Kathryn Krick's 'Battle Song': Victory Without the Cross

The reel, posted on Kathryn Krick's Instagram (reel Db6bKegy9pc), is a 2-minute-13-second song she introduces as a "battle song." Its refrain — "The devil is defeated... I have the victory" — is sung again and again (on-screen lyrics at 0:54-1:21), and she closes the section with her own framing: "Let this be your battle song." To be precise about what the song does and does not say: Jesus is mentioned once, in passing. The cross is never mentioned. The resurrection is never mentioned. In a song whose entire subject is victory over the devil, the place where that victory was actually won never appears.

Scripture has addressed this exact redirection of joy before. When the seventy-two returned from their mission rejoicing that "even the demons are subject to us in your name," Jesus corrected the direction of their joy: "Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:20, NKJV). The disciples' joy was aimed at victory over demons; Jesus aimed it at salvation. A battle song that spends two minutes celebrating the devil's defeat — and one's own possession of victory — while never naming the cross, cultivates precisely the joy Jesus redirected.

Where was the victory won? Paul defines the gospel in exactly these terms: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, NKJV). The same chapter locates our victory entirely outside ourselves: "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (15:57, NKJV). And Colossians names the moment the devil was actually defeated: God, "having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it" — in the cross (Colossians 2:15, NKJV). The devil is indeed defeated. But he was defeated by Christ, at Calvary, through death and resurrection — not by our declarations.

Paul resolved "to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). The battle song inverts that resolve twice over: the spotlight moves from the cross to the devil, and from Christ to the singer — "I have the victory." This is not an isolated slip; it matches the pattern documented in our full assessment of Krick's ministry, where attention is persistently drawn to demons, deliverance, and the minister herself rather than to the finished work of Christ. A ministry that keeps believers focused on the devil's activity produces dependence and fear; a ministry centered on the cross produces assurance.

The stakes of such displacement are the ones Jesus himself named: false christs and false prophets "will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:24, NKJV). Deception rarely announces itself by denying Christ outright; it works by degrees, moving the center of gravity away from him while keeping the vocabulary of faith. A victory song with no cross is exactly such a degree.

Test the song against Scripture yourself — the texts are Luke 10:20, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 and 15:57, Colossians 2:15, 1 Corinthians 2:2, and Matthew 24:24. Our complete 5-point biblical assessment of Kathryn Krick, with sourced quotes including this one, is linked below.