any other purported historical event.

The climax of Paul’s address to the Athenian Areopagus is this declaration: God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. And he has given proof of this by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31).

Because Jesus did rise from the dead—a demonstrable fact of history—we know that death is not the end. There will come a day of judgment when all will be judged by God with justice by Jesus Christ.

Read the Gospels for yourself. Jesus told his disciples not only that he would be executed and rise from the dead, but also that he would return to judge the world. Jesus also told parables which looked ahead to what happens after death. He not only said that he would separate all people into sheep and goats—those to be admitted into paradise and those to be thrown into hell⁵—but he repeatedly warned people about the horror of dying and going to hell.⁶

The road is narrow that leads to life in paradise and relatively few travel this path. But the road is wide and broad that leads to destruction and many follow the masses along this fatal highway. So said Jesus.⁷ Of course, when we take into account the many billions of people who have lived and died and are alive today, then we recognize that the few is still a vast multitude, as the book of Revelation well recognizes.⁸ But the tragic reality is that the vast majority of people in our world face eternal destruction. Spiritual warfare is horrific.

Mission Debrief

•Characteristics of War. It is horrific, monstrous, merciless, and inevitable.

•Image of God. While people are fallen, sinful, and in a state of confusion, they continue to be creatures made in God’s image. In war we see both horrendous human evil and magnificent nobility and self-sacrifice.

•Ultimate Fear. God is to be feared far more than any of the fears people experience in wartime.

•Ultimate Horror. Though largely invisible, the horrors of spiritual warfare far exceed those experienced in earthly war.

•Jesus’s Resurrection. The historical reality of Jesus’s resurrection proves that death is not the end and that he will decide the eternal destiny of everyone who has ever lived.

•Fate of the Majority. While a great number of people will enjoy the richness of eternal life, the vast majority face eternal destruction.

Gathering Intelligence

Read Matthew 13:36–43 (The Parable of the Weeds)

1.The human race is composed of two kinds of people. How does Jesus describe the essential nature of each type?

2.What role does Jesus play in history?

3.How does Jesus describe the reality that awaits each of the two kinds of people in our world?

1

. Matthew

10

:

28

.

2

. Romans

8

:

18

.

3

. Gurnall, Christian in Complete Armour,

2

.

4

.

1

Corinthians

15

:

17–19

.

5

. Matthew

25

:

31–46

.

6

. For example, Matthew

13

:

36–43

,

47–50

;

18

:

7–9

.

7

. Matthew

7

:

13–14

.

8

. Revelation

7

:

9

.

Chapter Two

War of the Words

Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.

Revelation 19:15

There is then a war being waged which almost never makes the news. There are no dramatic film clips that will show the devastation wreaked by this ongoing conflict. No photos of a small naked Vietnamese girl with a face contorted in terror as she runs for her life away from the horrors of war. No images of dead bodies strewn along the road following a massive bomb blast. So, when we speak of the immense damage to human life brought about by this hidden war it seems to many that this is just words, words, words.

The Most Powerful of Weapons

Ah, but not mere human words. The words we speak are actually weapons of immense power. So, Paul comments:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (

2

Corinthians

10

:

3–5

).

There you have it! Christians who follow in Paul’s footsteps are waging war. And we do so with weapons that have divine power to demolish strongholds. Here Paul is doubtless thinking of the enormous siege engines built in his own day which enabled the Romans to destroy massive fortresses. If Paul were living today he may well have used imagery relating to the destructive power of WMDs, weapons of mass destruction.

But do observe that the weapons used by Christians are not at all like this world’s weapons. These weapons are composed of words, words that demolish arguments. Words that attack all the human stratagems for suppressing knowledge of God. Words that capture thinking opposed to the lordship of Christ, and that compel obedience to Christ. Words with divine power.

