God has not left us ignorant of the sphere of warfare or of the enemy himself. Much biblical revelation from the first promise of Christ’s victory over the evil one (Genesis 3:15) is taken up with a revelation about the nature of spiritual warfare.

What impact would it have had on the church in our late-modern, scientific day and age if the author(s) of the Apostles’ Creed had included a statement about the reality of angelic activity and spiritual warfare in the Christian life? I envision such a statement as reading like this: “I believe in principalities and powers, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places with whom we wrestle; I believe that Christ has conquered them by His death on the cross; I believe that I need the armor of God to overcome them in my warfare with them throughout the time of my sojourn here.” I desperately wish that this was a part of our weekly confession of faith, because in many theologically informed congregations where holiness, wrath, righteousness, justice, sin, grace, mercy, and forgiveness are unashamedly proclaimed, there is sometimes a noticeable lack of teaching about the reality of spiritual warfare in the believer’s life.
Though many ministers, in our day, have given inadequate attention to a biblical exposition of spiritual warfare, this was not always the case in the church. Among the Puritan ministers in seventeenth-century England, there was no such shortage of works on spiritual warfare. The more well-known works include Thomas Brooks’ Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armor, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christopher Love’s The Christian’s Combat, and Richard Gilpin’s Demonologia Sacra.
What accounts, then, for the disparity of emphasis among seventeenth-century Protestant pastors and pastors in more theologically minded churches in our day? First, many mature Christians rightly seek to avoid giving the sense that we are not responsible for our own sin. Far too many professing believers have dismissed their responsibility by functionally blaming Satan for their sin. In the epistle to the Romans, there is only one reference to Satan (Rom. 16:20), whereas there are fifty-seven references to sin. Our sin is a major theme of biblical revelation. We must keep in proportion what God keeps in proportion in His Word.
Second, it is all too common for believers to overreact to the unbiblical teaching they endured in churches in which the leadership approached the subject of spiritual warfare as something more akin to New Age, science fiction gnosticism than faithful biblical exposition. A wrong view of spiritual warfare leads to a wrong view of the Christian life. Nevertheless, the New Testament does include an abundance of teaching about the reality of spiritual warfare. The most full-orbed treatment comes at the end of Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus in his exposition of the armor of God (Eph. 6:10–20).
The Battlefield
At the opening of the letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul reminds believers in the church that God has already blessed them “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1:3; emphasis added). At the close of the letter, he reminds them that the entirety of the Christian life is one in which they will be engaged in hand-to-hand combat “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (6:12; emphasis added). “The heavenly places” is shorthand for the heavenly origin of the Christian life. It is also shorthand for the spiritual realm in which we fight against spiritual hosts of evil. The great Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper once captured the essence of this spiritual sphere when he wrote:
If once the curtain were pulled back, and the spiritual world behind it came to view, it would expose to our spiritual vision a struggle so intense, so convulsive, sweeping everything within its range, that the fiercest battle ever fought on earth would seem, by comparison, a mere game. Not here, but up there—that is where the real conflict is waged. Our earthly struggle drones in its backlash.1
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Written by C. Michael Patton |
Saturday, November 25, 2023
In Luke 19:11-27, stewardship is described as being over “cities.” We shouldn’t be too literal with this, but the fact is that we will have great responsibility. We will have jobs. We have every reason to believe that we will have to be on time to work, have certain job requirements, have a certain skill set, deal with others who are “under” us, and have successes (and possibly, sinless failures). The labor that we do will not be from the sweat of our brow any longer (Gen. 3:19). In other words, we will find joy and contentment in what we are doing. We will all love our jobs! In these things, we will worship and fellowship with God. 

