Ephesians 6:11

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

The armor of God ... The Christian does not oppose evil in his own strength, but in the strength of the Lord. Only the armor of God is sufficient to the warfare involved.

The wiles of the devil ... One may experience only irritation and disgust at a remark like this: "Neither of these nouns is used by Paul; each occurs twice in this epistle (Ephesians 4:14,27). In place of `the devil' Paul always used the personal name `Satan'."[18] The incredible thesis that lies behind a comment like that is that Paul could not have written Ephesians, because there are two nouns in it that he did not use in his other writings! It is assumed by such theorizers that although Paul knew the devil's personal name and used it frequently, he did not know that Satan was "the devil," and that he could not thus have identified him here. Such a notion is outrageously fantastic. Note the following deduction that such a theory (if accepted) would require:

The pseudonymous writer who allegedly forged Ephesians in Paul's name is represented as one "deeply imbued with the mind and spirit of the great apostle, closely acquainted with his letters, etc."[19] Of course, this unknown fraud also had to be a great genius ever to come up with the kind of world-shaking truth revealed in this epistle; and yet, this great genius who knew all about Paul was stupid enough to say "devil" instead of Satan, which it is alleged Paul never did! Thus, the theoretical genius was a stupid ass, after all. The evil critics of God's word will have to come up with something a lot more reasonable than this to deserve any credibility whatever. Besides all that, the writer of Hebrews (Hebrews 2:14) used the word "devil"; and the conviction of this writer that Paul wrote that epistle is continually strengthened by further studies of the word of God. Paul's use of the word "devil" in this passage has its bearing in that same direction. The whole critical word game of counting and cataloging words is, in its entirety, artificial, contrived and absolutely undependable. Any writer may use words in any letter that he never used before. Of course, they talk about "probability"; but what is the "probability" that any fraudulent forger could have produced a book like Ephesians?

The wiles of the devil ... This refers to the strategems employed by the evil one with the design of destroying the faith of Christians. Paul was familiar with many of the devices by which Satan had sought to hinder and thwart his apostolic labors. He mentioned a glaring instance of this (1 Thessalonians 2:18), knew that the most intimate human relationships could be exploited to the detriment of Christianity (1 Corinthians 7:5), and pointed out that the devil could even take the form of an angel of light so as to lead believers away from the truth (2 Corinthians 11:3,14).

So-called "moderns" who are so far above the word of God that they reject all possibility of an unseen kingdom of evil presided over by a malignant personal foe (Satan), are not "wise" in any sense, but are blinded and deceived by "the god of this world."

[18] Francis W. Beare, op. cit., p. 737.

[19] Ibid., p. 600.