Some phrases in the Bible sound disturbing even when we’re not sure what they mean. “Principalities and powers” is one of them. The phrase comes from the King James Version, and it turns up in some of the apostle Paul’s sentences. Modern translations usually say “rulers and authorities” instead.
But who are these rulers? Are they demons? Are they governments? Are they something in between? And why does Paul tell ordinary Christians they’re wrestling with these powers?
What the Words Actually Say
The first surprise: “principalities and powers” isn’t one fixed term. Paul uses a small cluster of words, and he mixes them freely. All of them are borrowed from the language of government and the army—the words we’d use, say, for a governor, a magistrate, or a commanding officer.
| GREEK WORD | WHAT IT MEANS IN PLAIN ENGLISH | SAMPLE VERSES |
|---|---|---|
| archai | “Rulers” or “first ones”—those at the top. King James: “principalities”. | Romans 8:38; Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 1:16 |
| exousiai | “Authorities”—those who hold the right to give orders. | Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 2:15; Romans 13:1 |
| dynameis | “Powers”—those who have the strength to act. | Romans 8:38; 1 Peter 3:22 |
| kyriotetes | “Dominions”—those who hold a territory as lords of it. | Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 1:16 |
| thronoi | “Thrones”—royal seats, and so the rule exercised from them. | Colossians 1:16 |
| kosmokratores | “World rulers”—rulers of this present darkness. Used only once. | Ephesians 6:12 |
| stoicheia | “Elemental things”—the basic forces or first principles of the world. | Galatians 4:3, 9; Colossians 2:8, 20 |
The second surprise is bigger. Exactly the same words are used of human government too. Romans 13:1 tells Christians to submit to the “governing authorities”—the same word, exousiai. Titus 3:1 repeats it. Luke 12:11 uses both words together for the courts that would drag believers in for questioning.
So Paul isn’t using secret code for demons. He’s using ordinary words for power, and letting the sentence around them show which kind of power he has in mind.
One verse settles the question that some of these rulers aren’t human at all. Ephesians 6:12 says: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” “Flesh and blood” means human beings. Whatever else Paul means, he means more than difficult people.
Where the Idea Begins: The Old Testament
Paul didn’t invent this. He inherited it from the Hebrew Scriptures, where God rules a world that has more inhabitants than we can see.
- Deuteronomy 32:8-9. When God divided the nations, he “fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (ESV). Israel, however, was kept as the Lord’s own portion. Older English Bibles read “sons of Israel” here, following the medieval Hebrew manuscripts. A Dead Sea Scroll fragment of Deuteronomy, together with the ancient Greek translation, reads “sons of God”—and most modern translations now follow it.
- Psalm 82. God stands in the divine assembly and passes judgement on those who’ve judged unjustly. John Calvin understood these figures as human judges. Many careful readers today understand them as heavenly beings. Either way, the point is identical: God judges every ruler, seen or unseen.
- Daniel 10:13, 20-21. An angel tells Daniel he was delayed by “the prince of the kingdom of Persia”, and that the “prince of Greece” would come next. Michael is named as the one who stands for Israel. Notice carefully what Daniel does while this is going on: he prays and fasts. He doesn’t command any prince, name any prince, or fight any prince.
- Isaiah 24:21. On the last day the Lord will punish “the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth”. Heaven and earth are dealt with in one sentence, by one Judge.
The pattern is consistent. There are unseen authorities. They’re real. They’re creatures. They will be judged.
The World Paul Was Writing Into
Paul’s two most concentrated passages on this subject were sent to Ephesus and Colossae. That is not an accident.
Ephesus was the magic capital of the ancient world. Its temple of Artemis drew pilgrims who bought amulets inscribed with the “Ephesian Letters”—strings of nonsense syllables believed to work like a password against unseen forces. Curse tablets, thin sheets of lead scratched with binding spells, were folded, pierced with a nail, and dropped into a grave or a well. Acts 19:19 records new believers burning magic books worth 50,000 pieces of silver. That’s a fortune. Luke wants us to feel the scale of what was being renounced.
