(00:02) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 45. Hello, my Father.
(00:06) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter.
(00:09) Stephanie Warner: Good to be with you.
(00:10) Marcus Warner: Always.
(00:12) Stephanie Warner: This is a very nice, you know, hot July.
(00:17) Marcus Warner: It’s a very hot July. We’ve no, it’s like yeah. Well it feels like every winter we get at least like two weeks around zero, and every summer we get about two weeks where the heat index is way over a hundred and it’s humid, so we’re there right now.
(00:34) Stephanie Warner: Praise God for air conditioning. No, it’s good. Well, we are happy to be here on the trail with everybody. Rain or shine and heat or cold. And before we get into the meat of the episode, I just wanted to make you aware, if you are enjoying this series, you may be interested to know that Deeper Walk is hosting a spiritual warfare online conference at the end of August. This is called Battle Ready. It’s a pay-it-forward conference, which means you can also attend for free. We don’t want money to be an obstacle for you here. And you’re going to hear from Dr. Marcus Warner, Dr. Karl Payne, Pastor Dan Allison, and it’s going to be very practical, and you get some good perspectives. So more about that, you can see the link in the description. Yes. Okay. So…
(01:37) Marcus Warner: Yep. No, yeah, it’s going to be a great conference. Always fun to connect with Karl Payne and Dan Allison teaches the advanced spiritual warfare class for us at our school. So this should be good. A little bit of apologetics, a little bit of how to, and getting battle ready. So…
(01:57) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yeah, battle ready. So here we are. The goal of this series is to equip you with a spiritual warfare first aid kit, so you can function with more freedom on your deeper walk with God. So, you know, I think we’ve got this freedom theme happening over the course of this year. That wasn’t entirely intentional, but God knew. This is great. And for this series I also want to direct you to – so this is our book. What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare.
And we also have a free discussion guide, downloadable discussion guide for you in the link in the description as well. So avail yourself of that for your book studies, your book buddies, whatever you are using it for. And without any further ado, let’s dig into chapter three, all about authority. Which, you know, could be a good tea shop.
(02:54) Marcus Warner: Yeah, exactly. No, we should probably start with a definition, right? So, the trying to distinguish power and authority. All right, so power is actually the ability to make something happen because you have the strength to do it. So whereas authority is the right to represent that strength or that power. And so, classic example would be a police officer.
(03:23) Marcus Warner: And that is if you take on a police officer, you might think to yourself, well, I can handle this person. I’m stronger than them. I could take this officer. But you wouldn’t just be going up against that police officer. You’d be going up against the government that that police officer represents. And that government represents power, right? So that power now is going to be geared at you.
And so when it comes to spiritual warfare, we like to say that demons know that Christians have authority. They respond to and respect that authority, but they also want to press in and challenge to see if you know that you have authority. Because if you don’t know you have authority, then they can kind of make life much harder on you. And so just to get the definition straight, power is actually the strength to make things happen. Authority is the right to represent power.
(04:22) Marcus Warner: So I never go into, like an encounter with something demonic going, I’m stronger than you, right? I go into that encounter going, I represent a power way stronger than you. And it’s on the basis of the name of Jesus and that power that we’re having this little interaction here.
(04:42) Stephanie Warner: Absolutely. That’s a really good foundational framework. And on that note, I’m going to read a little excerpt from the book here for you to interact with. Very short, says, “The Christian’s authority over demons is not a spiritual gift. The authority of the believer is rooted in the fact that we are in Christ, and in Christ we are seated with him in the heavenly realms far above the angels, whether evil or elect.” Right? So could you comment on that?
(05:11) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so there are spiritual gifts that get used in spiritual warfare ministry, right? And the way that you’re wired and the way that God has gifted you will impact the way that you do this kind of ministry. So some people are very mercy-oriented and some people are very justice-oriented, and some people speak with – they have a gift that gives them more power that is present because of that, but it’s not more authority that’s present.
