As a lifelong Pentecostal, I’ve heard a lot about spiritual warfare. I grew up with constant reminders of Ephesians 6:11: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

That doesn’t mean my first impulse today is to assume the devil is scheming against me every time I get a flat tire. But I am thankful my tradition emphasizes the reality of a spiritual realm. You can’t go to many Pentecostal gatherings without hearing testimonies about struggles with the devil or prayers asking God to empower His people against demonic attacks.

Warfare language connotes fighting and power struggles. In fact, power is another theme of Pentecostal services. After all, Acts 1:8 says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”

Clearly, the Holy Spirit, spiritual warfare, and power have something to do with one another. But I wonder whether we sometimes misunderstand the relationship.

Often, when people think of Pentecostalism, they envision a preacher on stage giving a fiery altar call and wielding a sort of power — power to knock over individuals, power to heal, and power to cast out demons. While this is admittedly a caricature, it captures something of our vision of what spiritual power looks like.

We may imagine power is something the Spirit gives us to wield at our will. In other words, we isolate the power of the Spirit from the crucified Jesus. This is a mistake.

The untethering of the Spirit from Jesus separates the power the Spirit gives from the power of Jesus. Put differently, we may start to envision the power the Spirit gives in worldly terms. And our world is no stranger to power. It is the primary way human beings, tribes and nations interact.

The danger of allowing our worldly conceptions of power to color our understanding of the power of the Spirit should be clear. But if the power the Spirit gives is the power of Jesus, then that power moves from being abstract to becoming concrete.

Jesus defines power for us. When we think of power, we must always think of Jesus. And what does Jesus’ power look like? As Paul wrote, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

When we think of power, we must always think of Jesus.

This is quite different from our usual human ways of conceiving power. Even Pentecostals don’t always think of the Cross when they speak of spiritual power. It’s often power for success, power for health, power for wealth, and power for influence. But Jesus’ power is a cruciform power — shaped in the pattern of the Cross.

We have to revise our understanding of how Scripture speaks regarding power and warfare. Jesus’ example shows us spiritual battles are fought sacrificially.

Let’s take the example we began with: the armor of God (Ephesians 6). Isn’t armor for fighting? Is it not meant to give us power? Of course it is, but again, the armor should not be seen through the lens of worldly power. It must be viewed in light of true power, which is cruciform power.

New Testament scholar Hendrikus Berkhof offers this key insight:

This war with the Powers must be waged seriously. A man must arm himself for it. The arms named show that Paul is not contemplating an offensive against the Powers … . [The believer’s] duty is not to bring the Powers to their knees. This is Jesus Christ’s own task. He has taken care of this thus far and will continue to do so. We are responsible for the defense, just because he takes care of the offense … . The figurative allusion to weapons points to this defensive role. Girdle, breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet, and sword (machaira, the short sword) are all defensive arms. Lance, spear, bow and arrow are not named. They are not needed; these are the weapons Christ Himself bears. Our weapon is to stay close to him.

Our world is marked by the suspicion of power, and rightfully so. The #MeToo movement continues to expose how many men have leveraged their power to sexually exploit women. And in the political world, it’s easy to see that what both parties are actually after is power.

In the past, the desire for power has often been cloaked in moral language, but today it is being stripped of its trappings. The emperor has no clothes. And the Church is implicated in both of these examples.

But this is an opportunity for Pentecostals to display the true power the Holy Spirit gives. The word “power” in the oft-quoted Acts 1:8 is the Greek word dynamis. But the power the Spirit gives, as Jesus said, is specifically for the purpose of being Christ’s witnesses.

The Greek word for witnesses there is martys, the same word from which we get our word “martyr.” The power the Spirit gives is the power of Christ crucified. The power of the martyr. True power, the power the world so desperately needs, is found on the Cross. And the Spirit draws us into the work of Christ by calling us to pick up our crosses and follow in the Jesus way.

The Holy Spirit does not give us our own weapons to wield. He gives us Jesus. Our weapon is to stay close to Him.