Clinton Arnold, who has spent a career on these letters, has shown the very words Paul uses—ruler, authority, power, world ruler—appear in surviving magical and astrological texts as names for the spirits people tried to control. Paul isn’t importing strange ideas into a rational city. He’s writing to a city already crowded with powers, and telling it Christ sits “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Ephesians 1:21).
NEW FROM THE GROUND: COLOSSAE IS BEING EXCAVATED
Colossae, the town behind Paul’s letter to the Colossians, sat unexcavated for centuries—a grassy mound in south-western Turkey, abandoned since the twelfth century. That changed in 2025, when the first systematic dig began under a team from Pamukkale University.
The first announced discovery was a burial ground of around sixty intact rock-cut tombs containing pottery, glass bottles, oil lamps, coins and personal items such as sandals. Graves of this period are exactly where amulets and protective charms tend to appear.
Clinton Arnold has said the dig may finally shed light on the strange teaching Paul opposes in Colossians 2, which mixed rule-keeping with the worship of angels (Colossians 2:18). Watch this space: the archaeology is happening now.
Meanwhile, in 2026 researchers at Heidelberg University used special imaging to read a Roman lead curse tablet found in the Netherlands. It named enslaved men and women and carried magical signs meant to summon supernatural help. Binding magic was not a local Ephesian oddity. It ran the length of the empire.
Four Ways Christians Read the Phrase
Sincere Christians have read these texts in four main ways. Here they are side by side.
| THE VIEW | WHAT IT CLAIMS | ITS STRENGTH | ITS PROBLEM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Spirits only | The powers are personal fallen angels and nothing else. | Fits Ephesians 6:12 perfectly: not flesh and blood. | Cannot explain the same words used of magistrates in Romans 13. |
| 2. Structures only | The powers are the inner “spirit” of institutions—states, markets, systems. | Explains how evil grows bigger than any one wicked person. | In its strongest form it quietly removes a personal devil altogether. |
| 3. Human rulers only | The powers are simply kings, governors and courts. | Honest about how flexible the vocabulary is. | Collapses under Ephesians 6:12 and Colossians 1:16. |
| 4. Both (spirits and human) together | Created spiritual beings who work through people, systems and ideas. | Accounts for every passage without forcing any of them. | Requires patient reading; resists slogans. |
The fourth view is the one the evidence supports, and it has a long history among careful readers of Paul. Ephesians 2:2 puts both layers in a single sentence: unbelievers walk “following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air”. A course, a current, a way things are done—and a personal ruler working within it.
That’s why racism can outlive every individual racist, and why a corrupt system keeps producing corruption after you’ve replaced its staff. Something more than bad choices is at work. Abraham Kuyper’s famous claim that Christ cries “Mine!” over every square inch of creation cuts both ways: if every sphere belongs to Christ, every sphere is also contested.
One caution: Some recent scholars, especially Emma Wasserman, argue Paul didn’t picture two rival kingdoms fighting each other. Instead, they say, Paul saw one ordered universe ruled by one King—God. She’s right about one important point. The Bible doesn’t teach Persian-style dualism, where an evil god is equal to and competes with the good God.
But she goes too far. The Bible clearly presents evil as a real rebellion against God, and it often describes this rebellion as a war. It’s a war within God’s kingdom—not a war between two equal kingdoms. God’s rule has never been in doubt.
Six Things Scripture Puts Beyond Doubt the Powers
- They’re created. Colossians 1:16 says all things were created “through Him and for Him”—and then names thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities specifically. Satan is not God’s opposite. He is God’s creature.
- They’re ruled. Job 1 and 2 show the accuser needing permission before he touches anything. Luke 22:31 shows Satan asking to sift Peter. Even the enemy operates on a leash.
- They’re limited. They’re not everywhere at once, they don’t read minds, and they cannot create. They can only twist what God has made.
- They’re genuinely dangerous. 1 Peter 5:8 compares the devil to a prowling lion. Deception, accusation and fear are his tools.
- They’re already defeated. Colossians 2:15: God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him”.
- They’re not yet destroyed. 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 places their final abolition at the end, when Christ hands the kingdom to the Father. We live between the victory and the clearing-up.
