The Three Enemies of Every Christian

The Three Enemies of Every Christian
Jack Klumpenhower
7/13/2013

Read enough news and you’ll quickly be convinced that Christians have enemies around every corner. Changing social norms threaten our values. Government mandates challenge our freedom. In parts of the world, extremists even want to kill us. It’s no wonder we sometimes get the urge to fight back.

It’s good to know our enemies. We must be on guard. But I wonder if all the alarm accompanying those kinds of threats diverts our attention from even bigger foes. When the Bible speaks of our most dangerous enemies, it focuses on those that threaten our souls. Such enemies tempt us to sin and turn away from God. Bible scholars have often grouped them into three categories—the three chief enemies of every believer. They are the world, the devil, and our sinful natures.

Enemy #1: The world

When the Bible speaks of the world as our enemy, it means the world’s priorities and sensibilities. “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ” (Colossians 2:8, NLT). The chief danger from those who have power in the world is not what they might do to our bodies or how they might restrict our freedoms. It’s how they tempt and pressure us to conform to their ways.

We must work to keep our goals different from those of the world. Although we’re kind to others, we should never join in their thirst for power and worldly success. We ought to advance God’s Kingdom, not worldly empires. We must follow God’s laws, even when the world thinks those rules sound awfully strange. Jesus warned that the world may hate us for our different drumbeat, but that should be no surprise. After all, the world is our enemy.

Enemy #2: The devil

Pictures we draw of the devil usually make him look menacing, often harassing his victims with a pitchfork. The Bible says he’s an evil, spiritual being who’s even more dangerous than that, mostly because of his accusations and cunning lies. Jesus called him “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44, NLT).

The devil tries to get us to believe that living for God isn’t really in our best interests. He tempts us to doubt God’s goodness and trust what we think best instead. He also loves to accuse us when we sin, making us think that God could never love us given what we’ve done. The devil uses these lies to undermine our faith in God, which is what makes him such a dangerous enemy. We must battle to keep believing the truth.

Enemy #3: Our sinful nature

As long as we live in this world, we’re subject to sinful desires. Believers still struggle with their old, sinful nature. “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21, NLT).

That list contains a wide variety of activities and feelings that we’re tempted to indulge because, at the moment, they make us feel good. But they’re unkind, degrading, and hurtful toward others and ourselves. We must fight against the sinful nature that gives rise to them. It too is our enemy.

Fighting our enemies

I don’t mean to make light of the sort of enemies we read about in the news, but battling the three I’ve described here is enough to keep most of us busy for a lifetime. If we take an honest look at ourselves, we must conclude that too often we follow the world’s priorities. Too often we believe the devil’s lies instead of God’s promises. Too often we indulge in selfish sin. We need to fight our enemies, and fight hard.

Happily, we are not on our own. Do you struggle with pressures from the world? Jesus tells us, “Take heart, because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, NLT). Do you give in to the devil’s lies? Remember that “the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8, NLT). Are you tempted by the sinful lusts that remain in you? Believe that God has taken action: “He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins” (Romans 8:3, NLT).

The Christian fight is not easy, but neither is it waged alone. We have a Champion on our side, so we fight confidently by faith. We battle prayerfully, feeding on his Word, drawing strength from his fellow children who also fight with us. The urge to defeat our enemies is the right mindset, and the victory will be ours. Fight on, Christian warrior!

Jack Klumpenhower is a writer and children’s ministry worker living in Colorado.