The contention of this series of articles is that the Bible is set in the land of wild things. That is, the Bible is more fantastical—beautiful, dangerous, and strange—than we give it credit for. What we incorrectly call the natural and the supernatural, as if they are distinct and isolated realms, are actually part of a single, fascinating, and intertwined world. In the Bible, heaven and earth constantly interact and are alive with all kinds of creatures, forces, and powers—both seen and unseen.

What are these powers? What do they do in the world? How do they operate? How do they relate to God, to humans, and to the story of rescue and redemption the Bible tells? It’s past time we re-engage the Bible’s overlooked story of the powers. The six articles cover the following major biblical topics:

1. Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet the Powers
2. The World-Rulers of this Darkness
3. The Satan and the Law that Enslaves
4. The Bondage of Creation
5. Jesus’ Victory Over the Powers
6. The Powers and the People of Jesus Today

* I am especially indebted to G. B. Caird’s small book Principalities and Powers for the main outline of this series (based on his Chancellor’s Lectures in 1954 at Queen’s University).

Living as Jesus People

We are the people of Jesus living in an enchanted world.

Having been instructed by the Scriptures, we are aware of the kind of story we’re in.

Having been united with the Messiah, we’ve learned things, and we are now called to do things.

We are striving to live in the way of Jesus, to be his followers, not just his believers. We have transferred our allegiance to his kingdom, present and coming. We know that our Leader and Lord battled against the world-rulers of this darkness, and he prevailed against them. We know that like the enormous red dragon of John’s Apocalypse, the principalities and powers have been thrown down in a mighty defeat. They’ve lost their place in the heavenly council and they are aware of their approaching doom. They are servants of that vicious dragon, and now they prowl the earth looking for revenge. They are filled with fury, and have turned to unleash their hurtful rage on the community loyal to the Messiah.

On us.

We are not indifferent people gently passing our time in this world, merely awaiting our heavenly reward. We are children of the Divine Warrior, those called to take up the struggle against the darkness until the return of our King. As his chosen people, a holy nation, we are now on the front lines of the struggle against the dark lords. We have been called to take a stand against them.

But how? What are we supposed to actually do?

The answer, according to the New Testament, is for us to live into the victory the Messiah has already won. His path, as always, is our path. To give allegiance to Jesus is to accept his teaching. He has illumined the way for us, and if we are to win our contests against the darkness, we must approach them as our Leader did.

As we noted in the previous installment in this series, the Messiah’s conquest happened in three particular ways. Each of these directly shapes how we take up our own places in this long-running spiritual campaign:

1. We have a new standing in the Messiah.

Because the atoning death of Jesus took away the legal charges made against us by the powers, we are now people in good standing. Through the work of Christ, God declares us to be in the right. This has disarmed ha satan, the great accuser who has always been against us (see Colossians 2).

It also has another effect, often neglected in discussions of the atonement. The sacrificial death of Jesus diminishes the powers and simultaneously elevates humanity back to its proper role in the creation. That is, our fundamental human vocation in the world is restored: image-bearers of God made to manage the creation.

This is a key reversal of what human rebellion and misplaced allegiance had done. When we turned to worship and serve things other than our Creator, we handed power to malevolent principalities and spiritual dominions. They then took advantage of the situation to disrupt the life and flourishing of God’s good world.

The death of the Messiah on the cross turns this around and reinstates humanity to its rightful position of authority. As N. T. Wright explains:

So the first thing for followers of King Jesus to do in our spiritual battle is to take up our God-given position of those who create and shape culture to reflect the life and love of the Creator himself.

2. We have a new primary allegiance to the Messiah.

Humans are always looking for a group, a tribe, or a people to be a part of. We were made to be communal, and one way or another we will find a way to identify with others. What is the proper basis for this community?

The second thing Christ’s victory over the powers provides is a new foundation for corporate identity and action. Rather than giving our ultimate loyalty to any nation-state, any ethnic or racial group, any temporal institution, human philosophy, or economic system, our primary identification, name, and coherence as a group is now found in the Second Adam.

The renewal of humanity’s corporate existence is brought into effect by the appearance of a human pioneer, the Son of Man, who opens up a previously undiscovered route to human solidarity. Our adoption as children of God into the worldwide family of God provides us a new home and a deep unity with others.

In his short, powerful book Christ and the Powers (especially pp 47-54), Hendrikus Berkhof briefly outlines how this new identity in Christ works out in the public sphere. Once we stop absolutizing the powers, giving them our worship and highest fealty, we are free to manage the world more simply according to practical goals. If we quit acting as if countries, or economic systems, or money, or power, or technological tools, or any other thing in all of creation are gods, then we can begin to treat them as means, not as ends.

By not investing our identities in these things which are not worthy or capable of carrying them, we make their role in society more modest. We can de-escalate many human conflicts and have conversations about what works for the flourishing of human life – conversations that are less fraught with the ultimacy we’ve previously placed on them.

Berkhof notes that the powers will resist this by their usual means of propaganda, terror, and the ideologizing of all of life, trying to suck us all into life-or-death battles over our old idols. But those who are new creations in Christ have already transferred their core allegiance to the freshly revealed kingdom of light, which breaks the old thinking of the kingdom of darkness into pieces.

Historically (and very sadly) Christians have not always shown the ability to successfully follow through on this transfer of their highest devotion and obedience to King Jesus. Crucial spiritual battles have been lost to the powers precisely because those claiming Christ have continued to turn lesser things into idols.

Consider, as one example, the founding of the United States and the white supremacy and racism leading to slavery and the genocide of Native peoples, positions that were so often embraced by those who self-identified as Christians. These are classic tools of the powers to divide peoples, examples of which can be seen around the world and throughout history.

New ground can be taken back from the evil powers if believers would always make it perfectly clear, in word and in action, that they serve only one Lord and Master.

3. We have a new grounding in the truth of the Messiah

One of the Bible’s central claims is that the world-rulers of our darkness have blinded the minds of those who worship what is not God. In contrast, the true knowledge of God is made known through the Messiah. The wisdom of God, known and lived by the community of Christ, is therefore a powerful means of pushing back the murky and distorting darkness produced by the powers. The spiritual forces of evil have always lived and moved in lies. Deception is one of their primary weapons against us.

As Paul makes especially clear in 2 Corinthians, the light of the gospel is infused with God’s own power to successfully engage in spiritual warfare and push back the darkness. Gospel knowledge is power:

If our gospel still remains “veiled,” it is veiled for people who are perishing. What’s happening there is that the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they won’t see the light of the gospel of the glory of the Messiah, who is God’s image.

-from 2 Corinthians 4 (Kingdom New Testament)

Yes, we are mere humans, but we don’t fight the war in a merely human way. The weapons we use for the fight, you see, are not merely human; they carry a power from God that can tear down fortresses! We tear down clever arguments and every proud notion that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We take every thought prisoner and make it obey the Messiah.

-from 2 Corinthians 10 (Kingdom New Testament)

The realm of ideas is thus one of the key arenas for our spiritual struggle in the present evil age. The wisdom of God is not a merely intellectual exercise, however. It is a full-bodied wisdom that must permeate the entire life and witness of the body of Christ in this world.

The turning point of the story of the Bible is the story of Jesus. The gospel narratives about Jesus are battle stories. In a central way, therefore, the drama of the Bible is spiritual conflict. When the kingdom of light comes to reclaim lost territory, of course the existing powers controlling the kingdom of darkness push back. Hard.

This ongoing struggle is now the story of our lives. The Scriptures introduce us to a world where the wild things are. If we don’t adopt the enchanted worldview of the Bible, we won’t understand the world as it actually is. We won’t know who we are or what we’re supposed to be doing.

The Son of Man has come into the world, showing us a new way to be human. He has already won the decisive battle, so the outcome of the war is not in doubt. Yet that struggle is not yet over, so we too must be spiritual warriors. We wear the full armor of God, so that the reign of God will advance and bring light and life to chaotic, unruly, and broken places. Like the Divine Warrior himself (see Isaiah 59), we stand up and intervene when injustice and wrongdoing wreak havoc on God’s good world. As the living body of the resurrected King of Israel, we too confront the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. As Christ’s new community:

• we embrace the powerful, fortress-breaking truth of the gospel,
• we reclaim our lost human vocation to manage God’s creation in love and service,
• we find our true identity by giving our highest allegiance to the world’s true Lord.

