You Are in a Supernatural Battle

SPROUL: Listen to what Paul says in a passage  in Ephesians that you’ve heard many times:   “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be  able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 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. Wherefore, take unto   you the whole armor of God that you may be able to  withstand in the evil day and having done all, to   stand.” Christianity is thoroughly supernatural.  Take away the supernatural from the New Testament,   and you have gutted the New Testament. In fact,  to try to reconstruct Christianity without the   supernatural, I believe, is fundamentally  a dishonest enterprise. Here the Apostle,   in a didactic manner, said, “Look, you’re  in a struggle. You’re trying to please God.   You want to live a life that is one that manifests  sanctification, but it’s a battle. It’s a battle   with the flesh. It’s a battle with the world, but  the battle that you’re on goes beyond this. We’re   not wrestling against flesh and blood but powers,  principality, spiritual wickedness in high places,  

in the “ouranos,” in the heavenlies. Cosmic evil  is what we’re dealing with here in an unseen   realm. That is the realm of super-nature. See,  right at the heart of the Christian declaration   is that Christianity is based upon revelation—that  we receive information that is beyond the scope   of normal, empirical perception—that we  get information of the metaphysical realm,   of the noumenal realm, of that which  transcends the observable, and that God   tells us that there is a dimension of reality  there that is not visible to the naked eye;   but that that reality that is not visible to the  naked eye has a profound influence on our lives.