There’s one detail more, and it’s startling. Ephesians 3:10 says God’s “manifold wisdom” is now made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places “through the church”. An ordinary congregation of forgiven people, of different races and classes, worshipping together, is God’s public exhibit to the unseen world.
The Cross That Disarmed Them
Everything turns on Colossians 2:13-15. and the order of Paul’s sentence is the key to the whole subject. God forgave our trespasses “by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame.”
Read that again slowly. Our debt is cancelled first. The powers are disarmed second. The second happens because of the first.
What weapon did they lose? Accusation. Revelation 12:10 names Satan “the accuser of our brothers… who accuses them day and night before our God”. His power over a believer was never brute force; it was the true charge sheet he could hold up. When Christ paid the penalty in full, the charge sheet was nailed to the cross and the accuser was left holding nothing.
Paul then reaches for a picture every Roman citizen knew: the triumph, in which a victorious general paraded stripped and chained enemies through the streets. In Paul’s reversal, the cross that looked like Rome’s parade of a defeated Jew was in fact God’s parade of defeated powers.
That’s why victory and forgiveness must never be separated. A gospel of victory without a paid penalty leaves the accuser with his evidence intact. A gospel of forgiveness without victory leaves the forgiven trembling in the dark. The cross does both, in that order.
So How Do We Stand?
Ephesians 6:10-18 is the best-known passage on this subject and the most misused. Look at what Paul actually hands us:
- The belt of truth—honesty, and the truth of God’s word holding everything else together.
- The breastplate of righteousness—Christ’s righteousness given to us, worked out in a clean life.
- Shoes of readiness from the gospel of peace—being ready to go and speak.
- The shield of faith—trust that quenches the burning arrows of doubt and accusation.
- The helmet of salvation—assurance that guards the mind.
- The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God—the only offensive item, and it is Scripture.
- Prayer at all times in the Spirit—the atmosphere in which the armour is worn.
Every single item is ordinary Christian obedience. There’s no technique here, no formula, no secret name. And notice Paul’s verb. He says “stand” 4 times. Not storm, not chase, not bind. Stand. The ground has already been won by someone else; our task is to hold it.
Five things the armour passage doesn’t say
1. It doesn’t tell us to identify a spirit by name before we can resist it. Jesus resisted in the wilderness by quoting Deuteronomy three times (Matthew 4:1-11).
2. It doesn’t tell us to map the spirits over our city or nation. No apostle in Acts ever does this, not even in Ephesus.
3. It doesn’t tell us to insult or command the devil. Jude 9 points out even the archangel Michael refused to bring a reviling accusation, and said instead, “The Lord rebuke you.”
4. It doesn’t promise that resistance ends the fight. James 4:7 says the devil will flee—but Luke 4:13 says he departed from Jesus “until an opportune time”.
5. It doesn’t treat our own sinful desires as someone else’s fault. Galatians 5:19-21 lists works of the flesh, and James 1:14 says each person is tempted by his own desire. Some battles aren’t with a demon at all.
Two Ditches Along the Road
CS Lewis observed that people fall into two opposite errors about devils: some refuse to believe in them, and others think about them far too much and with unhealthy delight. Both ditches are still full.
In the first ditch, everything becomes a demon. A flat tyre is an attack. Every illness needs deliverance. Believers live under low-grade fear, always scanning for the enemy, rarely resting in the Saviour. This looks like faith but functions like superstition, because it makes the enemy the most interesting person in the room.
In the second ditch, nothing is a demon. The unseen world is treated as a first-century way of speaking that educated people have outgrown. This looks like maturity but functions like unbelief, and it leaves Christians with no explanation for evil that is plainly bigger than the people committing it.
The road between the ditches is narrow and it’s well lit. Take the unseen world seriously, because Scripture does. Take Christ more seriously still, because Scripture asks us to.
The Last Word Belongs to Romans 8
When Paul finally lists everything that might come between a believer and the love of God, the principalities and powers make the list—only to lose. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Notice the final phrase: “anything else in all creation”. Paul has just filed every ruler, every authority and every power under the heading of created things. That’s the whole doctrine in three words.
