VERSE

“And now I make one more appeal, my dear brothers and sisters. Watch out for people who cause divisions and upset people’s faith by teaching things contrary to what you have been taught. Stay away from them. Such people are not serving Christ our Lord; they are serving their own personal interests. By smooth talk and glowing words they deceive innocent people. But everyone knows that you are obedient to the Lord. This makes me very happy. I want you to be wise in doing right and to stay innocent of any wrong. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” —Romans 16:17-20

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind [yetser] is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” —Isaiah 26:3

TL;DR

Hebrew yetser (יֵצֶר) in Isaiah 26:3 = inner frame, imagination, conception, or formative mindset.

• “Yetser,” meaning the deep mind, inner orientation, spiritual perception framework (cf. Romans 12:2).
• The verse therefore reads: “The inner orientation (yetser) fixed on God is kept in perfect peace.”
• This confirms that biblical peace is not emotional calm but the result of a rightly-shaped inner framework—the mind moulded toward God.

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INTRODUCTION

I have come to believe that one of the most urgent questions a Christian must ask in this cultural hour is astonishingly simple: Whose spell do you live under? The very shape of the modern world is formed, warped, and mobilised by words—slogans, narratives, propaganda, and persuasive spells disguised as common sense and political correctness. We are spoken into movements, shepherded into factions, corralled into emotional reactions, and hypnotised by the glow of screens that tell us how to feel, what to fear, and whom to despise.

Paul’s words in Romans 16:17–20 feel eerily contemporary. His warning is tender yet fierce, pastoral yet prophetic: Watch out. Be vigilant. Be discerning. Recognise that the loudest voices are not always the truest, and that the most polished arguments can be nothing more than sorcery dressed in scholarship.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Carl Jung

When Paul says, “Watch out for people who cause divisions… by teaching things contrary to what you have been taught,” he is not merely policing doctrinal boundaries. He is teaching us to recognise the invisible liturgies, the ideological spells, the emotional enchantments shaping our thinking without our consent when we are not watchful.

THE SPELL: ETYMOLOGY AND STRANGE POWER

The word spell has ancient weight. In Old English, spell meant “a saying, a tale, a story,” and was related to the German Spiel (a play) and the Greek epos (a spoken word). But over time, spell took on a second meaning—the casting of an incantation, a spoken charm designed to change reality by shaping consciousness.

We are afterall what we think.

Here already we hear echoes of Paul’s cry in Galatians 3:1: “Oh foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” or as another translations puts it, “Who has cast an evil spell on you?” The Greek here, ἐβάσκανεν, carries the idea of casting the evil eye, enchanting, manipulating someone’s perception. That is, making the way we see the world crooked, bent out of shape and perverted—in short, wrong.

A spell is a story spoken with enough authority, emotion, or repetition to become a reality in the mind of the hearer.

We are not as rational as we believe. People do not rise or fall by data, but by narrative, imagination, expectation—by belief. And, story, the narrative internalised, determines what we believe about ourselves ,others and the world. This is why the Scriptures warn us repeatedly: guard your heart, guard your mind, guard your hearing, guard the stories that shape your world.

“My son, pay attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not lose sight of them; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to the whole body. Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow springs of life.” — Proverbs 4:20-23

HYPNOSIS: THE SUBTLE FORCE OF REPETITION

Modern psychology has another word for spells: hypnosis. Not stage-show hypnosis, but the quiet, constant shaping of the subconscious through repeated messages. Noam Chomsky famously called it the engineering of consent. Every political power, every empire, every movement has known this instinctively: words create worlds.

The “world” we experience is directly related to the words we have accepted. They become the lens through which everything is interpreted

The Bible knew this long before we developed academic terminology. Faith comes by hearing—but so does unbelief. So does fear. So does despair.

We behave the way we behave because we believe the things we believe.

A hypnotised person is not irrational—they are merely responding to the story they have accepted as real.

DIVIDE ET IMPERA—THE OLD STRATEGY

Paul warns: “Watch out for people who cause divisions…” (Romans 16:17). Rome understood this well: divide et impera—divide and rule. Division fragments the imagination. It isolates individuals. It weakens moral courage. When a people is divided, they become governable—easily steered, easily managed, easily pacified.

But Paul says the root is false teaching—not merely wrong ideas, but deceptive narratives. Stories that distort reality. Words that fracture the church. Voices that distract believers into pointless quarrels, political tribalism, or conspiratorial paranoia.

