Powers And Principalities

by D. Brendan Johnson 

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. – Ephesians 6:12

As we turn the corner on two years of the pandemic, with countless lives lost and the ongoing pain of health workers, we feel so deeply the “spiritual forces of evil” St. Paul names in his letter. Even beyond health, in the fiery suspicion and division that splits families, churches, and communities, we can feel spiritual evil like a cold draft at our backs.  These forces are not new, but in times like these, they show their faces.

What is a Christian to do? Especially for those of us who are becoming healers, how should we respond? We start simply by taking care of those around us and ourselves – and try to daily live out Jesus’ greatest commandments in light of Matthew 25, where Jesus identifies himself with the most vulnerable. However, beyond immediate care, we must heed Jesus’ warning: “You know how to read the face of the sky, but you cannot read the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:4).

There is one more link between the “signs of the times” and the “powers and principalities,” based on a simple claim in Paul’s letter to the Romans: “the wages of sin is death” (6:23). But what does this mean? It is commonly taken to mean that death is punishment for sin, but this is not quite right. ‘Wages’ are not punishment, but rather the natural product or exchange for something. Paul’s connection means that sin can be clarified and named: sin is everything that leads to death – and everything that leads to death is, therefore, a result of sin and brokenness. The Eastern church hints at this in their understanding of sin and salvation: instead of God as judge, with me found guilty on the stand (punishment model), it is rather that sin is like a disease, we are morally ill, and Jesus is the Great Physician. Sin, in a way, comes over us, ‘infects’ us, and then we are bound up inside of it. In this conception, it is perhaps more productive to think of sin as more often social than individual, just as Ephesians suggests.

The continued pandemic, as well as the worsening climate crisis and even our regular old bodily mortality, all participate in the powers of death. Plague, pollution, famine, conquest… these are some of the ancient “rulers… authorities … [and] cosmic powers of this present darkness.” Today, we must devote attention to discerning – individually and communally, and with the help of the Holy Spirit – the “spiritual forces of evil” at work in the contemporary world. 

Some of these are already showing their heads, which, like Revelation’s seven-headed Beast (13:1), are all interconnected. To take an example from the pandemic, the short-sighted and grasping vaccine nationalism approach taken by rich nations risks the lives of much of the world, will keep spawning new variants, and fractures the fundamental human solidarity that transcends national borders. But this is all tied into America’s love of money, the foundation of our national economic system. There is legal power enough to simply break Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine patents and instantly distribute the recipe to the world, but we seem more content to preserve the extreme profits of corporations over the image of God in each human life, a perfect example of the ‘culture of death’ that Christians must stand against in all its manifestations. In this case, behind the malfeasance of drug companies or the American government, we must glimpse the old idolatry of Mammon. Thus, Mammon and the powers of plague, pride, fear, and death are all tied together. Christ, the one who is always the “way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), invites us to work towards the kingdom of life instead of a kingdom of death. 

If truth and light are indeed found together in the healing work of Jesus, we must call on him to be co-creators of a more life-giving world. But to do so, we need to name the rulers and authorities of the forces of death today in order to combat them. 

As we look at the world and see who is dying, and what we are dying of, invite the Lord of Life to illuminate our vision and allow us to read the signs of the times. May Christ grant us the vision, vulnerability, and strength to see the narrow way of life in a world of death.

D. Brendan Johnson MTS is a student at the University of Minnesota Medical School where he previously served as an officer of his local CMDA chapter. He is a graduate of the Duke Theology, Medicine, and Culture Fellowship and co-hosts the podcast “Social Medicine On Air.”  by D. Brendan Johnson 

davidbrendanjohnson@gmail.com, joh09264@umn.edu

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash