Pastor and bestselling author John Piper recently explained that while Christians face real human conflict, such struggles are ultimately rooted in spiritual warfare, and emphasized the urgency of responding with Gospel-centered resilience and the armor of God.
In a recent episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast, the 79-year-old chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, addressed a listener wrestling with the practical meaning of Ephesians 6:12: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces in the heavenly realms.”
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The listener asked how Christians can apply that verse to the tangible, often painful realities of daily life, especially when interpersonal conflict makes it feel like people, not demons, are the real problem.
“This question is not artificial in any way,” Piper said. “It’s right there in Ephesians 6. It demands our attention. It’s a good question. I like it — I like this kind of question.”
Piper began by breaking down Paul’s words in Ephesians 6:11–12, which call believers to put on the “whole armor of God” in order to stand against the schemes of the devil. The passage continues, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
The challenge, Piper said, lies in understanding whether Paul is excluding human conflict altogether or suggesting something deeper about the nature of that conflict.
“‘Flesh and blood’ here refers to human beings over against supernatural demonic reality,” Piper explained. “But what about the fact that Paul did have real human adversaries that threatened his faith and the faith of his churches and his own life?”
Piper pointed to several passages in Paul’s writings where human opposition is not only acknowledged but also directly confronted. In 1 Corinthians 16:9, Paul writes, “A wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” In 2 Corinthians 11:13–15, Paul describes false apostles and deceitful workers as “servants” of Satan.
“It’s patently obvious, and everybody knows it, that Paul had real human adversaries to wrestle with. And so do we,” Piper said. “Paul is reviled; he’s persecuted; he’s slandered; he’s beaten; he’s whipped; he’s imprisoned; he’s deserted; he’s betrayed. And all of those are humans doing the mess, right?”
The Desiring God founder also emphasized that Paul saw these visible conflicts as intertwined with spiritual warfare. He noted that in Ephesians 4:14, Paul warns against being “carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” — language that mirrors the description of Satan’s tactics.
“I would go so far as to say that I don’t think Paul believes there is any human sinning that is not also influenced by Satan and his forces,” Piper said. “In other words, I don’t think it’s ever helpful to try to think of human evil as one thing and demonic evil as another thing. They’re always interwoven.”
Piper pointed to Ephesians 2:1–3, where Paul describes believers’ former lives before Christ as “following the course of this world,” “following the prince of the power of the air,” and “carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.”
“That sounds a lot like flesh and blood. And it is,” Piper said. “Flesh and blood apart from Christ is always under the sway of the spirit of the age, and it’s always under the sway of the prince of the power of the air, and it’s always acting out of its own bodily, mental desires. Therefore, in one sense, there is no separation in our warfare with human sinfulness and demonic schemes. They overlap; they’re intertwined.”
One example, Piper noted, comes from 2 Corinthians 2:10–11, where Paul links forgiveness with resisting Satan’s schemes: “Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive… so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.”
“A person who sins against us, a real flesh-and-blood human being, is in a place where we have to do some kind of spiritual warfare against the satanic, community-destroying work of Satan,” Piper said. “That’s real flesh-and-blood, human opposition and adversity, and it is a satanic design to destroy the church.”
In this light, Piper said, Ephesians 6:12 does not deny the reality of human conflict — it situates that conflict within a broader, more sobering spiritual landscape.
“When it says, ‘We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the [demonic forces],’ I think Paul means this: We do not wrestle against mere flesh and blood, mere humans. The opposition against us in this world is always bigger than that,” Piper said.
He cited 2 Corinthians 4:4, which says the minds of unbelievers are blinded by “the god of this world,” and Acts 26:17–18, where Jesus commissions Paul to “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.”
“We’re always dealing with two issues: the darkness of sin and the bondage of Satan,” Piper said. “The good news is that, in the death of Christ, the price has been paid for the forgiveness of those sins, and the damning power of the devil has been broken.”
Piper encouraged listeners to put on “the whole armor of God,” as Paul commands in Ephesians 6, and to step into daily struggles — both seen and unseen — with confidence in the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit.
“We put our whole armor on. That’s what we should do: Put on the whole armor of God and go triumphantly in the Gospel and the power of the Spirit,” Piper said.
According to a 2015 Gallup Poll, while about 9 in 10 Americans said they believed in God (89%), only about 61% of the same sample believe Satan exists.
Similarly, the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that roughly 7 in 10 (72%) Americans said they believe in Heaven — defined as a place “where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded.”
But at the same time, Pew found that only 58% of U.S. adults believe in Hell — defined as a place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.”
In an episode from 2024, Piper explained why Satan can wield such immense power over the spiritual world, especially when it comes to blinding people to the Gospel.
According to Piper, by allowing Satan’s presence to persist, God’s triumph in overcoming both the blindness of human depravity and the deception of Satan is magnified.
“God is showing us the double prison we are in,” Piper said. “We are doubly dark: the darkness of our own shackles around our wrists and ankles, and the darkness of Satan’s locked doors — like Peter in prison, had to have the hands freed, then he had to have the gates freed and the doors freed.”
“There were layers of bondage: the darkness of our own delusions about God — that’s one level of bondage and blindness — and then the added darkness of Satan’s lies and deceptions all around us.”
“If he obliterated Satan earlier, his power would be glorified. But if Satan remains, and we are able to defeat his deceptions by seeing the superior beauties of Christ, then not only is the superior power of Christ glorified, but also the superior beauty of Christ is glorified,” Piper said.
“We are so corrupt, we cannot see that Christ is a superior beauty, a superior worth, a superior greatness, and therefore a superior satisfaction over everything else. In our depravity, we are blind to all of that.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