The authority comes from the passage that says, first it’s in Ephesians 1. It tells us that Jesus, when he rose again, ascended to the right hand of God and was seated there. And it says he was seated far above, and it gives a list of all of these unseen realm principalities, powers, authorities, rulers, dominions, all this. And then one, like two paragraphs later, in the Greek, I think it’s one paragraph later, it says, and you also were seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. So Paul doesn’t repeat the list because he just said it. And that is, but we being in Christ are seated above. Right?
So the idea that we’re seated above is not primarily like I’m on the third floor, you’re on the first floor. It is above in the sense of authority. I am over you in authority. So that’s where the idea of the believer’s authority comes from. It is anchored in this idea that I’m seated with Christ. And then being seated with Christ, I am seated in a position of authority above these powers and dominions. And so we tell people that this is a real authority, but it is a delegated authority, and it is a limited authority. So, you know, we can unpack that too. But it’s clearly rooted in our, what’s called our session with Christ, that we are seated with him in the heavenly realms.
(07:16) Stephanie Warner: Yes. I definitely want to get back to that point you just made. But before we do, I want to press in a little further even on this “seated in the heavenly realms” or “seated above” quote. So I’m going to say a-a-hem class, take out your books and turn to page, it’s on page thirty three. You can see this handy dandy diagram that walks…
(07:45) Marcus Warner: Sounds like you said “turty tree.” Your little Irish got in there. Okay.
(07:49) Stephanie Warner: Turty tree. I’m Irish now, yes. And we call this the victor versus victim chart. And it’s really helpful to just kind of visualize what you’re talking about. So I would just say, like many Christians live in this sort of victim mindset position of trying to fight the devil in their own strength, or feeling defeated and discouraged because they just don’t understand their authority. What you were alluding to that, it’s not our power versus the devil’s power, right? It’s Jesus. We are representing the kingdom of heaven. So yeah, would you speak to that diagram a little bit more, in that victor versus victim…
(08:32) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so this diagram, the basics of it were developed by, you know, your grandfather. So, and it is this idea that there are three realms of being. There is the realm of God and only one inhabitant there, right? The Trinity is the only inhabitant of the realm of divinity. And then there’s the realm of the angelic, which would be the realm of unseen spirit beings who are not divine, who are below God. And then there’s the natural realm where humans and animals are, and that’s down below that. So this comes from Psalm eight, which says that he has created us a little lower than the angels.
(09:22) Marcus Warner: And that Jesus became a little lower than the angels in his incarnation, but is now crowned with glory and honor and is now above the angels. And Hebrews, again in the book of Hebrews, makes a big deal out of the fact that he is as far superior to the angels as, you know, God is. And so the three levels of this diagram come from this idea that you’ve got divine, you’ve got angelic, you’ve got human. And each of those represents a level of just being.
And so in his incarnation, Jesus left the divine, he emptied himself, and he became human. And not only did he become human, it says he became a servant to humanity and died on the cross for all of humanity. And then was raised from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God, where he was given a name above every name, which is interesting, right? Because he’s already the son of God. He’s the son of God from all of eternity. It was like, in what sense is he being given something he didn’t already have?
And I look at it as he’s kind of like he’s the crown prince of the empire. But he also went out and fought the rebellious first knight and defeated him. And so he is now given the title officially, like he was born to it and he’s earned it, you know, and it’s his. So he’s given a name above every name. And that’s also why it says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And so the implication here is that there is a new reality after the death and resurrection that did not exist before the death and resurrection. And that new reality had to do with the level of authority that Jesus had over the spiritual realms.
Like apparently God had given some kind of greater license to the devil and the fallen angels and all that before the cross. And afterwards, Jesus was given a higher place and greater authority because he had now earned it. And that’s why, you know, kind of what Revelation is about when it says worthy is the lamb to receive these things. So yeah, and then he shares that with us. So as those belonging to him, we share in those things. And so we have a delegated authority from him.
(12:16) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Because we are seated in Christ.
(12:19) Marcus Warner: You know, we aren’t him, so we don’t like…
(12:22) Stephanie Warner: Right. This is a great time to get back to that other point, which was getting into some common errors about authority.
Error number one, believing Christians have no authority. Error number two, believing Christians have all authority. So unpack that as it makes sense to you.