The question becomes devastatingly personal: Are your convictions your own, or were they handed to you by a world with an agenda?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PROPAGANDA

Modern propaganda is not crude. It is elegant. It is polished. It is industrial. It whispers rather than shouts. It works by shaping what you assume, not what you consciously agree with. It operates in slogans that bypass reason: “Trust the science,” “Follow your heart,” “Live your truth,” “Be on the right side of history.”

These are not arguments. They are enchantments.

And in the midst of this, Paul calls us back to what is solid, ancient, trustworthy: “what you have been taught.” Not inherited superstition. Not cultural Christianity. Not childhood religion without conviction or basis. But the apostolic gospel—the message that does not just inform but transforms.

THE HEGELIAN SPELL: HOW DIVISION REPLACES IDENTITY

One of the most effective spells cast over this generation is the ancient yet ever-renewed mechanism known as the Hegelian dialectic—the engineered cycle of problem, reaction, solution. It is the craft of manufacturing division, inflaming emotion, and then offering the very cure that deepens the wound. Scripture warns us that the enemy works through division, and yet we seldom recognise how deeply this pattern has been woven into the cultural consciousness.

In our age, the dialectic takes on familiar forms: race against race, gender against gender, ideology against ideology, neighbour against neighbour. The categories change, the battleground shifts, but the purpose remains constant—to fragment the individual, to erase personal identity, and to replace it with a group identity that can be shaped, provoked, and controlled through mass psychosis.

→ When people no longer know who they are, they can be told who they must be.
→ When personal identity collapses, group identity becomes a refuge.
→ And group identity, once accepted, becomes the cage.

This is not accidental; it is psychological warfare.

Modern society keeps the masses in a perpetual state of agitation—an adrenalised existence that resembles not the calm, rational image of God in man, but the fight-or-flight instincts of animals. People who are constantly triggered, constantly threatened, constantly offended, cannot think clearly. Their higher functions shut down. Their vision narrows. Their ability to discern truth evaporates beneath the roar of emotion.

→ A person reduced to reaction is a person no longer capable of reflection.
→ A person absorbed into the collective is a person removed from personal conviction.
→ A person governed by fear is a person easily led like an animal.

This is why manufactured division is so spiritually lethal. It does not merely fracture society; it fragments the soul. It cultivates mass psychosis—a shared emotional reality in which entire populations behave not as image-bearers but as herds, driven by narratives they never question and impulses they never examine.

And once the individual is lost, once personal sovereignty collapses, once a generation begins thinking in tribal slogans rather than Scripture, then the “solution” arrives: a new authority, a new ideology, a new moral framework that promises peace while consolidating power and deepening the suffering.

→ This is the dialectic.
→ This is the spell.
→ This is the design behind the division.

The gospel, however, restores the individual sovereignty. It calls you by name. It anchors you in an identity not handed down by the world, nor shaped by culture, nor assigned by a movement, but bestowed by God Himself—a benevolent loving Heavenly Father. Where the dialectic dehumanises, the gospel rehumanises. Where the world fractures, Christ unifies. Where propaganda inflames fear, the Spirit brings clarity.

The children of God were never meant to live as reactive animals. We were meant to live as redeemed, reasoning, Spirit-led sons and daughters—thinking clearly, seeing truthfully, and standing unshaken by the psychological storms of the age. Now we know why Paul writes,

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and a sound mind.” —2 Timothy 1:7

THE GOSPEL: THE ROYAL ANNOUNCEMENT

To understand how Paul thinks about truth, we must examine the very word he loves—euangelion. This is not a soft word. It is not religious jargon or sentimental language.

• The Greek stresses the messenger and the announcement.
• The Hebrew stresses the embodiment of the message.

And the ancient world heard euangelion as:

• A royal decree
• A military victory proclamation
• The inauguration of a new kingdom
• A message from the King
• A declaration that changes the legal status of the hearer

This is why Paul can call the gospel “the power of God” (Romans 1:16). Not information. Not philosophy. Power. Divine force entering human reality.

Meanwhile the English gospel comes from Old English gōd-spel—good announcement, good story.

Truth itself is a story—but a true one, a story that unveils reality rather than obscuring it.