The Word of God always communicated via human words. The Word of God which is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword or any commando knife. A word with such cutting power that it can slice between joints and the soft, fatty vascular tissue located in the interior cavities of bones.⁹ This word slices between soul and spirit. Just as the giant war machines of Paul’s day knocked down the walls of a town and left its inhabitants exposed and vulnerable, so the Word of God, the gospel, demolishes human defenses constructed to shut God out. And, having torn down these walls, it exposes and judges the hidden thoughts and intentions and motivation of the heart.¹⁰

A War Over Words

H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, a classic sci-fi story about war between humanity and extra-terrestrial beings. As we will see, this is closer to the truth than many might think. For the new humanity God is creating is at war with evil angelic powers from heavenly realms. However, this conflict is not merely the War of the Worlds. It is also the War of the Words.

One of the major strategies employed in war is the laying of mines. For many years after a war we hear of children blown to pieces or living as amputees because they trod on an undiscovered mine. But in the war of words the focus is not upon the minefield, but the mindfield. For it is in the mind that the greatest battle is raging.

Yes, Satan does use persecution in all its forms to attack God’s people. However, first he must instill hatred and animosity in the minds of those who will persecute the followers of Christ. And, indeed, his ultimate goal in persecution is not simply to wreak havoc among Christians, but to use persecution to engender fear and emotional and mental instability in order to destroy their faith. So, our spiritual enemies know full well that the mind is the major battlefield.¹¹ On this field of battle words have explosive and devastating power.

Think back to how this war began. Read Genesis 3 for yourself. The crafty snake, identified as Satan in the New Testament,¹² takes up words spoken by God, asking the woman, Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman responds by citing God’s words, but her Scripture memory is a bit off because she adds words God did not include, namely and you must not touch it. The snake then tells the woman that God was lying when he said that they would die if they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He tells her that God only said this to prevent them from becoming like him, sharing his knowledge of good and evil.

It is these words that play on Eve’s mind and arouse in her the desire to eat the forbidden fruit, leading to the Fall and all the devastation that has followed that fateful decision. Adam was with her at the time, listening to his wife, and following suit. From this point on, people find themselves to be in conflict with God and estranged from him—conditions mirrored in their now complicated relations with each other.

His-Story: Obeying God’s Word

We have all fallen down the mind-shaft and its slithery walls frustrate any attempt to climb our way out. With Genesis 3 in mind, Paul describes how our estrangement from God inevitably leads to our thinking becoming futile and our foolish hearts being darkened.¹³ Such is the depth of our confusion that our attempts to escape our predicament only result in digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

It follows from this that we are reading the Bible upside down if we think it is a moralistic book telling us what we must do to escape our moral plight. Besides, much more has been damaged by the Fall than merely the human ability to distinguish good from evil. The physical world itself has also been damaged. Humans, and other creatures, are not merely the victims of war but also of natural disasters—floods, earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, tsunamis, deadly diseases, and so on. At times even the natural environment is hostile to human life.

It was human disobedience to God’s Word that set all of this disorder in motion. It is human obedience to God’s Word that sets it all right. It is as the New Adam that Jesus obediently clings to and cites God’s Word in the face of Satan’s temptations.¹⁴ So Paul reminds us that through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, while, by contrast, through the obedience of the one man (Jesus) the many will be made righteous.¹⁵ And, as Paul goes on to explain, when the glory of those who have been declared righteous, the sons of God, is ultimately revealed, then the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.¹⁶

Jesus’s entire life was a life of obedience, but without doubt Paul was particularly thinking of the central expression of Jesus’s obedience on the cross at Calvary. This was the one act of righteousness that results in the justification that brings life for all men, in contrast with the one trespass of Adam that brought condemnation for all men.¹⁷ There are a number of reasons why, in order to deal with the problem of evil, it was imperative that the Word become flesh, why the eternal Son of God should become fully man, namely because:

•God is a faithful creator. He created people to image him and he will fulfill his creation purpose.

•In creating people in his image God formed a unique bond between himself and human beings.

•People can only become what they were created to be by being in union with the One they must image.

