Spiritual warfare is not optional. You are already in it.

Prince's approach to spiritual warfare was shaped by two things: the careful exegesis he applied to everything, and the practical pastoral experience of watching people remain in bondage despite sincere faith and years of Christian activity. The gap between the two was, in his view, almost always explained by the same thing: the person did not understand the nature of the conflict they were in.

His starting point was Ephesians 6:10-18, the most extended warfare passage in the New Testament. He noted that Paul does not tell the Ephesian believers to enter a battle. He tells them to stand in one. The implication is that the battle is not optional and has not been waiting for the believer to initiate it. It has been in progress since before their conversion. The relevant question is whether they will stand equipped or unequipped.

The armour passages were not, for Prince, a metaphor for general Christian virtue. They were a description of specific spiritual realities: truth as a belt because deception is the enemy's primary weapon; righteousness as a breastplate because accusation targets the heart; the gospel of peace as footwear because the enemy's strategy is to keep believers unstable and rootless. He taught each piece with textual rigour and pastoral directness.

His most quoted insight was the distinction between fighting for victory and fighting from victory. Colossians 2:15 states that through the cross, Christ disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them. The victory is past tense. The believer's role is not to achieve it but to enforce it, to apply in the present what was accomplished then.

He was sober about the cost of ignorance. He had seen too many sincere, devoted Christians living in unnecessary defeat to be polite about it. The weapons are real, he argued, the enemy is real, and the authority of the believer in Christ is real. The only variable is knowledge and the willingness to act on it.