Spiritual warfare is a divisive subject in the church. Some Christians focus only on the immediate world around them, living as though there were no spiritual opposition to God's people and his kingdom at all. Others take an aggressively confrontational stance in which hunting the enemy becomes a constant pursuit. MacArthur argues that both miss what Scripture actually says.

Working from Ephesians 6 and the rest of the New Testament material, he treats the nature of the conflict, the armor the believer is given, and the ordinary means - Scripture, prayer, obedience, the local church - by which ground is held. The treatment is deliberately deflationary about technique and insistent about holiness.