The Enemy

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

When Christians say "the enemy," they mean the devil — Satan — understood as a real spiritual being who opposes God and tries to harm, deceive, tempt, and discourage people. "The enemy is attacking" means the person believes their current troubles — conflict, temptation, fear, a run of bad events — have a spiritual source and not just a natural one.

The phrase is a euphemism, and a deliberate one. Many Christians avoid saying "Satan" or "the devil" in casual conversation, partly from a wariness about the name itself and partly because those words sound cartoonish. "The enemy" sounds serious and strategic, which is how they mean it.

The phrase can also be broader than Satan himself. When someone says "the enemy is attacking," they may mean the whole array of evil forces — demons and other powers Satan commands — working to cause chaos in the spiritual war, not necessarily the devil personally.

Why people say it

Christians believe the world is a place of real spiritual conflict, and the Bible describes an adversary who "prowls around like a roaring lion." Naming the enemy is a way of saying: this discouragement isn't just me, this temptation isn't random, and I'm going to respond with prayer rather than just willpower. It also reframes people who oppose them: the enemy is the devil, not the neighbor.

How to respond

If someone says the enemy is attacking them, they're telling you they're going through a hard time and reading it spiritually. You don't have to share the framework to respond well: "That sounds really hard — what's been going on?" gets at the actual situation. Don't argue about whether the devil exists in that moment; it isn't the point.

If the person keeps talking about spiritual warfare and demons and it makes you uncomfortable, you're welcome to redirect kindly: "And how is this affecting you day to day? What's actually been going on?"

If you hear it in different churches

Common in evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches, where spiritual warfare is a frequent theme. Catholic and Orthodox Christians believe in the devil just as firmly (both have formal exorcism rites) but tend to say "the evil one" or "Satan" in liturgical language rather than "the enemy" in conversation. Mainline Protestants use the phrase least.

In the United States, exorcism is rarely discussed outside Catholic and Pentecostal circles and is often assumed to be a relic. It isn't: the Catholic Church has trained more exorcists in recent decades, not fewer, and missionaries serving around the world will tell you that confronting evil spirits directly remains an ordinary part of Christian practice in much of the globe.

Where does “The Enemy” come from?

"Enemy" as a name for the devil comes straight from Jesus: in the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13), the farmer says "an enemy did this," and Jesus explains that "the enemy who sows them is the devil." The Hebrew satan itself means adversary or accuser. 1 Peter 5:8 calls him "your adversary the devil," and Ephesians 6 describes the Christian's struggle as being "not against flesh and blood" but against spiritual powers. As a habitual conversational euphemism — "the enemy is attacking" — the phrase rose with the twentieth-century spiritual warfare movement in Pentecostal and evangelical circles, especially from the 1970s on. "Lucifer" comes from Jerome's Latin Vulgate, which rendered the "morning star" of Isaiah 14:12 as lucifer; the passage addresses the king of Babylon, but Christian tradition read it as the devil's fall, and the name stuck as another way of saying "the enemy."

Good to know

You might also hear

Common questions

Further reading

• Ephesians 6:10–18 — the "armor of God" passage, the classic text on spiritual conflict (Logos)(affiliate)