The Most Powerful Force on Earth (Body Life, Chapter One)
The Church's Highest Priority (Body Life, Chapter Two)
Our Secret Weapons (2 Corinthians 10:1-6)
The Forces we Face (Ephesians 6:10)
Beginning the Battle (Ephesians 6:10-13)
The Strategy of Satan (Ephesians 6:10-13)
The Tactics of Terror (Ephesians 6:10-13)
Defense Against Defeat-Part 1 (Ephesians 6:14-17)
Defense Against Defeat-Part 2 (Ephesians 6:10-18)
Defense Against Defeat-Part 3 (Ephesians 6:17)
Defense Against Defeat-Part 4 (Ephesians 6:14-17)
A set of selected messages from the Ray C. Stedman Library, http://raystedman.org/
Background for Spiritual Warfare, I
This...is about the church. Not the church as it often is, but the church as it originally was. The church as it can be. And yes, the church as it must be again.
What sort of image does the word church bring to your mind? Does it suggest to you--
A snooty religious country club, bound by strange, almost secret rituals, traditions, and jargon?
A political action group, waging war on behalf of a political agenda (of either the left or the right)?
A waiting room, where people wait expectantly but rather passively for the next bus to heaven?
A collection of hypocrites who care more about expensive pipe organs, stained glass, and stone buildings than they do about the hurting and hungry in the world?
A place where "religious junkies" gather to get their weekend "feel-good fix" so they can get through another week?
A collection of sanctimonious kill-joys who want to legislate morality for the rest of the world?
Let's be honest: The church has been all of these things at one time or another. Again and again, it has justified every bitter charge, every gripe and criticism that was ever leveled against it by angry atheists and disillusioned agnostics.
Yet--despite all its obvious flaws, weaknesses, hypocrisies, sins, and excesses--the church has been the most powerful force for good on the face of the earth, century after century, from the time of the apostles right up to this present moment. It has been light in the midst of the blackest darkness. It has been salt--both a preservative and a delightful seasoning--in a corruption-prone, unsavory society.
A paradox? Absolutely! Many of the most wonderful truths of God come packaged in a paradox, wrapped in a mystery. As we unravel the seeming contradictions of God's church--as He designed it and created it to be--we will find some of the deepest, most exhilarating, and life-changing of all of God's truths.
The truths of Body Life.
Two churches
How can we unravel this paradox? How can the church be both sin-ridden and salt and light? How can the church be both a source of disillusionment and a source of illumination at the same time? The answer, as found in the Bible, is this: What we call "the church" is really two churches! One is selfish, power-hungry, and sinful. The other is loving, forgiving, and godly. One has a long history of stirring up hatred, conflict, and bloody persecution, all in the name of God and religion. The other has always sought to heal human hurts, break down barriers of race and class, and deliver men and women from their guilt, shame, fear, and ignorance.
One is a false church, a counterfeit, masquerading as Christianity, but whose head is Satan. The other is the true church, founded by Jesus Christ, mirroring His authentic character through acts of love, self-sacrifice, courage, and truth.
For some reason, we are continually surprised when we are confronted by this counterfeit church. For some of us, a painful encounter with this false church creates so much pain and disillusionment that we actually begin to doubt the reality of God and His true church! But we shouldn't be surprised or disillusioned when we bump up against counterfeit Christianity. Jesus Himself predicted that the false church would come.
In Matthew 13, Jesus uses a series of parables (that is, allegorical stories) to describe conditions in the world during the interval between His first coming and His second coming. That interval is the age in which we now live, and one of the parables he told is called the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Another word for "tares" is "weeds." In this story, Jesus says that He Himself, as the Son of Man, plants wheat in the field of the world. The wheat, He says, represents Christians, whom he calls "the sons of the kingdom."
But after the wheat is planted, the Devil comes in and plants weeds. These weeds, or "tares," look like wheat but produce no grain. The "tares" are, in effect, false or counterfeit wheat. These "tares" represent false or counterfeit Christians, whom Jesus calls "sons of the evil one." Outwardly, these false Christians look like the genuine article, just as the "tares" look like real wheat. The wheat and "tares" grow up together, and are completely indistinguishable from each other--for a while.
Soon, workers notice the weeds growing among the wheat and come asking if they should dig up the weeds. The Lord's answer: Absolutely not! Uprooting the "tares" would destroy the wheat along with the weeds. Instead, "let both grow together until the harvest" (Matt. 13:30).
The harvest, Jesus concludes, will take place at the close of the age when He sends His angels (not men) into the field to separate the weeds from the wheat. The weeds will be burned in judgment, but the wheat will be gathered into His father's barns. The wheat--the true Christians, the sons of the kingdom--are those who have experienced what the Bible calls the new birth. As Jesus says in another passage, "Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).
