41: Spiritual Warfare Basics (Part 3)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walks On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner.

I’m Stephanie and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Episode 41. Today we are continuing our look at some more spiritual warfare basics. Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:30] Stephanie: Oh, good to be with you in person this time.

[00:32] Marcus: This is fun. Yeah. You’re not off at Asbury now, so it’s good to be here. So we’ve been enjoying a few days together. It’s nice.

[00:39] Stephanie: I know this may be my last time at home with you until after I have graduated, which is a really weird thought now.

[00:46] Marcus: It is. It’s very strange. Been back and forth. I like to joke that your mom and I have been empty nesters, like every three weeks. You and Ben both went to school, but not really in.

[00:59] Stephanie: But we like being with you.

[01:00] Marcus: Yeah, I know, it’s cool, but it’s kind of… We just make it a joke. It’s kind of funny.

[01:05] Stephanie: Yes, well. And Ben is only like an hour away from here.

[01:07] Marcus: He is only an hour from here. So he comes home a lot.

[01:09] Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I know. When I first moved down there, I was like, why have we not invented a teleporter yet? Like, I like being down here. I also like being up near my family. Oh. But yes, so very happy to be with you. And wow. So this past weekend we have just had our “What Every Family Should Know About Spiritual Warfare Conference.” Or rather, we are personally recording prior to the conference. So I say with anticipation rather than assurance. What an epic conference.

[01:41] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We are just confident that it will be epic. But yeah, by the time this comes out, it’ll be a thing of the past. So it’s pre-recorded.

[01:49] Stephanie: Yeah, it’ll be a thing of the past live, but it will still be available in recordings.

[01:53] Marcus: That’s true. That’s true.

[01:54] Stephanie: Yeah. And also Happy Holy Week.

[01:56] Marcus: That’s true. We are launching into the end of Lent for those who are in the more liturgical traditions and getting ready to celebrate Easter.

[02:05] Stephanie: Yay, victory. Which I might skip ahead, but I want to talk about Christus Victor later. But first, like last episode, we dug into just a crash course of spiritual warfare principles. But I felt like we focused a lot on permission. And so I thought today we could continue the discussion and look more at authority.

So I’ve heard you say that there are two errors Christians will often fall into in regard to authority in Christ: that Christians have no authority or that Christians have all authority. So let’s speak to those two things. First, no authority. Why do people say, no, we don’t have authority?

[02:45] Marcus: Yeah, I think that this comes from, in some ways, it’s almost reactionary against people like me who would practice spiritual warfare and say that Christians actually need to know how to do this for themselves.

There’s a group of theologians out there who are like, “Christ has all the authority, and I don’t share that with him.” So it takes a little explanation. There isn’t a verse in the Bible you can point to that says anything about Christians having authority. That’s not a specific verse in the Bible, so we’ll have to talk about that.

On the other extreme is, are the people who say, “No, we actually have all authority. That when I speak, Christ is speaking.” Like if I say something in the name of Jesus, Jesus himself may as well be speaking. Well and literally.

I remember there was a time several years ago when I got handed two different books by two different people, and one of them was from a theologian making the case that Christians have no authority. And one was from a theologian. Actually, not really a theologian, just a well-known pastor. They are both just well-known pastors, to be honest. And the one was very charismatic and kind of that “word of faith” branch that basically says your words participate in creating reality. And I’m like, we don’t go there.

So as I look at this, I think there’s errors on both sides and we can explain why here.

[04:13] Stephanie: Awesome. So I know, particularly the no authority crowd often points straight to Michael and Satan wrestling for Moses’s body in Jude, and Michael saying, “The Lord rebuke you!” and so they say, if Michael can’t, then…

[04:28] Marcus: That is the classic verse. Good job remembering that. It is an unusual verse. Why are Michael and Lucifer fighting over the body of Moses in the first place? And then secondly, if Michael, the archangel over the people of Israel can’t just say, “You have to go in the name of Jesus, why can we?”

I’ll try to answer both those since we’re right here. So let’s start with the authority question, which in some ways is the easier one because we are children of God in Christ, the basis of our authority in Christ is that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. So to be seated is to be enthroned.

It’s like we share access to the throne. Well, the throne is authority. There’s some level of authority there. So what I like to specify about authority, is that we don’t have unlimited authority, in the same way that a police officer doesn’t have unlimited authority, A police officer can’t just tell you whatever they want.

