Who Is the Real Enemy?

Paul is writing to a church in a city full of people who worshiped differently than they did, spoke differently, lived differently. And he tells them something that must have sounded strange: the people across the street are not your enemy. The war you’re actually in is deeper than that. It’s against evil itself — the rulers and powers and dark forces that turn hearts cruel and hands violent.

The way I understand it, Paul isn’t telling them evil is imaginary. He’s telling them it’s bigger than any one person or people. If you spend your whole life swinging at flesh and blood, you’ll wear yourself out and never touch the thing that’s really doing the damage.

My Reflection

Let me be plain, because clarity is the whole point of this one.

October 7th was carried out by Hamas — a terror group that murdered around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, some of them at a concert. That was evil. I’ll say it as loud as anyone. And the persecution of Christians overseas is real and it is staggering — believers killed for their faith, churches torched, families driven from their homes. I will not soften either of those. Naming them is not hate; it’s honesty.

But here’s what I’ve had to sit with. The same darkness that murders a Christian in northern Nigeria is often the same darkness that drives a Muslim farmer off his land in the very next county. The jihadist doesn’t check the cross before he burns — he burns everything. The evil isn’t loyal to a people. It’s loyal to itself.

So when I ask who is the real enemy, the honest answer isn’t a billion-and-a-half people, most of whom are nurses and shopkeepers and grandfathers who never hurt a soul. The enemy is the spiritual rot that convinces any man — waving any flag, quoting any book — that he’s allowed to slaughter the innocent. That’s the thing Paul told us to fight.

And there’s a reason this matters for how I write and how you and I live. If I aim my anger at a whole people, I’ve done two things: I’ve let the actual evil off the hook, and I’ve made myself afraid of my neighbor. Fear is a poor foundation for a Christian. We were not given a spirit of fear. We were given clarity — the kind that can name a specific evil without condemning the crowd, and love a specific neighbor without excusing a single act of cruelty.

That’s not weakness. That’s the harder, sharper thing. Anybody can hate a category. It takes a person walking with God to hate the darkness and still love the person standing in it.

A Prayer

Father, give me clear eyes. Let me hate what You hate — cruelty, murder, the abuse of the weak — without letting that hatred spill onto people You made and love. Where there is real evil, give me the courage to name it. Where there is a frightened, grieving, or misled neighbor, give me the grace to see them the way You do. Guard my heart from fear, and keep my aim true. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

If this spoke to you, I’d love for you to join me at www.christaff.net — come walk this road with me.