The apostle Peter later describes the genuine Christians as being "born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God" (1 Pet. 1:23). The sons of the evil one are the false Christians, never born again by the power of the Spirit of God through faith in the Word of God, but who purport to be Christians because:
They have fulfilled some outward religious ritual; Have joined a local church; are relying on outward moral conduct; or they want to cloak their own evil and sin in an outward covering of religiousness. In the sight of God, they are children of Satan. To other people, and even to themselves, they are indistinguishable from the true Christians.
No wonder the church presents such a confused picture to the world! If we ignore the biblical picture, as illustrated by the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, then the church appears confusing even to those who love and defend it!
If we are unable to recognize the dual, "true-and-false" nature of the church, if we insist on viewing these two distinct churches as one and the same, then we are doomed to a kind of "ecclesiastical schizophrenia" that will leave us baffled and confused.
"But," you may ask, "isn't there any way we can separate the true church from the false?" It has been tried many times before, and every such attempt has failed because the separation has been attempted on the basis of external factors: doctrinal purity, moral conduct, ritualistic practices, and even affiliation with the government! Roman Catholics have insisted they had the true church. Baptists have scorned such claims and declared that they have the true pattern. Other sects and denominations have arisen and declared, "A plague on both your houses--we are the true church!" And so the battle has raged for centuries.
The result of all this confusion and bickering has been that the church has increasingly been robbed of its sense of identity. Like someone suffering from amnesia, the church is asking, "Who am I and what am I here for?"
Two-in-one Christians
The truth is, of course, that no religious organization or denomination can be the true church. The division between true church and counterfeit church does not lie along denominational lines. True Christianity is not a matter of organizations or groups.
"Well, then," you might say, "it must be an individual matter. What we have to do is examine the lives of individual Christians. Those who manifest counterfeit Christianity are counterfeit Christians. Those who manifest true Christianity are true Christians."
If only it were that simple! According to the Bible, however, it's a lot more complicated than that. It's true that, Biblically, counterfeit Christians can only manifest counterfeit Christianity. However, true Christians are capable of displaying both true and false Christianity-- though not at the same time. Genuine Christians can, through ignorance or willful disobedience, display a false and counterfeit Christianity in their lives. When they do, they cause as much harm as the irreligious, self-centered pagans around them! They bring the Gospel into disrepute, and they bring shame and dishonor to their Lord.
The sad truth is that it is deceptively easy to be a Christian yet not live a Christian life. Even though living in disobedience is dull, barren, and deadly, and even though the true Christian life is vital, exciting, and effective, many Christians choose disobedience. They bring hurt to themselves and the people around them--and they grieve the heart of Jesus.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, as a new millennium looms on the horizon, the great masses of people across this world are confused and afraid. They are searching for reality. They are desperate for a place of safety in a world beset with terrorism, rampant crime, racial unrest, AIDS, the threat of nuclear and biological warfare, the threat to the environment, and more. Today's headlines seem to be moving us toward the last days foretold by Jesus, Daniel, and John's Revelation--and toward the "harvest" of the "wheat" and the "tares."
So it is all the more urgent today that we search out from Scripture the true nature and function of authentic Christianity, and that we recover the dynamic energy and power of the early church. As we cross the threshold which divides the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the world seems to be a terribly complicated place--especially when compared with the world of the early church. And yet, there is no reason why the church in the twenty-first century should not be what it was in the first century. True Christianity operates on exactly the same basis now as it did then. The same power which turned the world upside-down in the book of Acts is available to us today.
What keeps us from experiencing that power today? I believe the major barrier we face is ignorance. Most Christians are tragically unaware of the biblical pattern for the church. Even true Christians, the true "wheat," still vainly attempt to do what their Master told them was hopeless and counterproductive: to physically separate the "wheat" from the "weeds" (see Matt. 13:24-30). We need to realize that elements of true and false Christianity will be intermingled in the same world, in the same church, even in the same person. Any attempt to "weed out" the false runs the risk of uprooting the true as well. Our goal as Christians should not be to go on a search and destroy mission against all the "tares" in the church, but to do everything we can to make the true "wheat" in the church so strong and healthy that the "tares" are powerless to damage it.
Jesus declared that He would build His church upon a rock, an unshakable foundation. That rock was the fact of his Messiahship and deity, as the apostle Peter confessed (see Matt. 16:16). Subsequently, on the day of Pentecost, His church came into being by the power of the Spirit of God. At first there was no sign of the presence of false Christianity. The true Christian life which was displayed shook the entire city of Jerusalem and soon spread to other cities and villages. Then, as Jesus predicted, the false seeds of the Satan's weeds took root and began to appear, not only as counterfeit Christians within the church, but as sin and counterfeit Christianity in the lives of true Christians (see the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5; the story of Simon Magus in Acts 8).
