For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Words will probably never do this concept justice. For the most part, this is way over our heads. We are trying to understand things about the Kingdom of God that are going to be explained by God in eternity. Then we will have “real” brains. Our ability to grasp these things will be greatly enhanced. And, that is the understatement of the decade. But, we don’t have to be totally in the dark now, if we will just trust God and His Word to talk to us about things that we have never seen (we have seen their influences).

Jesus takes the natural issues of God’s creation and uses them to explain things to us. We have already covered this to a great degree. None of this has to get spooky or weird. When we talk about the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, we just need to be careful to stay locked into the Bible; we have to let the Holy Spirit keep us in focus.

We can have one of two major reactions to things like this that will block off our study. We can simply refuse to study anything about authorities, powers of this dark world, or spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. Or, we can get so excite about studying something totally new and different, that we leave the original intended purpose for this Scripture and go into areas that won’t help us live a godly life.

Most people have heard about the devil; and, most have heard about demons. We have art work of angels which most of them probably don’t look like real angels. However, a lot of people don’t realize that we are being influenced by these invisible beings. We read about Jesus being tempted by Satan and we often look at it as one isolated event. We often fail to realize that we are being attacked with all kinds of temptations that are not initiated by us or other humans. The origination of a lot of temptations we have bombarding our minds and lives is coming from Satan.

If we were struggling against our own flesh or body, we could reason with our self, try hard to keep from committing sin, and see if we could develop better habits for our life patterns. If that were the case, that would probably take care of the sin patterns. If we were struggling against other humans, we could reason with them, argue with them, sue them, have a feud with them, hate them, or never speak to them for the rest of their life. However, we aren’t struggling with flesh and blood (human issues). Because of that, these efforts and systems simply will not work.

When other humans are used as instruments to try to cause us to sin, we still are not struggling with flesh and blood (the person). As a matter of fact, people-generated circumstances are often inspired by Satan. We usually want to attack the person and only deal with them. If we do it that way, the problem will not get solved. If, however, we do it the Biblical way, we will solve the problem without hurting people. Even if we are dealing with an enemy, we will love them and do spiritual warfare against Satan rather than them.

Mat 5:43-45 (NIV) You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.