The Bible is a collection of words with power—a living story that invites us in to take up our own places in the struggle against God’s enemies, sin and death. Both the powers and the humans have been in rebellion. But as followers of the Messiah, we’ve been invited to now share in his secret wisdom. The real power of God’s kingdom, the power that defeats evil, has nothing to do with the coercive and harmful weapons of the world. Rather, our triumph is found in the power of self-sacrificial love.

The contention of this series of articles is that the Bible is set in the land of wild things. That is, the Bible is more fantastical—beautiful, dangerous, and strange—than we give it credit for. What we incorrectly call the natural and the supernatural, as if they are distinct and isolated realms, are actually part of a single, fascinating, and intertwined world. In the Bible, heaven and earth constantly interact and are alive with all kinds of creatures, forces, and powers—both seen and unseen.

What are these powers? What do they do in the world? How do they operate? How do they relate to God, to humans, and to the story of rescue and redemption the Bible tells? It’s past time we re-engage the Bible’s overlooked story of the powers. The six articles cover the following major biblical topics:

1. Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet the Powers
2. The World-Rulers of this Darkness
3. The Satan and the Law that Enslaves
4. The Bondage of Creation
5. Jesus’ Victory Over the Powers
6. The Powers and the People of Jesus Today

* I am especially indebted to G. B. Caird’s small book Principalities and Powers for the main outline of this series (based on his Chancellor’s Lectures in 1954 at Queen’s University).

The Bondage of Creation

YHWH is indeed the lord of creation. When we question him and try to make our own case for how things should be, he answers:

Have you ever commanded the morning,
   appointed the dawn to its place,
to seize the earth’s corners,
   that the wicked be shaken from it?
-from Job 38 (The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter)

YHWH’s power is great, and we see vivid pictures throughout the First Testament both of God’s attentive care for all his creatures (cf. Psalm 104), but also his ability to raise up ferocious elements to execute his judgments (cf. Psalm 77). There is one and only one Creator, and there is nothing within the world that can ultimately overcome his rule.

But still.

We have not actually seen what will ultimately be. We live in the time of penultimate.

There is a way it was all was meant to be, but it’s not the way it’s ended up. Not at all. At least not yet.

The Lord created a world and then he made image-bearers, meant to echo, channel, reflect, and imitate God’s own good and gracious rule to support and enhance flourishing life everywhere. That’s what it means to bear God’s image. These human servants were intended to carry forward and implement God’s grace and peace to every thing in every way.

What is man that You should note him,
   and the human creature, that You pay him heed,
and You make him little less than the gods,
   with glory and grandeur You crown him?
You make him rule over the work of Your hands.
   All things You set under his feet.
-from Psalm 8 (The Hebrew Bible, Alter)

But the great rebellion changed everything. As we have already seen, the overreach of the human creatures was ironically an underperformance, leading to the rise of the world-rulers of our present darkness. In the biblical story, this has affected all people — Jew and Gentile alike. Everyone is in bondage to wrongdoing and mortality.

In a world we were meant to rule, we are now ruled. The powers have had their way with us.

And not only with us.

In a world we were meant to rule, we are now ruled. The powers have had their way with us.

If we read the narrative closely, we see that the disruption brought on by the principalities and powers extends throughout all of creation. We learn immediately at the very start of the story that the destiny of humanity and the rest of the world are tied intimately together. When image-bearers fell, the earth too was dragged down.

Evil is not merely a human problem. Evil is a cosmic disaster affecting everything.

In the Bible’s account of the powers, this is expressed in various ways. One very strange part of the picture is that elements of the creation itself seem to easily revert to a kind of rebelliousness against God’s good order. The demons and the powers of chaos have been forced back to the boundaries of the world, but they are not yet completely defeated. When things go wrong (mostly, when human beings are derelict in their moral duties) these powers can spring right back into disruptive action.

So in the prophet Isaiah, for instance, we find passages describing the effects of God’s judgment on wicked nations. When evil people are defeated, their land reverts to a wasteland where unruly plants and wild creatures take over:

Thorns shall spring up in her citadels,
   in her fortresses nettles and briars,
and it shall turn into an abode of jackals,
   a courtyard of ostriches.
And wildcats shall meet hyenas,
   and the satyr shall call to its mate.
There Lilith shall rest
   and find repose for herself.
-from Isaiah 34 (The Hebrew Bible, Alter)

Wait . . . what was that? Satyrs the demon goat-gods? Lilith the night hag? They are back in the land?