Once these "weeds" began to appear, it became the task of the apostles to instruct Christians in how to recognize the counterfeit Christianity that was in them along with the true, so that they could purify themselves, repudiating sin by the power of the crucified Lord while yielding themselves by faith to the resurrection life and power of Jesus Christ. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the early apostles developed and laid down the pattern of operation intended by the Lord for His body, the church. This timeless pattern, when closely followed, would make the church of any age, of any millennium, the most powerful force on earth!
Invisible and visible governments
Do we truly realize the power that is available to us? Do we have any concept of the power Jesus intended for His church to wield in this dark and dangerous world? Or has our vision of the church become so dimmed that the word "church" suggests to us only a building on the corner where we go once a week to sing hymns and hear sermons?
The church, as God designed it and as the Bible describes it, is an amazing, dynamic, world-changing force. It is, in fact, a kind of invisible government, influencing and moving the visible governments of the earth. Because of the powerful influence of the church, the people of this planet are able to experience the benefits of social stability, law and order, justice and peace. Yes, the world is troubled and in turmoil--but we haven't seen even a fraction of one percent of the tribulation, tyranny, anarchy, and slaughter that would take place if the church were suddenly taken out of this world! (See Matt. 5:13,14; Phil. 2:14,15; 1 Tim. 2:1,2.)
Whenever the church has followed the biblical pattern and become more of what God designed it to be, righteous conditions have spread throughout society. When the church has abandoned this divine pattern, relying on worldly power, becoming proud, rich and tyrannical, then it has become weak and despised--and terrible forces of evil have been unleashed in the world.
"When all else fails, follow directions!" says the popular slogan. God has given us a set of directions for building a powerful, functional, dynamically effective church. In this book, we will open the Scriptures and examine God's directions for the church--which, as it turns out, are also God's directions for building a rewarding, effective, dynamic life. It is through the koinonia-fellowship of the church that we truly become all God intended us to be.
We find God's truth and instructions about His church throughout the New Testament, and especially in the writings of the apostle Paul--his letters are, after all, written specifically to individual churches and to church leaders, such as Timothy and Titus. Paul's masterpiece of the church is his letter to the Ephesians, which deals almost exclusively with the origin, nature, and function of the church, and its essential relationship to the Lord. So it is to this letter that we now turn, and especially to the first sixteen verses of chapter 4. There we will find our guideline to God's truth about the life of the body of Christ, the church.
from Body
Life, by Ray C. Stedman, Chapter One
TOP
Background for Spiritual Warfare, II
This is a revolutionary age.
The hurricane winds of change are howling around the world. The human race seethes with unrest and rebellion. Our political institutions are polarized, divided to the left and right without any common ground in the center. Despite the signs of current prosperity, our debt-ridden, hair-triggered economy seems precariously balanced on the verge of collapse. We have barred and dead-bolted our homes, making ourselves prisoners while criminals roam free in our neighborhoods, graffiti-tagging and shooting at random, filling our hearts with fear. With every day's headlines, with every new atrocity or terrorist attack, we see more evidence that there is a very thin line which separates civilization from anarchy. We seem to be approaching not just a political breakdown, but a cultural meltdown.
What is our response? Is there anything the church can do in the face of such complex and insoluble problems? Can the church make a difference in this wobbly, dangerous world? Or has the church simply become irrelevant?
Amazingly, when Paul wrote his letter to the Christians in the city of Ephesus, the Christians of the first century faced strikingly similar problems and asked similar questions. Ephesus was a city in the Roman province of Asia, and the entire Roman empire was being shaken by political instability, civil unrest, crime, and radical change. Half the population of the Empire were slaves, sunk into such hopeless bondage that they were traded and sold like cattle. Except for a small class of rich aristocrats and patricians, most of the population eked out a poverty-line living as farmers, tradesmen, and laborers.
The moral corruption of Ephesus was legendary. The city was the center of worship for the sex-goddess, Diana of the Ephesians. As for cruelty, the Roman legions were ready to march anywhere to suppress any rebellion or civil disorder with ruthless slaughter. The ruler of the Roman world was Emperor Nero, whose sordid and savage life had scandalized the empire.
Paul was in Rome, a prisoner of Caesar, when he wrote his letter to the Ephesians. He was awaiting the hour when he would he summoned before Nero. Though permitted to live in his own rented house, Paul could not go about the city. Instead, he was subjected to the indignity of being chained day and night to a Roman guard. Seeing about him the decadent life of the city and knowing the conditions which prevailed in distant Ephesus, what would the apostle tell the Christians to do when he wrote? The answer is striking and instructive: "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." (Eph. 4:1-3.)
What does the apostle say to the Ephesian church in the face of so many desperate cries of human need? What is his answer to the pleas for justice and relief from oppression all around him? Simply this: Fulfill your calling! Obey your orders! Don't deviate from the divine strategy! Follow your Lord!
