The Lutheran Hour
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"Knight, Death, and the Devil"
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Text: Ephesians 6:12
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“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood …” Our struggle is not against other people. Instead, it’s against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
That’s from a 2,000-year-old letter written by a man named Paul. He was a leader among the earliest followers of Jesus Christ. And it’s one of the many truths of the Christian faith that I am inclined to forget and I need to be reminded of regularly. It’s easy for me to imagine that my struggle is against other people—people right in front of me, whom I see as “in my way,” or in competition with, because we’re struggling against each other for scarce resources. Or these people are trying to thwart my will or wreck my plans or rain on my parade. And I forget that our real struggle is not against each other, no matter how far apart we are on the political spectrum, or how differently we see the world. Other people are never the real enemy, the Bible tells me.
Our struggle is against the unseen, spiritual forces of evil led by a powerful, supernatural, spiritual agent the Bible calls the devil, who wants to destroy me and separate me from God, and separate you from God and us from each other. So, I need to be reminded, because, like you, I’m a child of the modern world, which has taught me to take seriously only the things that I can buy and sell and measure and manipulate. And since the devil is none of those, not something I can buy or sell or measure or manipulate, I’m inclined not to take him seriously. And I’m guessing it’s the same for you.
So, today, I am inviting you to contemplate an image with me. It’s an image from a different time, an earlier time, a time that tended to take the devil more seriously. This image was engraved on a flat copper plate about the size and shape of a standard sheet of paper. It was etched into the copper with stunning technical precision more than 500 years ago by one of the greatest artists in German history, Albrecht Dürer. The piece is called “Knight”—knight spelled with a K, like a knight in shining armor—“Knight, Death, and the Devil.”
If you’ve never seen the engraving, it’s only an internet search away. You could open your web browser right now if you wanted, and find the image on the internet. Search “Durer,” spelled “D-U-R-E-R,” then knight with a K, death, devil. If you see the profile of a lone knight riding on horseback, that’s probably it. And if you don’t have internet access right now, just imagine it with me.
Now, if you found a high-resolution version of the image, you can zoom in on the bottom left corner and see the artist’s signature mark, A.D., which stands for Albrecht Dürer, and above that, the year that he engraved it,1513. If you zoom out again, you can see that the focus of the engraving is the lone knight and his horse, the two them majestically fill the scene.
Now, in the year 1513, I’m told that there weren’t a lot of functionally employed knights left in the German principalities, where Dürer was from. Changes in tactics and weapons had made knights mostly ineffective as a military instrument of power. But the image of a heavily armed horseman was still important— kind of like how there aren’t a lot of real cowboys left anymore, but you still see country-western singers don the signature hat and boots. It’s all about the image—the appearance of being something people admire.
So also, knights, in Dürer’s day, often represented the best ideals of the cultural rebirth that Europe was experiencing—the Renaissance—or the “Re-nay-sance” as Mr. Stewart, my 11th grade history teacher used to say it. This was a time of great discovery and invention—think about Leonardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus and the new world, and Ferdinand Magellan and his quest to circumnavigate the globe—all of that was happening in Dürer’s generation.
Now, when I look closely at the knight in Dürer’s etching, I can’t decide if he’s confident, or just cocky. He kind of looks like George Clooney, actually. From head to toe, he’s covered in custom-fit armor, with a heavy sword holstered on his hip. In his left hand, he’s holding the reigns of the horse. In his right hand, he casually holds a spear, or maybe it’s a lance, resting on his shoulder. Steely-eyed, calm, determined, accompanied by his shaggy hound (you can see the dog there underneath the horse), the knight is undaunted as he leads his noble steed along a narrow pass, flanked by barren banks and overshadowed by gnarled, leafless trees.i
And in the darkness, you can just make out two menacing specters hovering near him, waiting to converge on the knight. The knight seems unconcerned, though. With all that armor and weaponry, he knows he can handle anything. Or, maybe he’s just distracted, like he’s got a pair of earbuds in under his helmet.
