The Three Enemies

Ephesians 2:1-3 “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

Disobedience can come in three ways:

1. Sin (Hamartia): when we miss the target.
2. Transgression is when we cross a boundary that God has given. An example is when God drew a boundary for Adam and Eve around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When they crossed that line and violated the instruction that God gave, it was a transgression. 
3. Iniquity is when sin/ transgression  becomes a lifestyle or a culture in our lives. 

In this passage, we see that God has resurrected our spirits (born again experience) that were dead in transgressions and iniquities. We used to follow the ways of this world (cosmos: world system) which are under the control of the devil; who is at work in the disobedient. All of us lived like this, giving into the desires of our flesh. We deserved the wrath of God. 

We see three main enemies of ours in this passage:

1. The ways of this world (The World)
2. The ruler of the kingdom of the air (The Devil and his demons)
3. The cravings of our flesh (The Flesh)

The world is the visible enemy. The devil is the invisible enemy (an evil spirit). The flesh is the inward enemy (it is inside us). 
When a person is saved, these enemies do not disappear/ vanish. The war with these enemies only starts when we are saved. Till then we were slaves to these enemies, but now we begin to fight against them. Before we were saved there was no war, but when we decided to live a new life in Christ, these three became our enemies. 

The war with the world and the devil are external, while the war with our flesh is internal; it’s a civil war! 
When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, the devil and his demons begin fighting us. It is a misconception that all the demons leave us when we become a child of God. Some may leave, but not all. Usually,  the evil spirits hide inactively inside us and spring up once in a while. When we are in the presence of Jesus, many a time , demons do not actually leave instead they manifest. They leave only when we command them to leave in the name of Jesus. 

When Jesus stepped on the land Gadarenes that held the demon-possessed man, his demons started manifesting. When Jesus commanded them to leave the man, they left and filled the pigs on the island (Matthew 8.28-34)

Sometimes we think that when we are saved, all the enemies run away. But they do not leave a person automatically even in the presence of Jesus, instead they begin to manifest. We have to command it to leave  in Jesus’ name. Jesus has given us the  authority to expel demons.  

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