[05:33] Stephanie: I don’t like the color of your shirt. I’m going to give you a ticket.

[05:36] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. They don’t have that right. They can try, and I’m sure. And they have tried throughout the years. I mean, there’s been bad police officers throughout the years, but their authority is limited by law.

And so, in the same way, we don’t have unlimited authority, we have limited authority that is limited by the laws that govern the kingdom of God. But the basis of our authority is that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. So when I look at the people who say that we don’t have any authority at all, and we look at this debate between Lucifer and Michael, what I would say is that we actually outrank Michael on the flowchart of the kingdom, if you will.

It’s not that I have authority over Michael. I don’t order him around. I’ve heard some people do stuff like that. Like, they order angels around, but I think that’s a misuse of authority. But as someone who is seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, because human, we have a unique relationship to Jesus that is different than even the angels.

And the author of Hebrews refers to angels as ministering spirits sent to serve. And so in this sense, I think that Michael and Lucifer were more like peers, and so he couldn’t just take authority over him. Whereas I don’t speak to demons as peers. I speak down to them as those who are beneath me on the flowchart, if you will, of the authority structure of the kingdom of God.

[06:58] Stephanie: Now I just have Karl Payne’s voice in my head right now. If you didn’t come to the conference, go get the recordings and listen to Karl Payne. He will teach you how to talk down to demons.

[07:09] Marcus: No, he’s very good at it. That’s true. Karl and I have taught together on many occasions, and he’s very blunt with them.

[07:19] Stephanie: Okay, so give us your theory for why they are wrestling over the body of Moses.

[07:25] Marcus: You know my theory on this is: there is something in the Old Testament called “nehushtan”. And I’m sure everybody uses nehushtan in a sentence every week. Nehushtan is the Hebrew word for the bronze serpent.

When Jesus references it, “So just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…” In the original story, there were snakes coming in and biting people and they were dying. God told Moses, “Make this bronze serpent, when people look at it, they’ll live. They’ll be saved from these snake bites.”

So we learn later, in the time of the kings, that this bronze pole became an idol, and that a cult had started up around the idol, and people were worshiping it. You can understand why, because they thought, “Oh, this must have magical powers to heal, and so we all want healing, so let’s do that.” Well, I thought if they made a cult out of the bronze serpent, imagine what they would have done if they would have had Moses’s tomb. I’m just thinking that it would have become a place of pilgrimage unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

[08:34] Stephanie: And go back, because we didn’t mention the tomb part. We just mentioned the body.

[08:40] Marcus: Yeah, it was all part of the body.If Lucifer got the body, he could, I don’t know what all the rest of the implications there are, but I do think that he would have been able to point people to it.

[08:53] Stephanie: Well, becausewhen Moses died, no one knew where he was buried.

[08:57] Marcus: That’s true.

[08:57] Stephanie: And so I guess that’s the point I was going toward. That some people might not remember or realize that they did not know where his body was.

[09:06] Marcus: Because that’s a good point.

[09:07] Stephanie: He went on a walk with God and didn’t come back.

[09:09] Marcus: That’s a good point. Wow! That sounded very mafia-like (laughter).

But I do think that you’re right. God said, “This is it,” and it was time to go, and he did not let people know where Moses’s body was buried. I think part of the reason for that was they wanted to avoid the whole cult thing that would follow out of that. So that’s my theory. I can’t prove it. That’s just kind of my working hypothesis on why this happened.

[09:35] Stephanie: It makes the most sense to me of anything I’ve ever heard. So, okay, so. So then can we go back to the “all authority” advocates and why people do that?

[09:44] Marcus: So the “all authority” again, comes from this idea that Jesus says things like, “Ask for anything in my name and I will do it.”  And it’s a fairly short step from a statement like that to “Well, if I say anything in the name of Jesus, then I can speak with the same authority as Jesus.”

But anybody who’s been in authority structures knows that’s not the case. I can represent the king and speak with authority on behalf of the king. It does not mean that I share the king’s level of authority. And so I think that’s just a gross misunderstanding that in some ways is understandable, if you don’t look at it too closely. But once you do, it’s really hard to land there.

[10:26] Stephanie: I don’t have anyone in mind particularly, I’m just saying I’m about to ask maybe a controversial question. I don’t have anyone in particular in my head when I’m asking this, but it struck me when you said earlier that you can just speak reality into existence. That’s very occultic. That’s a very witchcraft sort of mindset. And so I’m just wondering.

