Ready for battle

There is no doubt that Paul faced severe attack — far more than any of us are likely to encounter. Yet for Paul, the reality of these ferocious attacks did not change his fundamental perspective on spiritual warfare, which is that we are besieging the enemy, not that the enemy is besieging us. How do I know this? The “weapons of our warfare” he refers to in 2 Corinthians 10:4 are in fact siege engines — powerful devices used to launch an offensive attack on a besieged city, in this case the fortress of Satan. Perhaps we can describe the process as “attacking while being attacked.” But this does raise a number of questions about spiritual warfare. Who is in control of the circumstances? How much do we have to suffer? To what extent will God protect us? Will we emerge victorious? These are legitimate questions. And we can give some brief answers, all from Romans 8. Who is in control? God is in control — otherwise He is no longer the sovereign God the Bible says He is, nor could it be truthfully said that He works all things together for good for those who love Him (Rom. 8:28). Even where the enemy is at work, inflicting damage on us as best he can, God is working over, through and in it all to bring about a bigger and better purpose, which sooner or later will become clear. There are times when we just have to hold on and trust Him.

As to how much we may have to suffer or to what extent He will protect us, the same chapter in Romans says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). The fact is none of us can define the extent of what may come against us. One thing is for sure: it is hardly likely that this entire list of challenges — all of which (except possibly the sword) Paul personally experienced — will befall us. Yet none of them deterred Paul from following Christ, or made him feel that following Christ was not worth the price he had to pay for it. We cannot sit around worrying about whether we could withstand a trial that might or might not take place: “What would I do if this or that happened?” God does not give grace and strength for a trial until we are in the trial. The truth is God has promised that, no matter what happens, nothing will separate us from His love.

And finally, as to whether we will emerge victorious, the answer is clear: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). So let’s get on with the battle, and trust God with the results!

Faith for the fight

How do we view the Christian life? What does it really mean to follow Christ? We would all admit that we live in a very pleasure-oriented, self-seeking society. This attitude can overflow into our understanding of Christianity. Do we teach people becoming Christians that following Jesus means to be rescued from all worldly troubles? Or that Christianity is a gateway to material prosperity? Or that it is a guarantee of protection? If so, we will not have a framework for understanding spiritual warfare when it occurs. But what if we take the Bible seriously in its portrayal of the Christian life as a battle in which we besiege the powers of darkness, fight against them and defeat them? In this case, we will have some expectations in place: -a battle presumes an opposing power; -this opposition will do some damage to us; -the moment this damage occurs is the critical point where we must trust God and hold fast our position; -no matter what the ups and downs of the battle, God guarantees ultimate victory.

If, on the other hand, we present the Christian life in terms of benefits and protection, the result — paradoxically — will be fear. Why? Because when trouble comes, we will have no frame of reference to understand or cope with it. Why is this happening when we thought God would protect us? This is the downfall of much teaching on faith. If faith is understood as trusting God that He will keep us from financial, physical and emotional hardships, we will have no means of dealing with those situations when they inevitably arise — and we will find ourselves in confusion and even disillusionment in our relationship with the Lord. But if we present the Christian life in terms of a battle which we fight offensively, the result will be peace — albeit peace in the midst of a storm. Why? Because:

-we have anticipated the attack of the enemy; -we are trusting God to keep us in it; -we see God as sovereign over it; He has warned us in advance that attack will come, but He promises to keep us in it and bring us through it.

Revelation repeatedly presents the Christian life as one of overcoming — which presumes we have things to overcome, but that, by God’s grace and empowering, we will do so. And when we have fought the battle, we will never regret doing what He called us to do.

How faith works

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” The key word here is “substance”, which represents the Greek word hupostasis. This word is used twice elsewhere in Hebrews. According to Hebrews 1:3, the Son is the exact representation of God’s hupostasis, and according to Hebrews 3:14, believers share in Christ only if they hold fast the beginning of their hupostasis to the end. In the Greek language, this word originally meant that which supports something, a deposit or sediment in the ground, or even an item of immovable property. It came to refer in a more figurative sense to the underlying reality behind a thing. Christ is pictured in 1:3 as the exact representation of the reality, substance or being of God. The eternal reality of who and what God is in the eternal, unseen realm is made physical, earthly reality in Christ. In the same way, the things that exist in the eternal realm – the “things hoped for”, the things we do not yet possess, are made into flesh and blood reality in the lives of individual believers in Christ through the exercise of faith. As Christ brings the invisible substance of God into this physical world, so faith brings the things we do not yet possess into our possession. Our faith in Christ reaches out for and secures what is real in the invisible world and brings it into the physical reality of this present world, whereas the outward realities of that world are in fact only passing shadows. What is real in the eternal world but has no substance in the material world gains substance through the exercise of our faith. It is this substance which enabled the heroes of faith, whose lives are recorded as chapter 11 unfolds, to conquer everything the world threw against them, and still emerge victorious, whether in life or in death.