•The creation of a new humanity that images God involves forming a people who will in due course render perfect obedience to God.

•Such human beings can only come to render perfect obedience by being united with the One they must image.

•Such is the state of fallen human nature that people have estranged themselves from the One they must image and are incapable of seeing him as he is and therefore being like him.

•God must act to reveal himself as he really is (as the One to be imaged) and to unite people to himself.

•But God is perfectly holy and just and will not and cannot unite disobedient people with himself.

•Only a human being who is perfectly obedient can enjoy perfect union with God and image him.

•Since no human is capable of being perfectly obedient, God, in the person of Christ, clothed himself with our humanity.

•Jesus is the Image of God par excellence, the New Man, the perfect human being who has rendered perfect obedience to his Father as one who was not merely fully God but also, more pointedly, as one who was fully human and yet in perfect union with God.

•Jesus now acts as mediator between God and humanity. People who are united with Christ are united with God through him.

In particular, Jesus’s act of obedience on the cross, for all united with him, results in complete forgiveness for all sins—past, present and future—while also initiating the process by which all such humans are transformed into the image and likeness of God.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead also results in a radical difference between two representatives of humanity—the first man Adam . . . a living being and Jesus as the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. That is, as our resurrected Lord, Jesus now indwells his people in the person of the Holy Spirit and thus empowers us, so that as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.¹⁸

As Watkin points out, modernity is informed by four disastrous prejudices concerning the nature of ultimate reality, namely that it is: ahistorical, universal, abstract, impersonal.¹⁹ This way of looking at reality, among other things, necessarily fails to come to grips with evil which is very much an historical, particular, non-abstract, and highly personal phenomenon. Notably, the incarnation in addressing the problem of evil evinces all four of these features, each of them a scandal for those who worship the truth-replacing idol of modernity.

A biblical understanding of what is involved in countering the world, the flesh, and the devil must place at the very center Jesus’s supreme and decisive act of obedience on the cross. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus exhorted his disciples, saying, Pray that you will not fall into temptation (testing). Then he himself prayed, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done. In context, then, we see Jesus himself facing the severest time of temptation or testing he had ever experienced. Significantly, while he was in a state of anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like great drops of blood falling to the ground.²⁰

Jesus was waging war on his knees while his disciples slept. It is Jesus’s perfect obedience to God’s Word and his continuing work as the only mediator between God and humanity that protects and empowers God’s people in all our weakness.

Words that Terrify

God never gave up on humanity. He promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation. In the first instance that great Abrahamic nation is to be identified with Old Testament Israel and those relatively few non-Jewish people like Rahab and Ruth who were incorporated into the nation. God made a covenant, a special pact with Israel and at its heart this involved what people have dubbed the Ten Commandments. But in the Old Testament itself they are simply called the Ten Words.

These Ten Words were heard by Israel at Mount Sinai. Early in the book of Numbers we are told there were over 600,000 Israelite men counted by Moses. Something extraordinary and utterly unique in history happened at Sinai, quite apart from all the dramatic phenomena that accompanied God’s self-revelation. What I am referring to is this—God spoke audibly and directly to an entire nation. Somewhere in the order of two and a half million people heard God, the creator of the universe, speak to them.²¹

They were already frightened by the thunder and lightning, the presence of a thick ominous cloud over the mountain and the sound as of a very loud trumpet blast. We are told, understandably enough, Everyone in the camp trembled. But it then became even scarier. Next the entire mountain was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. Then the mountain itself shook violently and the trumpet sound grew louder and louder. If the people were trembling before this, imagine how terrified they would have been at this point. Could it be even more frightening than this? Well, yes, it could and it was. For then comes the grand climax. What comes next utterly scares them out of their wits.

We simply read, Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. That’s it! But if you had been there at the time then you too would have shaken in your shoes to hear the voice of the living God, the creator of the universe, the one who simply said, Let there be light and there was light.

Winner of The Voice