I guess that’s just an observation. I don’t know if you have anything to say about that.

[10:58] Marcus: Well, it’s one of the reasons why Deeper Walk has always rejected that worldview, because it smacks more of the occult than Christianity. The idea is that God can speak things into existence, but I can’t. I can’t speak things into existence just because I say them. Now that’s different than saying my self-talk is not important. Or it’s not the same thing as saying that it doesn’t matter whether I’m constantly berating myself or berating other people. That’s bad for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with creating reality.

There’s a classic book by Napoleon Hill called Think and Grow Rich, and it’s been read by success people, teachers throughout decades. A lot of people, I don’t think, read the end of the book, because he’s basically having seances in his attic, where he gets the information for this stuff. And part of his theory is, visualize what you want, believe it’s going to happen, speak it out.

So there’s this New Age concept. that if you believe it you can believe things into existence, which sounds a lot like when the scriptures are talking about your faith has healed you. And so I think what happens is that people, too many people, are taking that step from the occult side of creating the reality that I want, because that’s really what the occult is about. I know the reality that I want, and I’m going to use this power to get what I want.

That’s not how Christianity works. I want God’s will to be done. I submit myself. I surrender my will to him. I don’t use God to get what I want. And that’s why a lot of people misunderstand prayer, because they think that prayer doesn’t work because I don’t get what I want. That’s not how Christianity works. That’s not what it’s for.

[12:42] Stephanie: Okay, so I’m going to kind of pause this here, even though it’s a little off topic. I think it’s really important. I run into this all the time on social media and even in conversation with especially my age demographic, where people do have the self-talk that borders on, or just straight up claims, manifesting reality. I do think self-talk is important, and there is this idea of self fulfilling prophecy, where if you say this is going to happen, a lot of times it happens because you just put yourself on that path to make it happen or not happen or whatever, whether that’s positive or negative.

Part of the deception is that there is some truth in it. Could you speak more to how to differentiate between some positive self-talk, and some making plans.

[13:34] Marcus:It’s a good question, because what I think the difference here is that one is psychological and emotional and the other is spiritual. What I mean is the difference here is one thing is counting on it creating reality with spiritual force. If I believe the right things, if I say the right things, I can make this happen, versus simply the lack of wisdom, or the folly, shall we say, of constantly putting yourself down or seeing things that are not true.

For example, I was an athlete for a lot of years. I can’t say, “ We’re going to win this week, we’re going to win this week. We’re going to win this week,” and make it make us win. Now, I can picture myself shooting correctly in my head, versus being sloppy in my thinking, and it’s going to make a difference. I can go into a game thinking that we’ve got no chance, and that’s going to have an effect on my performance, but it’s strictly an emotional, psychological level. I’m not creating that reality with any kind of spiritual force. So there’s a difference between something being wise or foolish and something being powerful.

[14:42] Stephanie: Thank you. That’s good. I could ask more questions on that topic, but that would be a different episode. So shall we move on to Christus Victor?  I want to look at the connection between authority and victory and all of that. And it’s Holy Week. So like the crucifixion and the resurrection and such.

[15:04] Marcus: Absolutely. Christus Victor is the view of the Atonement that was most popular back when the early church fathers, folks like Irenaeus and others, tended to present what happened at the cross in terms of this cosmic battle between the forces of darkness and the kingdom of God.

At the cross, the devil thought he won, only to find out he actually got completely disarmed. So you have this classic text, Colossians 2:15, which says that Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers at the cross. Well, what does that mean? The verse before that points us to the fact that, prior to the cross, Satan had a claim on us.

There was a certificate of debt, it’s called in Colossians 2:14. This idea is that as long as that certificate of debt existed, Satan could go to the courtroom of heaven and have a claim on us, and God had to grant, sort of, his request.

But at the cross, what we’re told Paul says in Colossians 2:14 & 15, is he erased it. In John, when one of his last words on the cross was “tetelestai”, which is that Greek word that means: it is finished. And that is actually the word they used to stamp on these certificates of debt, to cancel them, to erase them, if you will, to bring them to an end.