THE STORY YOU LIVE IN IS THE LIFE YOU EXPERIENCE

Everyone lives in a story. The question is not whether you believe a story, but which story you believe.

• The world tells you salvation is self-creation.
• The market tells you salvation is consumption.
• Politics tells you salvation is control.
• Entertainment tells you salvation is distraction.
• The state increasingly positions itself as a surrogate husband, provider, protector—as Helen Andrews observes, replacing the family, replacing the church, replacing God.

No wonder Paul asks, “Who has bewitched you?” Because a gospel has rivals. Not just other religions—but counterfeit stories that baptise sin as freedom and rebellion as authenticity.

OBEDIENCE: THE FRUIT OF TRUE BELIEF

Paul rejoices in the Roman church: “Everyone knows that you are obedient to the Lord” (16:19). This is the bookend of the entire letter. Romans begins with “the obedience of faith” (1:5) and closes with it (16:26).

→ Faith is not emotion.
→ Faith is not opinion.
→ Faith is not intellectual agreement.

Faith is obedience, and obedience is the truest proof of belief.

We do what we do because we believe what we believe. If a person never obeys God, it means they do not believe God. Their unbelief is merely clothed in Christian vocabulary.

WISDOM AND INNOCENCE

Paul’s desire is paradoxical: “I want you to be wise in doing right and innocent of any wrong.” (16:19)

We are wise—painfully so—regarding our problems. We can diagnose ourselves to exhaustion. But Scripture says that true wisdom is found in knowing, understanding and implementing the remedy, not in analysing the wound.

This is why he tells Timothy:

“You have known the holy Scriptures from childhood, which are able to make you wise unto salvation.” (2 Tim 3:15)

THE LOSS OF SCRIPTURAL WISDOM IN AN AGE OF OUTSOURCED DISCERNMENT

Wisdom is not the accumulation of insight about the self. Wisdom is the illumination of the soul through Scripture—the kindling of divine light within the human spirit by the Word that spoke worlds into being.

Wisdom was never meant to be a mirror in which we endlessly analyse ourselves; it was always meant to be a window through which the light of God’s Word enters and illuminates the soul. True wisdom does not rise from introspection but from revelation—from Scripture shaping the imagination, confronting the conscience, and forming the inner life.

In today’s world and in today’s church, this kind of wisdom has grown strangely rare. Not because Scripture has lost its power, but because we have slowly surrendered our responsibility to know it.

Somewhere along the way, we began outsourcing our response-ability—our God-ordained duty to respond directly to the Word of God—to religious professionals. This is why we, our societies and churches, have become abused. We have subconsciously adopted the modern assumption that sacred knowledge belongs to specialists, that theology requires accreditation, and that biblical understanding is safest in the hands of those certified by the world. Degrees, institutions, and endorsements have become the new markers of authority, as though truth needs a stamp of approval before it can be trusted.

But if you pause for even a moment, the problem becomes glaring.

The world would never—could never—certify the truth. The truth exposes the world. The truth unmasks its illusions, confronts its idols, destabilises its powers, and announces its downfall. The worlds propaganda is in direct competition with the words of the gospel. Why would a system built on autonomy and self-exaltation ever endorse a Word that calls people to surrender, repentance, and obedience? Why would a culture addicted to narratives approve the one story that dismantles every lie?

The answer is simple: it wouldn’t. It can’t.

So instead, the world promotes a subtle, cultural spell: “Trust the professionals.” Trust the experts.

Trust the people trained by the very institutions that have every incentive to dilute, reinterpret, or marginalise the biblical message. Trust those certified by the very system that is allergic to truth. As long as the church believes that truth must be mediated through worldly accreditation, believers will remain dependent, passive, and spiritually malnourished. Ignorance becomes not just accidental but engineered.

It is clear why the church has begun to the resemble the world and not vice versa.

The tragedy is that the modern church has abundant content—sermons, books, podcasts, courses—yet a famine of conviction. And conviction only comes when men and women return to Scripture for themselves, when they stop waiting for someone else to interpret reality for them. You cannot subcontract spiritual discernment. You cannot delegate the knowledge of God. You cannot outsource holiness, revelation, or the renewal of the mind.

→ To know Scripture is to know God, and to know God is to experience transformation.
→ To know God is to walk in truth and experience freedom.
→ And to walk in truth is to become immune to the enchantments of a lying world.