In this admonition the apostle clearly recognizes the true nature and function of the church. It is not a human institution. It is not expected to devise its own strategy and set its own goals. It is not an independent organization, existing by means of the strength of its numbers. It is, rather, a body called into a special relationship to God. Within this letter to the Ephesians, the apostle employs several word-pictures to describe the relationship between God and the church:
A body: Paul says the church is a body under the control of its Head. What a tragedy it would be if that body refused to respond to the direction of its Head! In realm of medicine, there are diseases which ravage the nerve pathways which enable the human brain to control the human body. It is tragic and heartbreaking to see a person bound to a wheelchair or hospital bed, unable to control his movements and body functions. A church which is unresponsive to its Head is every bit as tragic and heartbreaking to watch.
A temple: The church is also a temple for the exclusive habitation and use of a Person who dwells within, and who has the right to do with that temple whatever He wills.
An army: The church is an army under the command of a king. An army that will not obey its leader is useless as a fighting force. Therefore, says Paul to the church, obey your orders, follow your Head.
The divine strategy
Paul didn't just preach to the Ephesians. He was an example to them. After languishing for two years as a prisoner in Caesarea, Palestine, he had been sent to Rome on a perilous sea voyage which ended in shipwreck on the island of Malta. Finally, he arrived at Rome, a prisoner of the Roman emperor. Yet never once in his letter does he refer to himself as "the prisoner of Caesar." He always calls himself "a prisoner of [or for] the Lord." He does not fret about being chained up in prison. Read his letter to the Philippians (which was also written from prison in Rome), and you'll find it glows with an aura of joy and the assurance of ultimate triumph.
Paul does not consider himself a prisoner of Caesar. The Roman emperor may think he runs the world and everyone in it, but there is a much higher Authority in charge. Behind Caesar is Christ, and Caesar can do nothing to Paul unless the Lord Jesus Christ allows it. Paul sees beyond the chains and the guard and the imperial processes of justice--and what he sees there is the controlling hand of Jesus Christ.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, "We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen" (2 Cor. 4:18). Why? Because that is where the ultimate answers lie. That is where ultimate truth is found, where the ultimate power exists. Jesus himself reflected this same attitude when He stood before Pontius Pilate.
Pilate said to Him, "Do you not know that I have power ... to crucify you?" Jesus replied immediately, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above" (John 19:10,11).
Much of the explanation for the confusion which exists so widely in the church today is that Christians have been looking at the things seen instead of at the things that are unseen. We see a suffering world with human need groaning and screaming everywhere. Hate and bigotry abound, injustice prevails and misery exists wherever we turn. The obvious solution: Let's get to work--now! What are we waiting for? Let's do something--anything!
It sounds so logical--but that is because our human thinking is shallow and superficial. We only see the things that are visible. In our shallow concern for externals we treat symptoms and not causes. We apply superficial remedies that work only for the moment, if they work at all. Soon the situation is worse than before--and we wonder why.
We desperately need this practical admonition of the apostle: "Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called" (Eph. 4:1). The One who has called us sees life much more clearly than we do. He has devised a strategy that will actually remove the root cause of human darkness and misery--not just cover the cancer of sin with a Band-Aid. When the church is faithful to its calling--it becomes a healing agency in society, able to lift a whole nation or an empire to a higher plateau of healthy, wholesome living.
In his monumental history of the world, The Story of Civilization, Will Durant compares the influence of Caesar and Christ. He says of Jesus:
The revolution he sought was a far deeper one, without which reforms could be only superficial and transitory. If he could cleanse the human heart of selfish desire, cruelty, and lust, utopia would come of itself, and all those institutions that rise out of human greed and violence, and the consequent need for law, would disappear. Since this would be the profoundest of all revolutions, beside which all others would be mere coup d'etats of class ousting class and exploiting in its turn, Christ was, in this spiritual sense the greatest revolutionist in history. (1)
The true church is here to effect that revolution. The false church is here to oppose it. But true Christians actually promote the cause of false Christianity when, through ignorance or mistaken zeal, they deviate from the divine strategy and disobey their divine calling. We mere humans cannot improve on the divine program. Nor are we left in doubt as to what that calling is. The first three chapters of Ephesians are devoted to describing it, and it is also detailed elsewhere throughout the New Testament. If Christians are to give intelligent obedience to their Lord, they must give highest priority to understanding what He wants them to be and do.
Back to reality
Human strategies are founded upon limited human understanding and the best estimates human beings can make. But God's strategy, His calling upon our lives, is based upon an absolutely perfect understanding of fundamental and ultimate reality. In fact, that is the glory of Christianity: it sets forth things as they really are. The Christian diagnosis of all the world's ills--from conflicts between nations to conflicts within an individual human soul--is accurate because it reflects a true understanding of the human condition.