And so what happens is like, if you owe somebody a debt and he gets paid, I don’t owe a debt anymore. And so in that way, he has disarmed the enemy against us. There is also this, what we talk in Kingdom terms of, an already / not yet theology of the kingdom, which says that Christ defeated Satan totally in regard to that debt that we owed and removing the claim against us. But his final victory over Satan is a not yet thing that is waiting to happen.

So in the meantime, though, because we have been seated with Christ through the resurrection, and because we have had the claims against us taken away by the cross, we are in a position to live in freedom as Christians that did not exist before the cross. And that’s why, when we talk about the cross, we tend to talk about two things, primarily, and one is about Christ’s victory over the enemy at the cross, and also about the cancellation of our debt against us at the cross.

[17:28] Stephanie: As you were talking, I just kept seeing Chronicles of Narnia and Aslan and Wow! I mean, obviously we know what that analogy is on the stone table.

[17:40] Marcus: Stone table, yeah, like an altar.

[17:42] Stephanie: But I’ve never actually thought of that and had the thought of Christus Victor in my head.

[17:48] Marcus: And this is part of the genius of C.S. Lewis and writing the Chronicles of Narnia. In fact, when we did our 2012 national conference, we brought down all the house lights. We opened with that scene, that exact scene of Susan and Lucy mourning at the stone table because Aslan was just killed the night before by the White Witch, who represents the devil. Aslan represents Christ. And here is this battle of cosmic warfare. And it looks like Satan or the witch has won, but the stone table cracks. And this cracking of the stone table is just genius to me. It’s so significant because it illustrates this idea that the charges against us have been broken.

The foundation for the charges against us have been broken. We’ve been set free from the law, Romans 7 says, we’ve been set free, therefore, from sin, both Romans 6 & 7 says. We have been set free from all of these things because of what Christ did on the cross. That’s the foundation of our victory, the foundation of our freedom, and also the foundation that gradually is the idea of our authority. Because of his victory, and also, because the penalty was paid, and it is complete.

[19:04] Stephanie: And just to complete that story, you commissioned an actual cracked table for the stage. I was still in undergrad at Taylor at the time, and had connections at the theater, and we got a table, a full size table that I think actually a high school used in a production of Chronicles of Narnia as their set piece. Yes, so as the lights were coming down, that was up there, and it was so epic as this symbol.

[19:34] Marcus: Yeah, it was pretty cool. We had that broken stone table up on the stage for the whole conference. To me, that was just the clearest picture of grace I could think of to lay out for people, to keep it in front of them for the conference on grace.

[19:48] Stephanie: John Lynch was at that conference.

[19:49] Marcus: He was. For that reason. He’s very good at talking about grace.

[19:54] Stephanie: Oh, okay. Now I’m all wrapped up in memory. And I’m losing track of my train of thought.

[19:59] Marcus: That’s all right. We probably need to wrap up.

[20:01] Stephanie: We do. Okay. Wrapping up. Any final thoughts?

[20:07] Marcus: So again, if you haven’t heard of Christus Victor, that is a view of the Atonement that focuses specifically on the idea that Satan thought he had defeated Christ at the cross, only to find out later that he had been completely disarmed, that his claims against us had been broken, the law had come to an end. When you combine the resurrection with that, you have this complete reversal of the legal situation on which Christians live. That’s why we say that spiritual warfare is a legal thing, primarily because of what happened at the cross and the resurrection completely changed the legal landscape.

We need to, as part of our theology, understand what our legal rights are as we go into these battles, and when we understand our legal rights and we enforce those, the demons know when they’ve been beat. I don’t come into something like that knowing that I’m stronger than them, that I’m smarter than them, that I’m even more powerful than them. I come into a conflict like that knowing that this has already been legally decided, and as long as we can get people to deal with the permission involved, then they have no legal right to be there. That’s why we spend so much time talking about permission.

Authority is the right to represent power, and we represent the kingdom, the power of the kingdom of God. I will sometimes pray at the end of something like this, “God, now that I’ve made this command, would you please use your power to enforce it?” And he has never let me down.

[21:38] Stephanie: Amen. Hallelujah! Yeah, that’s usually if you have a contract, you can’t just tear it up, but we can tear this contract up because of what he did at the cross, because he did fulfill it. So, hallelujah!

[21:48] Marcus: Yep, it’s been canceled.

[21:50] Stephanie: Well, thank you all so much for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk International is a nonprofit organization, and we partner with people like you in order to do what we do.

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Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week. Happy Holy Week.