(12:39) Marcus Warner: Sure. So several years ago I had people hand me two different pamphlets from their favorite, you know, preachers, as people will do. And one of them was basically making the case that Christians don’t have authority over demons. And it was basically an overreaction to some of the charismatic theology they were encountering. And the other was a pamphlet where a very charismatic pastor was saying, when I speak, Jesus is speaking, right? I have the same authority as Jesus, because when I speak in the name of Jesus, Jesus is speaking. And so he’s essentially saying, I have all authority in Christ, which gets into, I can declare reality, I can make things. It doesn’t work.
So I thought it was interesting that I got both of those in the same week from people. And so the argument for no authority was anchored only in one text, it was Jude. And it was this unique passage where you know Lucifer and Michael are battling over the body of Moses, right? Which turns out that there is intertestamental literature about this. But the point, you know, in the text is that Michael did not say to Satan, I rebuke you, but said, you know, the Lord rebuke you. And so the argument is Michael is greater than we are.
So if Michael doesn’t have authority over the enemy, how could we have an authority over the enemy? Which I think is like one of the weakest possible arguments anybody has ever made on this. Like, it’s like you just got to intentionally forget that the cross happened and that all these other things. Because Michael and Lucifer would have been fighting over the body of Moses pre-cross back then. So the whole authority structure was different. And two, if you use these three realms…
(14:42) Stephanie Warner: Right. The diagram is helpful here.
(14:45) Marcus Warner: Michael’s in that middle realm, and we’ve actually been seated at a position up above them. So the person doesn’t make any argument against these other positions because they clearly haven’t even thought about these other positions. They just don’t want Christians to have authority because they’re so afraid of being charismatic. And I’m like, you don’t have to be charismatic or not to believe this. This is just what the Bible teaches. So that’s a problem, one.
Two is, and then on the all authority part of it, that’s where you get. Yeah. You get people playing God and they’re like, I’m ordering a division of angels over here and I’m ordering Michael and his angels to go over there because I’m like, really? Because I don’t think that’s the point. And so you also get the idea that, because where people like that want to go is, I can make any illness disappear, I can bless anybody with, you know wealth and health and all the rest of it. That’s where they want to go with it. So, I say they’re both errors, they’re both extremes that we want to stay away from and neither one of them are biblical.
(15:58) Stephanie Warner: And I will just add to that, I can make anything happen sort of error, that there’s a lot I see in common with that, you just have to be discerning and careful about with, how do I say this? You know, we live in a culture where people talk about manifesting things or we talk about, you know, it’s treating faith kind of like magic. Now that’s not all it is. That’s oversimplifying. I know there’s lots of nuance to all of the things, but I just think we have to be careful about that. So speak in.
(16:30) Marcus Warner: Sure. No, there’s no question. So that is a biblical thing, is to distinguish faith and magic. So they aren’t actually that close together. They just sort of mirror each other a little bit, I suppose. So let me just walk you through the – I Samuel gives us a nice picture of this in just the way that the stories are arranged.
You see first of all, that the people of Israel saying, we’re tired of always being in these wars against our enemies. We need something. And they turn to magic. And they’ve turned to magic specifically in the idea, we’re going to bring the Ark of the Covenant into battle with us. And this magic item is going to give us victory. That’s different than trusting God, because trusting God would be, let’s obey God and do things his way. And follow his law and how his law says to wage war, and let’s go seek God for his will on how to fight this battle, not let’s bring this magic box into the battle and hope that it defeats our enemies for us. So that’s putting their trust in magic.
And then in the middle, Samuel leads the people in a revival where they renounce that, and God gives them a dramatic victory over the enemy as a gift because now they are having faith, and now they are throwing away their idols, and making a pact to serve God only. But that lasts a very short time.
And the people come back and say, yeah, we can’t trust this. Give us a man. You know, we want a king. And so first they put their trust in magic, then they put their trust in a man. But in the middle, this sort of chiastic structure you get is what’s supposed to happen, and that is to put your faith in God. So yeah, there’s a big difference between those and unfortunately there’s a lot of people who think that if you have enough faith you can make anything happen and that really is the realm of magic and not the realm of obedient faith.