Childhood Expectations of Heaven
Since I was young, I was excited about getting to heaven. We all were. I remember when my mother told my older sister, Kristie (yes, my wife’s name is also Kristie), about heaven. She told her that Christ was going to come someday to take us there. Upon hearing this, Kristie quickly ran out of the room. When my mother called to her and asked her why she was leaving so abruptly, she said, “I am going to get my shoes so I can be ready to go.”
Doubts and Guilt Arising from Traditional Teachings
But I also remember having my hopes dashed by something that produced a great amount of guilt. During a Sunday School session, while we were discussing heaven, the question on the table was if heaven was forever, what were we going to be doing all that time. Wouldn’t we be bored? The teacher responded in a way that is representative of many people’s understanding of heaven: “When we get to heaven, we will be bowing down before the throne of God twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
The Traditional View of Eternal Worship
Talk about taking the wind out of the Superman sails of a little boy such as myself! I had big plans for heaven (which included flying 3-5 hours a day). It was hard enough for me to bow down before the throne of God for five minutes a day, much less for all eternity 24/7. Simply and unspiritually put, that does not sound like too much fun. The answer was always the same when I would timidly admit my fear of ultimate and eternal boredom: “When you are in heaven, sinless and in perfect submission to God’s will, you will be perfectly and joyfully content bowing before the throne of God all day, every day.”
Revelation and Misconceptions of Heaven
As best I can tell and remember, the primary reason why many people believe this is from the book of Revelation: “And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.” And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.” (Rev 4:8-11)
A Different Perspective on Heaven
But I don’t believe the Bible presents such a view of heaven. In fact, I think Evangelical “heavenology” is in as much need of a major overhaul as just about any other doctrine. In fact, even my previous hopes about heaven don’t pass biblical muster. I believe with a more systematic and biblical view of heaven things change quite a bit.
Common Misunderstandings About Heaven
Other misunderstandings I have since come to realize were wrong about heaven: The eternal heaven is separate from the Earth; In heaven, we will be able to fly (or do anything we want); In heaven, we will know everything; In heaven, you will not love anyone more than another; In heaven there will be no challenges, advancements, or failure.
Heaven’s Similarity to Earth
I often tell people today that one of the biggest surprises that Evangelicals will have when they get to heaven is not how different it is, but how similar it is.
The Concept of ‘Plan B’ in Heaven
Not “Plan B.” This is the most important thing for us to realize.
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Good deacons are humble, and sacrificial, and creatively constructive—and they’re also deeply happy. Their humility is a happy humility. Their sacrifices are glad sacrifices. Their initiative is not just willing, but cheerful and eager. They have found, like the Servant they follow, that joy not only fuels ministry to others, but blossoms from that ministry.

As surprised as we might be by divisiveness in the church, and as uncomfortable and maddening as it may feel at times, such cracks in the walls have dogged us from the beginning.
The kinds of cracks have varied from age to age and culture to culture, but give any congregation enough time—even the best of them—and cracks will emerge. They’re side effects of making covenants with fellow sinners—as unpleasant as they are unavoidable. It’s just part of keeping a home in a fallen world.
Many have tried hard to diagnose and treat the current cracks in our walls—politics and elections, mask mandates and rebellions, racial disparity and superiority, men’s and women’s roles in the home and beyond, domestic abuse and other moral failures, and so on—but many of them have overlooked or marginalized a missing ingredient to harmony. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if the wildfires in some pews are as fierce and contagious as they are because this piece seems so small in many of our eyes.
When God planted the first churches, he knew the cracks he’d find. He wrote them into our stories, in fact, because he knew that cracked but loving churches served his purposes better than ones with brand-new walls and pristine floors. He had planned the cracks, and he had plans for the cracks, and one of those plans was called deacons.
Strong Enough to Help
We first encounter deacons during a meal (which, as any normal family knows, is when fights often break out). As the early church began to meet and grow, Greek-speaking Jews who had been scattered outside of Israel (“Hellenists”) returned to Jerusalem to join the church and follow Jesus. After a while, though, they came and complained to the Hebrew-speaking apostles because Greek widows were not receiving the food they needed (Acts 6:1).
Urgent needs like this, as any church knows, require time and attention, pastoral sensitivity, and careful follow-through. This meant the leaders would have less time and attention for teaching and prayer, and they knew the church would suffer even more if that were the case (Acts 6:2). So, the apostles called the church to appoint seven men to make sure all were fed well. And because they did, “the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem” (Acts 6:7).
How much or little we think of diaconal ministry today rests, in significant measure, on what problem we think those first proto-deacons were solving. Was this merely a matter of entrées and sides for some lonely and vulnerable women, or was the church facing a deeper, more sensitive threat?
Matt Smethurst, in his introduction to deacons, draws our attention to the greater dangers hiding beneath the dining tables:
How our churches react to conflict can make all the difference in whether our gospel witness is obstructed or accelerated. Acts 6 is a story of church conflict handled well…The seven weren’t merely deployed to solve a food problem. Food was the occasion, sure, but it wasn’t the deepest problem. The deepest problem was a sudden threat to church unity. (Deacons, 44, 52)
Cracks were suddenly surfacing and spreading. How could the church win the war for souls if there were wars within her walls? How could the word run if its people were mired in swamps of bitterness? The church didn’t merely need better waiters; it needed peace and healing. It needed men strong and wise enough to help mend fractures in the family.
Giants Bowing Low
Many might hear deacon and immediately think of dull or menial tasks that few people want to do—building maintaining, budget crunching, nursery cleaning, furnace repairing, meal serving. They might imagine a sort of junior-varsity team that relieves the pastors of lesser work. When the apostles saw those seven men, however, they saw something different in them—a stronger and more vibrant force for good, a noble and vital ministry.
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