And of course, the substance of our faith is Christ  -  He is God’s guarantee standing behind everything we believe — so how can we fail? Maybe it’s time we took some more steps of faith by testing the substance of what we have but often fail to exercise. We may be amazed at the results!

The church's future

1 John 2:14: “I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him from has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” John says here that the strength of young men is in the Word of God and in their ability to overcome the enemy. This is an interesting statement. We tend to think that it would take as many years to come to know God’s Word and to have spiritual power to overcome the enemy as it would to gain the type of knowledge of God possessed only by the fathers who, John says, “know Him who has been from the beginning”. Yet such is not the case. It is true that some levels of understanding God’s Word take years to reach. But the problem lies in our over-emphasis on intellectual knowledge.

While it make take years of advanced training to understand certain aspects of Scripture, or to be able to get up and teach the church about it, most of the Bible is pretty simple. Anyone can gain a sufficient grasp of it quickly enough to use it. A brand-new convert with only a small understanding of the Word can use it against the enemy to devastating effect. By the same token, an unbelieving or liberal-minded professor of theology may have accumulated a lifetime of facts about the Bible – many of them erroneous –  but in truth understands it less than the new convert on fire for God. There is something in the spirit of a young man which takes the Bible as a sword and jumps at the chance of using it in battle. That’s what he’s talking about here.

The same thing is true for the second part of the statement. Young men are destined by God to overcome the enemy. You don’t have to have known God for years to enter into battle and triumph. After all, the armed forces usually recruit men under 25, not over 50! There is a raw strength of faith in young men which can be harnessed to achieve great things.

Satan’s strategy, therefore, is to neutralize the strength of the young men. The young men are the future fathers and leaders, and if he destroys them now, he destroys the future of the church. That’s why the fathers (who know God and equally know the enemy and his ways), are charged with safeguarding the young men and helping them to achieve their destiny. The generals, through their years of experience, know their enemy, know his tactics, and know the way to win. But it is the soldiers who will fight the battle. The job of the generals (like the fathers in the church) is to release the young men in such a way that their strength is employed most effectively.

All this leads us to ask the question: how many churches are making the raising up of young men their overriding pastoral focus? Food for thought!

Delivered from the power of darkness

“For He delivered us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13-14) The word “delivered” speaks of the action of a mighty conqueror who rescues someone by his great strength. “Authority” refers to a tyrannical form of government, enslaving those under its power. A greater power must intervene. No man can rescue himself from the authority of darkness. Jesus used exactly the same phrase at Gethsemane when the crowd came to seize Him: “While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on me, but this hour and the authority of darkness are yours” (Luke 22:53). Jesus notes that the people opposing Him are exercising  the power of darkness. But those who try to use the power of darkness will also fall under its authority.

When man fell into sin, he tried to make use of the serpent’s wisdom to gain his own goals, but soon found that he had fallen under both the serpent’s authority and its judgment. The authority of darkness is the place of Satan’s rule and the counterfeit or opposite of God’s kingdom. It is the place where every single one of us lived before we came to Christ. We entered it through sin, and every one of us has sinned. We can exit it only through total absence of sin and obedience to God, the state in which we were created. But no man can free himself from the hold of sin and so no man can free himself from the kingdom of darkness. We are in an impossible dilemma!

Yet there is a way out, for Christ has delivered us; the verse continues: “He has transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.” The word “transferred” or “removed” was the word used when conquering kings took with them whole populations of towns and cities and moved them to a new place. They did it for an evil cause, but God does it for our benefit. What we could not do He has done. Notice that we do not have to wait for the future to be part of His kingdom. We are in His kingdom now. To be in His kingdom means to be living under His rule and authority, to be experiencing the reality of His power in our lives. To be transferred into the kingdom means change, and change for the better. What was impossible before is possible now.