(18:41) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Oh man, there’s so much more we could say on that, but we’ll have to come back to it another time. I would like for us to move into uses of authority. So in this chapter you talk about binding, loosing, and evicting.
(18:56) Marcus Warner: Okay, so binding and loosing. Yeah. So let’s start with binding and loosing. Binding has to do with limiting demonic activity. And loosing has to do with releasing somebody from demonic activity. And so limiting and loosing, right, are kind of the two ideas there. And then evicting kind of speaks for itself as the idea of making something leave. Now I’m going to unpack evicting first and then we’ll walk backwards.
Evicting makes it sound like someone is possessed by a demon and that demon has to be kicked out, right? So the Greek word ekbalo to be cast out. So that is one form of eviction. However, we would use the same word for a demon that is present someplace we don’t want it to be, and we are evicting it from that place. So that place doesn’t have to be inside of me. All right. So if I’m saying, yes, we are using eviction language when we tell demons to leave. So in the name of Jesus, I command you to leave.
That doesn’t mean that I think the person is possessed or even inhabited. What it means is, that demon has been given permission to a place in this person’s life and it needs to leave. And so it’s the same word. And that confuses some people because I’ve heard people argue that the very fact that we use eviction language means we’re teaching that Christians can be possessed and that they don’t go together. The eviction is the word you’d use when you’re casting a demon out of someone who’s possessed, but it’s also the word you use when you’re just making a demon leave any place where it’s not supposed to be. And so that’s why it can be a little bit confusing there.
Let’s go back to binding and loosing. Binding and loosing. We’ve been talking about permission and authority. The demons can only do what they have permission to do. So binding and loosing are directly about permission, and eviction is about authority. And so I’m using my authority to limit a demon that has permission to be there. Sorry, I can’t kick him out yet. He’s got a right to be there, but I’m limiting what that demon can do. So that’s why it’s the image of tying him up. All right. I haven’t cast him out yet, haven’t made him leave yet, but he’s tied up and limited in his activity.
So the dominant use of this that we found in spiritual warfare ministry is when a demon is interfering with your ability to speak to somebody, or they are interfering with that person’s ability to speak to you. And so, like for example, we’ve had people who are saying, in the name of Jesus, I renounce my sin, I choose to confess, and now in Jesus’ name I command the enemy to leave. And they’re getting ready to do that, and they can’t finish it. The words won’t come out.
And so I’ve heard numerous times people say, in j-j-j, you know, they can’t get it out, can’t say Jesus. And so I’ll just say, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I bind the demon from doing this. And sometimes I’ll add, you may have a right to be here, but they have a right to say this. So they always back off and the person can get through their thing. So that’s binding, right? It’s limiting the activity of the demon prior to eviction, even though they have ability to be there.
Another context we might use binding, for example, is when I am in somebody else’s home or I’m in somebody else’s place, and the demons have permission to be there because of the stuff that that person is doing. And I can’t necessarily kick them out because I don’t have jurisdiction there, but I can bind them and I can limit their activity. Like you’re not going to affect me while we’re here. You’re not going to affect what’s going on in this. And so that’s kind of the role of binding. That’s limiting things, demonic activity while they still have permission to be there before they can be evicted. Or even if they’re not going to be evicted at all, because you know, whoever you’re dealing with doesn’t want to get rid of them for whatever reason.
(23:15) Marcus Warner: And so the loosing then is the other way around. And loosing is removing permission. It’s the things that we do to remove a demon’s permission to be present. So for example, that concept of forgiveness is sometimes a translation of the Greek word luo, which means to loose. And so forgiveness is a great example of loosing. And that is, I am loosing myself from the bondage of bitterness. I am loosing this person from the debt. I am letting go of this.
It’s also a good word for confession or repentance. I am loosing myself from this by confessing it. I am dealing with the permission. So the things that I do to loose myself from the agreements that I have entered into, the things that I do to loose myself from permissions that have been granted, that’s kind of what we mean by that.