The New Testament epistles always begin with the truth--what we call "doctrine." The New Testament writers always call us back to reality. Then, on the basis of that underlying foundation of truth, they go on to suggest certain practical applications. How foolish it is to start with anything but truth!
In the opening chapters of Ephesians, Paul makes several clear statements regarding the purpose of the church--and not merely its purpose for eternity, off in misty futurity, but it purpose right here, right now. Let's examine some of these statements of the nature and purpose of the church:
Purpose No. 1: The church is to reflect God's holiness.
"He chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Eph. 1:4). Here we see clearly that the church is no afterthought with God. It was planned long before the world was made.
And what is God's first concern for the church? He is not, first of all, concerned with what the church does, but with what the church is. Being must always precede doing, for what we are determines what we do. To understand the moral character of God's people is essential to understanding the nature of the church. As Christians, we are to be a moral example to the world, reflecting the pure character and holiness of Jesus Christ.
I once read of two American men who were riding on a train in Britain. (English trains have compartments where up to six people can be seated). In the compartment with these two men was a very distinguished-looking gentleman. The two Americans were quietly discussing him. "I'd wager money," whispered one of them, "that the fellow over there is the Archbishop of Canterbury."
The other American said, "He can't be. I'll take that wager."
So the first man approached the gentleman and said, "Sir, would you mind telling us, are you the Archbishop of Canterbury?"
The Englishman looked up in annoyance and snarled, "Mind your own blankety-blank business! What the blankety-blank difference does it make to you who I am?"
So the first American turned to the other and said, "He'll never tell us if he's the Archbishop or not! The bet's off!"
Obviously, a genuine Christian--whether he's an Archbishop or a run-of-the-mill lay person--ought to give clear, convincing evidence of their Christianity by the way they talk, live, act, and react. We Christians are called to be "holy and blameless" before God. We are to reflect His holiness. That is one of the purposes of the church.
Purpose No. 2: The church is to reveal God's glory.
Paul gives us another purpose of the church in the first chapter of Ephesians:
"He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace" (v. 5).
"We who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory" (v. 12).
Think of that! The phrase "we who first hoped in Christ" refers to us who are Christians as having been destined and appointed (here is our calling again) to live for the praise of his glory. The first task of the church is not the welfare of human beings. Yes, our welfare is definitely important to God, but that is not the church's first task. Rather, we have been chosen by God to live to the praise and glory of God, so that through our lives His glory will be revealed to the world. As the New English Bible states it, "We should cause his glory to be praised."
What is God's glory? It is God himself, the revelation of what God is and does. The problem with this world is that it does not know God. It has no understanding of him. In all its seekings and wanderings, its endeavors to discover truth, it does not know God. But the glory of God is to reveal Himself, to show the world what He Himself is like. When the works of God and the nature of God are demonstrated through the church, He is glorified. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6).
People can see the glory of God in the face of Christ, in His character, His being. And that glory is also found, says Paul, in "our hearts." God calls the church to reveal to the world the glory of His character, which is found in the face of Jesus Christ. This is stated again in chapter 1 of Ephesians: "He has put all things under his [Christ's] feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22,23).
That is a tremendous statement! Here, Paul says that all that Jesus Christ is (his fullness) is to be seen in His body, which is the church! The secret of the church is that Christ lives in it and the message of the church to the world is to declare him, to talk about Jesus Christ. Paul describes this secret of the true church again in the second chapter of Ephesians: "So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Eph. 2:19-22).
There is the holy mystery of the church--it is the dwelling place of God. He lives in His people. That is the great calling of the church--to make visible the invisible Christ. Paul describes his own ministry as a pattern Christian in these terms: "To make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now he made known to the principalities and powers In the heavenly places" (Eph. 3:9,10).
There it is very plainly. The task of the church is "to make known the manifold wisdom of God," to make it known not only to human beings but also to angels who are observing the church. These are "the principalities and powers in the heavenly places." There are others besides human beings watching the church and learning from it.
Surely the verses above are enough to make one thing perfectly clear. The calling of the church is to declare in word and demonstrate in attitude and deed the character of Christ who lives within is people. We are to declare the reality of a life-changing encounter with a living Christ and to demonstrate that change by an unselfish, love-filled life. Until we have done that, nothing else we can do will be effective for God. That is the calling of the church Paul talks about when he writes, "I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called" (Eph. 4:1).
Notice how the Lord Jesus Himself confirms this calling in the opening chapter of the book of Acts. Just before Jesus ascended to His Father, He said to His disciples: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
Purpose No. 3: The church is to be a witness to Christ.
The church is called to be a witness--and a witness is one who declares and demonstrates. The apostle Peter has a wonderful word about the church's witnessing role in his first letter: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).