When I was in the military, I had a boss, a commander as we called them. And he could have been a knight in shining armor. I remember watching him mount the stage at his change of command ceremony, clad in service dress, brandishing a chest full of medals. I thought he could handle anything. He had blond hair, bright eyes, a winning smile. He’d been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel after only 16 years in the service—promoted ahead of his peers, twice. Even when his boss, the base commander, was breathing fire about the latest hot issue, our commander, he stayed cool and calm and collected. Nothing rattled him. I was sure he’d be a general one day. He set an example, and I wanted to follow him.
You may have not been in the military, but there’s probably some courageous person you’ve admired like that—a hard-working mother who always made sacrifices for her family, who cared for and nurtured not just her own children, but everybody she met. Or a seasoned coach, who bravely led his team through dark days and onto new heights of winning seasons and well-deserved championships. If we still have knights today, it’s people like these, shimmering in their armor—people who seem like they can handle anything.
But look again at Dürer’s etching (or imagine it). If you consider it more carefully, it appears our knight’s armor won’t do him any good, like his confidence is foolishness, because death stands before him and the devil is on his tail. And he doesn’t even see it coming.
Dürer depicts the devil, emerging out of the darkness behind the knight, as a half-deranged hybrid creature, part wolf, part wild boar, with a single rhinoceros horn coming out one side of his head, his alligator snout hanging open, teeth bared, salivating, greedy to devour his game. But also, the devil doesn’t need to be in any hurry. He’s been honing his craft with stunning technical precision for thousands of years. He knows all the chinks in your armor. You can just barely see his arm reaching out for the knight, ready to sink his talons in. He knows his opportunity will come. It’s only a matter of time.
And time is running out for our knight. The devil will make him stumble and fall. Then death will swallow him whole. Dürer depicts death as a rotting cadaver, with worm-eaten flesh still clinging to his bones, his lidless eyes stare vacantly at the knight.ii Death holds an hourglass, symbolic of the sands of time that are slipping away from all of us.
These two, death and the devil, they work together, a one-two punch, to corrupt, spoil, and undo everything our knight stands for. And he doesn’t even see it coming.
I didn’t see it coming—the news about my old commander. I remember where I was when I got word that he had committed suicide. He had just retired from the military and had started another job. I don’t know what it was that led him to take his life—struggles with his marriage maybe, alcohol, pressures of a new career, the aimlessness that you feel when you step away from your life’s work? It could have been any of those or all of them—death and the devil doing their work.
That hard-working mother, who seemed like she had it all together, she struggled behind closed doors with depression and rage. And only her children suffered the fallout. That respected coach shocked everyone when the stories about his abuses surfaced. And not one of these brave knights fell so far yesterday that you or I couldn’t fall further tomorrow. There’s a skull etched at the bottom corner of Dürer’s copper plate that reminds us, that mocks us: “Your armor cannot protect you.”
But if you zoom out further, there’s another way to see this image. Down here in the valley of death’s shadow, everything looks hopeless, doomed. But lift your eyes up, above the dark valley, up there, on the ridgeline, you can see a mighty fortress.
When I first looked at Dürer’s etching of the knight, I didn’t even notice it. It just blended in up there with the gnarled, spindly tree limbs. But it’s there. And once you see it, you cannot un-see it—a mighty fortress. And in that mighty fortress there is the king who chose this knight for this mission. And now we can see that the strength of this soldier is not in his appearance, but in his Lord, who called him and commissioned him.
I mentioned those famous words from the apostle Paul, who said our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil. That passage comes from his letter to the Ephesians. Earlier in the letter, Paul called to mind the God-forsaken death of our King Jesus. See, God had commissioned Jesus, His Son, to leave His throne and enter the fray, into battle against the cosmic powers of this present darkness. And Jesus did battle, not with the weapons of this world, but with the Word of God’s truth, words spoken in love. Jesus fought valiantly, but it appeared that God abandoned even Him into the hands of death and the devil. And they had their way with Him. Just like they have done and will do to every other brave knight, they knocked Him off his horse, robbed Him of His work, and buried Him in the ground.
But God, says Paul in Ephesians 1, “by the strength of His might, God raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above every rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that can be named, not only in this age but in the age to come. God put all things under the feet of Jesus and gave Him as Head over all things for the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Jesus has triumphed over the powers of death and hell and He has pledged Himself to be your Protector, to be the armor that you put on.