So we got binding, limiting the activity, loosing, getting rid of permissions, and then eviction is casting them out from a place they no longer belong, right? They’re not supposed to be there anymore. So you’re getting rid of them.
(24:27) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. This is really good. Next episode, we are going to be unpacking the process. We’re going to be unpacking the Karl Payne’s three C’s and we’re going to go deeper into your S.O.U.L.L acrostic about how we give permission and the remedies for those. I think we have already talked about “if prayers” here, but I think repetition is always good for important things. Would you just in this context of authority and such, address “if prayers”?
(24:56) Marcus Warner: So an “if prayer” is kind of a testing prayer, right? It’s where I’m not sure what’s going on. Because let’s face it, when we’re dealing with spiritual warfare, most of what we’re dealing with is unseen. And so, one of the ways that you test is when you’re not sure if permission has been given or not, you can use an “if prayer”. Say, if I have given permission through this thing that I have done, then I renounce that in Jesus’ name.
This is often used when there are counterfeit supernatural experiences. Like, for example, maybe you went to somebody, and you meant well, and you thought you were in a safe place, but when they put their hand on you, the spirit that they passed to you was not the Holy Spirit. And you’re going to test that now. So you pray, God, if when that person laid hands on me, I received the Holy Spirit, then thank you for that. May I use whatever gift I receive to your glory. But if I was deceived and there was actually a demon that was passed to me, then in Jesus’ name I renounce that. I command that wicked spirit to leave and take all of its works and effects with you.
And we have actually in our ministry’s history, hundreds of stories of people losing whatever gift, you know, that they had received because it was actually, you know, it’s kind of like when a witch blesses you, it’s still a demon that is doing what they’re doing, it’s not actually a blessing.
(26:22) Stephanie Warner: There’s no such thing as white magic.
(26:26) Marcus Warner: There’s no such thing as white magic, which most people don’t want to hear because it’s the solution of almost every Disney movie, but it’s still a problem.
(26:32) Stephanie Warner: And I do just want to reiterate which I think is evident, but you know, we do believe in spiritual gifts, and we do believe the Holy Spirit is active in all of this stuff. We’re just talking about that it can be counterfeited and how to deal with it if….
(26:51) Marcus Warner: Yeah. So it’s my point is it’s more common than most people think for this stuff to get counterfeited. And there’s too many people who assume that it was done by a Christian in a Christian setting, and the people all present all thought it was what was happening was okay. Because I find that a lot of testing is more like, how did you feel about that?
(27:18) Marcus Warner: And as long as everybody in authority felt okay about it, that’s all the testing that’s needed. And this is just taking it a level deeper to a little more direct testing. Like let’s just actually talk to the spirit involved here. And we know we won’t be offending the Holy Spirit when we do that, because he told us to test every spirit. So we’re like, in obedience to you, Holy Spirit, we’re going to test this. And you know, so…
(27:44) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yep. Well, we are so pleased to offer this podcast free across the world. Thank you to each of you who partners with us to keep us on the trail, whether that’s in prayer, volunteering, sharing episodes with friends, donations, all the things. Thank you so much for being on the trail with us and making this book study possible. And again, encourage you to check out the Battle Ready, the Battle Ready seminar conference that’s happening August 29th. And I think it’s going to be really good. All right, Father, final thoughts for this episode.
(28:25) Marcus Warner: Yeah, and when we’re talking about authority, we also can’t leave out the idea of prayer. And when we pray in the name of Jesus, we are praying from a position of authority that says, in the name of Jesus, I’m now talking to my Father in heaven by virtue of my position in him. And it’s a different kind of thing. I don’t have authority over God to tell him what to do, right?
So God wants me to understand that he wants me to use what I have been given, and what I’ve found is that God doesn’t want to do things for us that He’s designed us to do for ourselves. And so one of these things is praying, and praying in the name of Jesus is really an idea of praying from that position of authority, which is another way of saying, don’t pray like a victim, pray like a victor. And that makes a big difference.
(29:29) Stephanie Warner: That’s a good word. All right, see you next week.
