Satan Hasn’t Retired—So Why Have We?

The deadliest enemy of your soul is not stress, work, or sickness. It is Satan himself. Yet you’d hardly know it by listening to most pulpits today. The modern church acts as if the devil hung up his armor in Eden and retired. But Scripture screams otherwise.

Many Christians nod politely that demons and Satan are “real.” But where are the sermons? The conferences? The books? The podcasts? We speak of spiritual warfare as if it were a chapter in history, not a present danger.

It’s like treating 9/11 as a one-time tragedy, then pretending terrorism no longer exists. If people really believed the threat was real, they’d live differently. Yet we act as though Satan had one big moment in the past and then disappeared.

“Jesus is stronger than Satan,” we say. And of course that’s true. But too often, that truth is used as an excuse to stop paying attention. We act as if God’s sovereignty makes Satan harmless. As if the warnings in Scripture are just background noise. It’s like we believe the spiritual realm exists on paper, but not in practice—real in theory, but irrelevant in reality. We treat the Bible’s warnings about Satan the same way liberals treat the miracles of the Bible: nice stories, but not something we actually expect to see at work in the real world.

From the Beginning, It’s Been War

From the very start, Satan has been our fiercest enemy. Pharaoh wasn’t the first tyrant. Goliath wasn’t the first giant. Rome wasn’t the first empire. The first battle was with a serpent—a spiritual being, cunning and deadly, who deceived Adam and Eve into rebellion.

And that serpent never retired. Today he blinds unbelievers, tempts the saints, and wages war against Christ’s church. Almost every New Testament book warns about this conflict. Out of all the New Testament writings, only Philemon doesn’t mention spiritual opposition.

If you preach systematically through the New Testament, you cannot avoid it. But we do. We soften it. We skip it. We act as if it’s a fairy tale.

Fighting the Wrong Battles

Instead of equipping the saints to resist the devil, the church has traded its sword for squabbles.

Some fight with the weapons of law and power—dreaming of theonomy, nationalism, and culture wars. They think legislation can open blind eyes. But the law has no power to raise the dead.

Others fight with the weapons of relevance and compromise—chasing progress, therapeutic sermons, or the approval of the culture. But compromise cannot save.

Different strategies. Same mistake. Both forget Paul’s words: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood.” And while the church wastes its strength on the wrong enemies, Satan laughs.

The Only Power That Saves

Paul declared: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.” Not the law. Not politics. Not cultural influence. The gospel.

And the gospel is not a slogan or a ticket to heaven. It is the daily armor of God, without which you cannot stand. Every piece of protection Paul names in Ephesians 6 is Christ Himself. The belt is His truth. The breastplate is His righteousness. The shield is faith in Him. The helmet is His finished salvation. And the sword is His Word. To neglect this is to walk naked into a battlefield where the enemy does not sleep.

The Tragedy of Our Pulpits

Here lies the scandal: without even announcing it, our pulpits have left the church unarmed.

In Reformed circles, sermons often collapse into lectures. In megachurches, they collapse into self-help TED Talks. Either way, Satan doesn’t care which poison you drink—so long as you remain defenseless.

I once heard a preacher say, “Preach Ephesians 6 and then move on.” As if the battle ends when the sermon series does! But that is exactly the problem—we handle passages on spiritual warfare like they only matter while we’re in them, not as truths that define our lives.

We would never treat Christ that way—only mentioning Him when He appears in the text and then setting Him aside until He shows up again. Christ is the point of the whole Bible, and Scripture tells us that an entire spiritual army exists to keep us from knowing Him and trusting Him. Paul’s warning in Ephesians 6 isn’t just a sermon outline. It’s a worldview. It’s the lens through which we are called to see the world every single day.

Preach the Whole Counsel of God

The answer is not endless speculation about demons, nor cowardly silence about the war. The answer is to preach the whole counsel of God.

And that counsel is clear: the greatest danger you face is not what you can see, touch, or measure—but the lies and deceptions of spiritual powers that war against your soul.

To ignore this is to disarm the church. To proclaim it is to give God’s people armor, courage, and hope in Christ.

The Call to Arms

Pastor—preach Christ against the powers. Do not starve your sheep while the wolves circle. Christian—stand firm in His armor. Do not be lulled into thinking the battle is politics, preferences, or personal improvement.

This is not a side issue. It is the fight of your life. Ignore it, and the sheep will be devoured. Preach Christ, and the church will stand.

The war is relentless. But the victory is His.