God seated Jesus in heaven, but that does not mean He is removed from our battles. He fills all things in heaven and on earth. He is with us. His Spirit lives in us. We are members of His body. Our King does not sit with folded hands in some castle in the clouds. He exercises His dominion and power for us. All things must serve Him and obey Him—even death, even the devil.
The armor that He gives, it doesn’t appear to be worth much. It doesn’t shimmer. It doesn’t shine. You can’t buy it or sell it, measure it or manipulate it. But it counts for everything. Because Christ Himself is your armor—His Word, His truth, His righteousness, His peace, His presence.
Albrecht Dürer, the genius Renaissance artist, was also a man of deep faith, a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. He once wrote, “Christ Jesus is the Son of God, the highest power, who can do all things, and He is the Eternal Life. Into whomsoever Christ comes He lives, and himself lives in Christ. Therefore, all things are in Christ good things. There is nothing good in us except it becomes good in Christ.”iii
In Christ, we can see Dürer’s etching differently—we can see the world differently. Time is running out for death, because death has lost his greatest prize. The Son God is risen from the dead and will reign forever. Death is harmless, half-decomposed, defeated. The same goes for his partner, the devil. He is desperate. He knows his schemes will be exposed and brought into the light. He tries to wound the knight, but his efforts are doomed. This knight has been pardoned and claimed by our King. He already shares in the indestructible life to come. He is out of the devil’s reach.
I look again at the knight. He still looks a little like George Clooney. But now, I don’t see him as cocky or unconcerned about the danger around him. He goes forward humbly and confidently in God’s strength. His confidence isn’t in himself, but in his Lord and protector. And no sin, no mistake, no failure, no devil, not even death can stand in the way.
There’s been much speculation about who is the inspiration behind Dürer’s knight.iv Maybe it was some great hero, a famous saint, a prince, a politician, a prominent leader in the church? But it’s likely the inspiration was closer to home. During the years Dürer was completing this etching, his mother lived with him. His father had died recently, and Dürer took his mother in to care for her. Dürer had great love and admiration for his mother. She had given birth to 18 children, several of whom died as children. Dürer’s mother cared for her family through plagues and poverty. Yet he said, “She bore no malice,” and “I cannot enough praise her good works and the compassion she showed to all.”
That year, while he was finishing his etching, Dürer’s mother was struck with an illness that eventually took her life at the age of 63. Dürer was with her when she died, and there was nothing romantic about it. He said that she died hard, and it appeared as though she saw something dreadful when it happened. “Death smote her two great strokes to the heart, and she departed with pain,” he wrote later. Death and the devil had taken another brave knight.
Before she died, Dürer’s mother told him that she feared death much, but she said that to come before God she feared not. And it was God who was with her when she faced death. Her name was Barbara, and “to speak of God was ever her greatest delight,” Dürer wrote. Whenever he went out or came in the house, her saying was always, “Go in the Name of Christ.”
Perhaps the knight in Dürer’s engraving doesn’t stand for just one person. And maybe we shouldn’t see him as the lone knight at all. Because in Christ we go out together, each of us a small but important part of the body of Christ, created in Christ for community, sent on a mission for the Savior, together we stand firm.
As Paul says it in Ephesians, chapter 6: “Finally, you all be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you all can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. Because our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and, having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, and with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the Gospel, the Good News of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the (fiery) arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And pray, pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I should.”
In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
i William Conway, editor and translator. The Writings of Albrecht Dürer. New York: Philosophical Library (1958), 153.
ii “The Knight, Death and the Devil,” Collection detail, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Accessed on June 15, 2026 at fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/explore-our-collection/highlights/P3088-R
iii Conway, Writings of Albrecht Dürer, 155.
iv See Carolyn Brinkley, “Albrecht Dürer’s ‘Knight, Death, and the Devil,’” March 13, 2017. Accessed on June 15, 2026 at lutheranreformation.org/history/albrecht-durers-knight-death-devil/Reflections for July 12, 2026
Title: Knight, Death, and the DevilNo reflection segment this week.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“I Walk in Danger All the Way” arr. by Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Almighty God, Your Word Is Cast” arr. by Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Almighty God, Your Word Is Cast” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.