So what are the principalities and powers? They’re real, created, ranked, rebellious authorities who work through people, systems and ideas—already disarmed at the cross, still active for a season, and certain to be abolished. They’re worth being aware of. No, they aren’t worth fearing.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Are principalities and powers the same thing as demons?
They overlap, but they’re not identical terms. “Demon” (Greek daimonion) is the word the Gospels use for the spirits that afflict individuals and are cast out. “Rulers” and “authorities” are words of rank, describing organisation and status rather than activity. Colossians 1:16 also shows that not every ruler and authority is evil, since all of them were created through Christ and for Him. So the fallen powers are a subset of a wider created order of unseen beings, and the ranking language tells us that the rebellion is structured rather than chaotic.
Does every nation have an angelic prince over it today?
Daniel 10 is the clearest evidence that something like this was true in Daniel’s day, and Deuteronomy 32:8 points in the same direction. What Scripture never does is turn this into a method. Nobody in Acts researches the name of a city’s spirit, announces it, or tries to pull it down before preaching. Paul goes to Ephesus, the most spiritually crowded city in the empire, and preaches, teaches, prays and plants a church. The practice of spiritual mapping goes far beyond the evidence, and it tends to shift attention from the ordinary means God has actually promised to bless.
What are the “elemental spirits of the world” in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2?
The Greek word stoicheia originally meant things arranged in a row, and it came to mean either the basic principles of a subject or the basic components of the universe. Both senses are defensible in Paul. In Galatians 4 he links them to the calendar of days, months and seasons that the Galatians were adopting; in Colossians 2 he links them to human tradition and rule-keeping. The most likely reading holds the two together: religious systems that promise safety through rules, which unseen powers are happy to exploit. Paul’s response in both letters is the same—you died with Christ, so why go back under a tutor?
Can a true Christian be possessed by these powers?
No. The believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and 1 John 4:4 says the one in us is greater than the one in the world. Two masters can’t own the same house. That said, Scripture is realistic about the pressure Christians face: we can be tempted, deceived, accused, harassed. We can, however, give the demons a foothold through unrepented sin (Ephesians 4:27). The pastoral distinction is between ownership and opposition. We may be under attack; we’re not up for sale.
Who are the “rulers of this age” who crucified Christ in 1 Corinthians 2:8?
Paul says these rulers did not understand God’s wisdom, “for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”. Some read this of Pilate, Herod and Caiaphas; others of the unseen powers behind them. The double reading is probably right, and it fits the pattern of the rest of Paul’s letters. Human hands drove the nails; unseen powers pushed for it. And in the greatest irony in history, both were doing exactly what God had planned beforehand (Acts 4:27-28).
Should Christians rebuke or bind the devil out loud?
The New Testament never instructs believers to do this. Jude 9 records that Michael, in a dispute with the devil, would not pronounce a reviling judgement but appealed to the Lord instead. Jesus in the wilderness answered with Scripture. James 4:7 tells us to submit to God and resist the devil, and Ephesians 6 fills out what resisting looks like: truth, righteousness, faith, Scripture and prayer. The confidence of the Christian is not in the volume of a formula but in a finished work.
If Romans 13 uses the same word for government, should we treat rulers as enemies?
No. The same vocabulary carries two very different verdicts because the two situations are different. Government as an institution is God’s servant for our good (Romans 13:4), and Christians are told to submit, pay taxes and pray for those in office (1 Timothy 2:1-2). What Ephesians 6 opposes is not the office but the corruption of it—power turned against God and against people. This is why believers can honour a magistrate and resist an unjust law at the same time, saying with the apostles, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Related Reads
- Standing Firm: A Biblical, Reformed View of Spiritual Warfare
- Spiritual Warfare: A Believer’s Guide to Complete Battle Armour
- What Is the Divine Council? Psalm 82 and the Unseen Realm
- Are We Little Gods? The Truth About Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34
- ‘Prince of the Air’: What Does Satan’s Title Mean?
- Jude 9: Why Do Michael and Satan Dispute Over Moses’ Body?
