NOTES for Eph 6:12

It is not always easy to understand adequately Paul's words concerning the spiritual fight. For us today "the principalities, the powers and the rulers of the world” designate either the representatives of the earthly power, or a certain spiritual hierarchy, of course of the darkness.

However, neither the “yahvisme”, nor the Christian tradition has ever tended to an excessive spiritualism. Certainly, the existence of the spiritual world wasn’t a secret neither for the Judaism, nor for the Christianity, but this world (in exception maybe of the sects with gnostic orientation) has never thought as something, completely separated from our world.

Besides, neither the Jews, nor the Christians have ever exaggerated the influence of this world on the human affairs, although they did not deny it. And under "principalities", "powers" and "rulers of the world", if Paul probably hinted at certain spirits of the darkness, then it would be above all only about the sense of their influence on the spiritual state of concrete people. But indeed, the apostle says concretely that Christians will fight not with people!

It is not surprising: indeed, the battle of concrete people (even if it is about representatives of the power) can hardly change something radically: to the replacement of some come others, no society can be without power, and there is no reason for hope that the new ones will be better that the old.

The only battle, to which are called Christians is the battle against evil, in which lies the world. And there is only one way to resist this evil: do in such way that the Kingdom spreads the most fast and most widely possible in the world, transforming it. Because only a complete victory of the Kingdom can end this evil, in which the fallen world is laying.