Notice the structure, "You are ... that you may." That is our primary task as Christians. We are indwelt by Jesus Christ so that we may demonstrate the life and character of the One who lives within. The responsibility to fulfill this calling of the church belongs to every true Christian. All are called, all are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, all are expected to fulfill their calling in the midst of the world. That is the clear note the apostle sounds throughout the whole Ephesian letter. The expression of the church's witness may sometimes be corporate, but the responsibility to witness is always individual. It is your individual responsibility and mine.
But here a problem re-emerges: the problem of possible counterfeit Christians. It is easy for the church (or the individual Christian) to talk about displaying the character of Christ and to make grandiose claims about doing so. However, as many knowledgeable pagans know from Christians closely, the image Christians project is not always the true, biblical image of Jesus Christ. That is why the apostle Paul is careful to describe that authentic Christlike character in more specific terms: "With all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:2,3).
Humility, patience, love, unity, and peace--these are the true marks of Jesus. Christians are to witness, but not arrogantly or rudely, not with an attitude of holier-than-thou smugness, not in sanctimonious presumption, and certainly not against a background of ugly church fights, Christian against Christian. The church is not to talk about itself. It is to be lowly in mind, not boasting of its power or seeking to advance its prestige. The church cannot save the world--but the Lord of the church can. It is not the church for which Christians are to labor and spend their lives, but for the Lord of the church.
The church cannot exalt its Lord while it seeks to exalt itself. The true church does not seek to gain power in the eyes of the world. It already has all the power it needs from the Lord who indwells it.
Further, the church is to be patient and forbearing, knowing that the seeds of truth take time to sprout, time to grow, and time to come to full harvest. The church is not to demand that society make sudden, tearing changes in long established social patterns. Rather, the church is to exemplify positive social change by shunning evil and practicing righteousness, and thus planting seeds of truth which will take root in society and ultimately produce the fruit of change.
The supreme mark of the authentic Christianity
In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon ascribes the collapse of Rome not to invading enemies, but to disintegration from within. In that book is a passage Sir Winston Churchill committed to memory because he felt it was so instructive and accurate. It is significant that this passage talks about the role of the church within the declining empire:
While that great body [the Roman empire] was invaded by open violence or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol. (2)
The supreme mark of the life of Jesus Christ within the Christian is, of course, love. Love which accepts others as they are. Love which is tenderhearted and forgiving. Love which seeks to heal misunderstandings, divisions, and broken relationships. Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). That love is never manifested by rivalry, greed, ostentatious display, indifference, or prejudice. It is the very opposite of name-calling, backbiting, stubbornness, and division.
Here we discover the unifying force which enables the church to carry out its purpose in the world: Christlike love. How do we reflect God's holiness? By our love! How do we reveal God's glory? By our love! How do we witness to the reality of Jesus Christ? By our love!
The New Testament has very little to say about Christian involvement in politics or defending "family values" or promoting peace and justice or opposing pornography or defending the rights of this or that oppressed group. I'm not saying Christians should not be concerned about these issues. Obviously you cannot have a heart filled with love for human beings and not be concerned about these things. But the New Testament says relatively little about these things because God knows that the only way to solve these problems and heal broken relationships is by introducing a totally new dynamic into human life--the dynamic of the life of Jesus Christ.
The life of Jesus Christ is what men and women truly need. The elimination of darkness begins with the introduction of light. The elimination of hatred begins with the introduction of love. The elimination of sickness and corruption begins with the introduction of life. We must begin with the introduction of Christ, for that is the calling to which we have been called.
The Gospel germinated in a social climate much like our own--a time of injustice, racial division, social unrest, rampant crime, unbridled immorality, economic uncertainty, and widespread fear. The early Christian church struggled to survive under persecution so relentless and murderous it is beyond our ability to imagine. But the early church did not see its calling as one of fighting injustice and oppression, or demanding its "rights." The early church saw its mission as one of reflecting God's holiness, revealing God's glory, and witnessing to the reality of Jesus Christ--and it did so by demonstrating relentless love, both toward those within the fellowship, and those outside.
The outside of the cup
Those who look for proof texts to justify picketing, protests, boycotts, and other "in-your-face" political action to cure social ills are doomed to disappointment. Jesus called this "washing the outside of the cup." A true Christian revolution changes people from the inside. It cleanses the inside of the cup. It doesn't just change the slogan on the sign a person carries. It transforms that person's heart.
This is where churches so often go astray. They become obsessed with a political agenda--either on the right or the left. Christ came to transform society--but He didn't come to do so through political action. His plan was to change society by transforming the individual people in that society--by giving them a new heart, a new spirit, a new orientation, a new direction, a new birth, a resurrection life, and the death of self and selfishness. Once you transform the individuals, you will have a new society.