This is how the story communicates the dark side of the animal world, long known in folklore, in which unclean creatures consort with the evil spirits, eager to wreak their havoc. Nature red in tooth and claw indeed.

In the Bible’s story, there really are wildlands where the wild things really are in charge. With the world under the powers, the peaceable kingdom remains a prophetic vision, not a present reality.

Along the same line, the Scriptures speak of the continuing powers of chaos, usually housed in the great and riotous sea, ready at any time to undermine good order and reintroduce anarchy. The First Testament refers to Rahab, Leviathan, and Tehom Rabbah (the Great Deep). We can see the great and ongoing battle in the Creation and the Exodus stories. The Chaos King lives in the water, God first subdued him to shape and order the world, and then he cleft the sea again to rescue his people from slavery. As Psalm 74 has it:

Yet God is my king of old,
   worker of rescues in the midst of the earth.
You shattered the sea god with Your strength,
   You smashed the monsters’ heads on the waters.
You crushed the Leviathan’s heads,
   You gave him as food to the desert-folk.
– (The Hebrew Bible, Alter)

And in the Scriptures, the story works through recapitulation. As it has been, so it will be. The shape of the narrative is constantly replaying earlier patterns. In the future time of salvation and rescue, God will act with power again:

On that day the Lord shall punish
   with His fierce and great and mighty sword
Leviathan the slippery serpent,
   Leviathan the twisting serpent,
   and shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
– from Isaiah 27 (The Hebrew Bible, Alter)

God’s stance vis-à-vis these powers of the natural world is that of a Divine Warrior. He clashes with them. The Bible is a battle story. The promise of the Bible is specifically about how the battle will go.

The Bible’s Lens on Our World

As good children of modernity, we have been taught for a long time that all such speculations about demons, nature gods, and powers are really nothing at all. I would submit that all too often even those of us who ostensibly accept the biblical storyline are functional materialists in our day-to-day outlook.

None of this talk of powers, demon-creatures, and mythical beasts comports well with our typically scientific, and let’s be honest, mostly naturalistic view of the world today. But this is precisely the point: the Bible is telling us that there is more to the world than meets the rationalistic eye.

So the world is not what it seems. Not all the powerful actors in this drama are human. There are great and mighty gods of this age, and while we may not use the ancient mythopoetic language of the Bible to describe them, we should not doubt their existence nor their ongoing role in the story.

In the end, the Bible’s view of the creation is therefore mixed. It is always first and foremost the good place God made for us. God cares for it, provides for it and all its creatures, and it has its own place in his coming redemption of all things. But just as the human drama has suffered a deadly disruption, so too has the story of the creation. The world rulers of this darkness have turned the world upside down—and the baneful ramifications run right through the cosmos, from top to bottom.

Bondage is the word that captures the essence of this story. Humans are in slavery to sin and death. The creation is captive to corruption, decay, and disaster. There are moral failures, and there are natural disasters. There are deliberate acts of evil, and there are pandemics.

Which brings us to the Apostle Paul, a man of two worlds—Hellenistic and Jewish. From the Greek side of the story, he knew all about the endless, repeating cycles of the natural world. He was aware of how ancient astrology had weighed down the hearts of so many with its sense of all-pervading futility. From the Jewish side he knew the Scriptures and the painful curse that had fallen on the land.

But Paul also believes this is not a permanent bondage, nor a story of endless cyclical affliction:

This is how I work it out. The sufferings we go through in the present time are not worth putting in the scale alongside the glory that is going to be unveiled for us. Yes: creation itself is on tiptoe with expectation, eagerly awaiting the moment when God’s children will be revealed. Creation, you see, was subjected to pointless futility, not of its own volition, but because of the one who placed it in this subjection, in the hope that creation itself would be freed from its slavery to decay, to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified.

Let me explain. We know that the entire creation is groaning together, and going through labor pains together, up until the present time. Not only so: we too, we who have the first fruits of the spirit’s life within us, are groaning within ourselves, as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our body.

-from Romans 8 (Kingdom New Testament)

How did this dream of a New Exodus become possible? Where does this hope come from? Who brings this breaking of the chains that bind the creation?

We’ve explored the devastating effects wrought by the evil powers. Now it’s time to turn to the one who came to take them on.

Part 5: Jesus’ Victory Over the Powers >>>