This is why the church is weak: not for lack of information, but from a lack of will, and a lack of discipline. And a lack of consequent illumination. And illumination comes only when the Word is opened, read, wrestled with, prayed through, and allowed to confront us. If we are to break the spell of ignorance—the one constantly reinforced by the culture’s whisper, “Leave it to the professionals”—we must reclaim the ancient path: open the Scriptures again, expect the Spirit to speak, and let the truth of God form the very structure of our thinking so that we can reorient ourselves and experience the promised freedom and transformation.

Only then will the church become wise again. Only then will believers become ungovernable by lies. Only then will the Word regain its rightful place—not as commentary in the hands of experts, but as living fire in the hearts of God’s people.

THE GOD OF PEACE AND THE CRUSHED SERPENT

Then Paul gives one of the most shocking lines in the entire New Testament:

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” (16:20)

→ Peace is not passivity.
→ Peace is not softness.
→ Peace is not conflict avoidance.

This is the fulfilment of the proto-evangelium, the first gospel promise declared in Genesis 3:15:

“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

The God of peace wages war against the serpent, and He does so through the feet of His people. This is where a fascinating word-study opens a window.

The Hebrew word aqav (עקב) can mean “heel,” but it is also connected to ideas of trickery, crookedness, or angling. It shares resonance with aqal—bent, twisted, wicked. This is why Jacob (Yaʿaqob) is named for the heel—not because he was weak, but because he would grasp, subvert, overcome through twisted means.

→ The heel becomes the weapon.
→ The angle (aqal) of the ankle becomes the stabiliser.
→ The angled part of the body becomes the crushing force.

Greek mythology echoes this in the story of Achilles—the heel as both vulnerability and victory. Scripture reverses the symbolism: the heel is not our weakness but the site of God’s triumph. We are the boots on the ground for the kingdom of God.

SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM

“If you want peace, prepare for war.” This ancient principle sits underneath Paul’s blessing. Spiritual peace is not maintained by withdrawal but by readiness—readiness of mind, readiness of faith, readiness of conviction and readiness that leads to engagement.

The God of peace crushes, conquers, subdues—and He does it under your feet.

Which raises the question: how can God crush a serpent under the feet of someone who is living under the spell of the serpent’s lies? Remember, what makes a serpent dangerous is not it’s bite, but the poison in its mouth. Words, the worlds words, are poisonous.

ARE YOU LIVING IN REALITY OR IN AN INCANTATION?

The world enchants us with false gospels:

• The gospel of self-help
• The gospel of national identity
• The gospel of political saviours
• The gospel of productivity
• The gospel of pleasure
• The gospel of personal authenticity

These are spells—subtle, persuasive, hypnotic. They demand allegiance. They demand sacrifice. They demand obedience.

But none of them can save. Because none of them are true.

THE WAY OUT: BREAKING THE SPELL

The way out is always the same: Hear the true gospel again. Not the gospel reduced to sentiment.
Not the gospel trimmed to fit cultural fashion. Not the gospel domesticated into self-help. But the royal announcement:

→ That Christ is King.
→ That His kingdom has come.
→ That His cross has broken the power of the serpent.
→ That His resurrection has established a new reality.
→ That His Spirit empowers obedience.
→ That His Word reveals truth and leads us into freedom and transformation.

When you hear that gospel—truly hear it—every counterfeit story collapses. The truth will set you free.

“As Jesus spoke…many believed in Him. So He said …If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” —John 8:30-32

DEVOTIONAL PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, expose every spell I have willingly or unknowingly submitted to. Deliver me from the enchantments of this world—from its fear, its false hope, its counterfeit gospels, its seductive narratives. Teach me to hear Your voice above every other, and let Your Word become the story that forms my identity. Crush the serpent under my feet, not because of my strength but because of Your victory. Make me obedient by faith, courageous in conviction, innocent in motive, and wise in righteousness. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. What story is currently shaping your decisions, emotions, and expectations? Is it truly the gospel? Are you experiencing the promised freedom and transformation?
2. Where might you be living under an inherited or cultural conviction rather than a scriptural one?
3. How have words—narratives, propaganda, or emotional messaging—influenced your spiritual life without your awareness?
4. What would it look like for you to return to the apostolic teaching as your primary source of truth and interpretation?
5. In what area of your life do you need the God of peace to crush the serpent under your feet? How can you cooperate with heavens invasion plan?