When we are changed from within, when the inside of the cup is cleansed, our entire outlook on human relationships changes. Our natural inclination, when confronted with conflict and mistreatment, is to respond with "an eye for an eye." But Jesus calls us to a new kind of response: "Bless those who persecute you." This is the response the apostle Paul calls us to when he writes, "Live in harmony with one another. ... Repay no one evil for evil. ... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:14-21).
The message God has entrusted to the church is the most revolutionary message the world has ever heard. Should we now surrender that message in favor of mere political and social action? Should we content ourselves with allowing the church to become just another worldly political or social organization? Do we believe God enough to agree with Him that it is Christlike love, lived out in the koinonia-community of His church, that will change the world--not political power or social agendas?
God calls us to become individually responsible to spread the radical, revolutionary, life-transforming good news of Jesus Christ throughout society. The church must again invade commercial and industrial life, education and learning, the arts and family life, government and our social institutions with this tremendous, transforming, unequaled message.The risen Lord Jesus Christ has come among us to implant His own never-ending life within us. He is ready and able to transform us into loving, compassionate, confident people, empowered to cope with any problem, any challenge life sets before us. That is our message to a weary, fearful, sorrowing world. That is the message of love and hope we bring to a hostile and despairing world.
We exist to reflect God's holiness, to reveal God's glory, and witness to the fact that Jesus has come to cleanse men and women, inside and out. We exist to love one another, and to demonstrate Christlike love to the world. That is our purpose. That is the calling of the church.
from Body
Life, by Ray C. Stedman, Chapter One
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by Ray C. Stedman
This last section of Second Corinthians contains some of the strongest language against people that the Apostle Paul uses in any of his letters. Because of the severity of that language, and the fact that it seems to contrast with some of the earlier passages in the letter where he expresses joy over the Corinthians' repentance, many scholars have felt that this is a fragment of another of his letters that has somehow been tacked onto Second Corinthians. Some have even thought it may be the "severe letter" that Paul mentions earlier in this letter that he wrote to the Corinthian church and which has been lost to us. We ought to remember, however, that when he wrote this, as happened with many of his letters, he was traveling about from place to place. He would dictate his letters at night, and this is probably the cause of some of these sudden changes of subject which we run across in his writings from time to time.
It is obvious that here he does, indeed, change the subject very sharply from what he has been talking about in Chapters 8 and 9. When we note also that the sharp words he uses in this last section are not addressed against the church as a whole, but against a special group of teachers in the midst of the Corinthians who were teaching false doctrine, you can understand that this is a subject that might well engage his attention as he concludes this letter.
This is a very helpful passage to us because we have many false teachers in the church today as well. Some of them are blatant and open and easy to recognize. In every congregation we have people who are being influenced by the Moonies, under Sun Myung Moon, the Korean "messiah." He is now capturing the attention of many young people, especially here in the Bay area, inspiring them with the hope that he is going to be the expected Messiah to deliver the nations. Then we have the Mormons. They are going about from door to door trying to convince people that the Book of Mormon is authentic history. They teach strange doctrines that have no correspondence with Scripture, and yet they try to hide under the general guise of being evangelical Christians. Some are being misled by them. Then there is the Hare Krishna group. They meet you in the airport, pin a nice flower in your buttonhole, and seek to engage you in conversation on spiritual matters to set forth their teaching. There are the Scientologists, the followers of Est, and so many other groups today.
Some are more subtle. They are within the church itself, such as those who espouse transcendental meditation and various self-improvement movements. There are the "Christian homosexuals," as they call themselves, who have formed churches which teach that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle among Christians. Then there are many who are, perhaps, unquestionably evangelical, and yet they are teaching legalism, spiritual elitism, or pushing some special experience as a shortcut to spiritual power. So you see that these passages in Second Corinthians are relevant to us. We can understand something of the apostle's concern about this kind of thing in the church at Corinth.
Now all these groups and all these individuals have one thing in common. Whether they know it or not, they are being used as a tool of the devil to derail the church, if he can, to rob individual Christians of their liberty and joy in the Lord, and to oppose and defeat the gospel in its powerful ministry of deliverance within a community or a nation. So the apostle writes with considerable feeling about this. We will see this now as we look at the opening words in Chapter 10:
I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ -- I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold to you when I am away! I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of acting in worldly ambition. For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare ate not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Cor 10:1-6 RSV)
You can see that these are the words of a faithful shepherd who sees his sheep under attack from wolves in sheep's clothing. They are among them and are appearing as Christians, but they are teaching some very destructive heresies. Paul does not normally speak sharply or severely. In fact, in this first verse he refers to himself in the same way his enemies in Corinth were describing him: "I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold to you when I am away!" That is what these teachers were saying about him in Corinth: "Don't pay any attention to Paul. He's just a paper tiger. He sounds very impressive when he writes, but when he comes he is very meek and inconsequential." Paul says, "That is what they are saying about me, but..." He links this with the meekness and gentleness of Christ.
