Imagine something akin to the perfect day. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and you are enjoying time with the people you love the most. You are abounding with thanksgiving to God, and it seems that all is at peace. But in a moment, the world is turned upside down. You realize that you can gain popularity with your best friends by making a show of generosity, so you lie to them about a good deed that you barely did. Pride has come before your fall, and now some of your closest relationships are on the brink of destruction.

Such is the world we live in. Every day, our peace, our joy, and our sanity are held up on a tight rope. One wrong move, or one adverse movement of the wind, and we will fall plunging down to a hurtful place, only to be saved by the grace of God. Even worse, these winds aren’t mere inanimate effects of random forces of nature. Rather, there are evil spiritual forces around every corner, who set dangerous traps for us to fall into.

All of us who are in Christ have experienced the subtle, cunning, and jolting attacks of the evil world. Like careless American soldiers in a Vietnamese jungle, we’ve been walking along with no sounds but the rustle of the grass and the songs of birds, when at once, the woods explode in a fury of gunfire, explosions, and war cries. We’re thrown facedown to the ground, and before we have time to raise our rifle to our shoulder, we’re wounded.

This isn’t mere fiction, but the reality of conflict we face every day. Marriages are slowly eroded, friendships twisted into bitter rivalries; strong, respected, leaders, are viciously accused by those who used to affectionately submit to them. One small impulse to lustfully glance at a body gradually turns into year-long enslavement to pornography. The peace we used to enjoy in our daily life may be crumpled into a constant struggle against throbbing anxiety. Someone we once dearly loved may incite a bitter resentment in our core every time we see them. The battle with sin is real, and its consequences are eternal.

The height of this battleground is the enslavement under which most of our neighbors, coworkers, and some family members are. Every moment of every day, the evil spirits and ideas of the world drag people deeper and deeper into sinkholes that lead to hell. But rather than see their plight, they instead curse the God who made them, and worship the tree that stands nearby. Further, the saints that hold a rope of rescue in their hands are seen by them as enemies, and enticed to join them in their ever worsening plight. Meanwhile, the slaves of the devil infiltrate the ranks of the saints, and set traps and bombs among God’s people.

All of this is to say that our lives as Christians are warfare, and yet so few of us live soldierly. I want to show you how the holy Scriptures describe this story of God’s redemption in which we live as the war of the ages, and how we need to fight it. Although we’re secure in Christ, and God is causing all things in our lives to work together for our good, yet there are real dangers threatening us every day.

One of the biggest proofs for the real danger that we face as believers is the prominence of corrections, rebukes, warnings, and admonishments in the New Testament. Most of its letters were written to combat errors in belief and living that were being embraced by Christians. Many of them are very much like battle plans for the saints, as they fight the good fight of faith. As such, they remind us that we are living in a world at war, and we are targets of the enemy. To be good soldiers of Christ, we must understand the war’s sides, its stakes, its strategies, and the strength we have to fight it. We must fight well, because both our own souls, and the souls of the people in our lives, are at stake. To begin to give you an overview of the Christian warfare, we’ll first look at how the war has gone thus far, and what the goals of both sides are.