While it is nice to have friends in high places, Godβs people have foes in high places!
βFor we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high placesβ (Eph. 6:12).
The Greek word for βhighβ here is epouranios, elsewhere translated βheavenly,β βcelestial,β and βin heaven.β Only here is it translated βhigh places,β a phrase that is elsewhere always found in the Old Testament, where it was associated with the worship of the false god Baal (Num. 22:41; Jer. 19:5; 32:35) and idolatry (II Chron. 14:3). Thatβs why it angered God when Israel allowed these high places to exist in their midst (Psa. 78:58), and why He was pleased when they were removed (II Kings 18:1-4) and displeased when they were not (II Kings 12:3;14:4; 15:4,35).
But hereβs the kicker. As strange as it may sound, Jehovah was often worshipped in these high places in the worship of idols (II Kings 17:32; II Chron. 33:17)! If that sounds familiar, it is because fusing the worship of God with idolatry is a device Satan used for centuries during the Dark Ages in the church of Rome in our own dispensation.
This pollution of worship was still going strong when our Authorized Version was translated, and it might be why the translators rendered epouranios as βhigh placesβ in our text. They may have perceived that while the βspiritual wickednessβ they wrestled was the host of fallen angels in heavenly places, the sphere of operation of these wicked spirits on earth was in the Roman church whose towering cathedrals reminded them of the βhigh placesβ where God was worshipped with idols in Israel.
In Danielβs day, a wicked spirit wrestled with an angel sent from God to try to keep a message from God from getting through to a man of God (Dan. 10:10-14). Similarly, during the Reformation, the Reformers wrestled with wicked spirits who tried to keep the message of Godβs Word from the people of God by using the brute strength of the Roman church that restricted His Word to the Latin language that few could read. The Reformers wrestled and overcame them by translating the Bible into the languages of the people.
Today those same wicked spirits strive to keep the message of Godβs Word to us from Godβs people, the message of Paulβs distinctive apostleship. This is the wrestling in which you too must be engaged if you want to βfight the good fightβ (I Tim. 6:12). It is the βgood fightβ that Paul fought to his dying breath (II Tim. 4:7). Is it your fight too? source