Our Lord was indeed meek and gentle, but there were times when he spoke very severely. When he drove the moneychangers out of the temple his eyes were blazing and his arm was lifted up in violent action against those who were destroying the people of God. Paul says, "When I come, that is the way I will behave as well. I am fully prepared to employ all the weapons at my command."
The great question, of course, we have to ask about this passage is, what are those weapons that Paul refers to? What can Christians use to counteract the cults around us? How do we respond when we see a loved one or a whole community of believers threatened by error, by a false idea which may take over a church, a community, or even a whole nation? I submit to you that these are very relevant issues. Right here in Santa Clara County today we are being faced with a powerful threat from the homosexual community to impose, by law, an unrighteous lifestyle upon our young people in schools and in public institutions. Christians are rightly asking "How can we oppose this? What weapons can we employ?"
Not only that, but we find ourselves harassed and bombarded daily by sexual themes implying that any form of sexuality is acceptable. We are constantly assaulted by crude and offensive slogans on bumper stickers on cars, on billboards and on television commercials. Time Magazine recently admitted that it is impossible to watch the evening news without being treated to a stream of thirty-second treatises on hemorrhoids, tampons, feminine deodorant sprays, cures for bad breath, and constipation. Drug pushers do their best to hook our young people on narcotics. Pornographers push their wares at us at every news stand. Teachers openly espouse Marxism and revolution in our classrooms. Inflation depletes the value of our dollar every day while politicians continue mouthing empty words and doing nothing about it. Do you ever feel like I do sometimes, a great sense of frustration, an increasing sense of desperation at being so helpless? I am sure you do. How do we stem this downward slide into national disaster? Well, listen again to these words.
For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Cor 10:3-4 RSV)
I do not know why the Revised Standard translators substituted the word "world" for "flesh" here. The text does not say, "We are not carrying on a 'worldly' war." What it really says is, "We are not carrying on a 'fleshly' war for the weapons of our warfare are not 'fleshly.'" But in a sense I can understand why they have changed that word, because "the flesh" and "the world" are very closely linked.
The "flesh," as you might define it in the Scriptures, is what we would call inherited selfishness, that self-centeredness of life, which all of us have without exception that wants to pursue our own interests at the expense of everybody else. Now when you put a lot of self-centered individuals together and ask them to work and plan together you get a fleshly governed society. That is what the Bible calls "the world," a society committed to the defense of its own interests, to protecting its own rights. It is thus, inevitably, engaged in eternal conflict. That is "the world," and that is what the translators undoubtedly had in mind when they used the term "world" here.
So Paul says we do not employ the weapons of the flesh. What are those weapons? What does the world use to try to solve the problems it recognizes in society? Well, you know what it uses: Coercion, manipulation, pressure groups, compromises, demonstrations that ultimately result in raised voices, in clenched fists and outbreaks of conflict, boycotts, pickets and strikes, in attempts to pressure people into doing what others want. These are the weapons of the world. It does not have any others. So it is understandable why those who are governed by the flesh would seek to employ fleshly weapons to get things done. But the universal testimony of history is, these do not work. We still have the same problems we have had for centuries. We never will get rid of them. We only rearrange them by these methods so that they seem to take another form for a little while but soon we are right back with the same problems, if not worse. That has been the unbroken experience of history. No one can deny it.
Well, then, what are our weapons? Paul makes it clear that they are not those. Christians are not to use coercion, manipulation, pressure groups, compromises and conflict to oppose the evil in our midst. We have other weapons, he says. They are mighty, they are powerful, they accomplish something. They will "destroy strongholds" of evil, he says. But when you ask yourself, "What are these weapons?" you find that there are no answers in this passage. The apostle evidently understands that the Corinthians know what they are. He has referred to them in various places in his letters. We find them scattered all through Scripture so we have to go to other passages in order to understand what he is talking about here. But we do have spiritual weapons that are mighty against these forces of darkness.
The one we would put first, I am sure from the Scriptures, is truth. The Christian is given an insight into life and reality that others do not have. We know what is behind the forces at work in our society today, and we ought to know how to go about overcoming them. As Paul put it in Ephesians, "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood," (cf, Eph 6:12a KJV). Our problem is not people, much as we identify, like the world around us, with people as the problem. Scripture says, "No, it is not people," but rather, "principalities, powers and wicked spirits in high places, the world rulers of this present darkness," (cf, Eph 6:12b RSV). We wrestle with spiritual powers behind the scenes. We need to understand that.
That is what truth is all about. Truth is realism. The wonderful thing about the Word of God is that, when you understand the world as the Bible sees it, you are looking at life the way it really is. I do not know anything more valuable than that. That is why it is so important that we understand the Scriptures, that we refresh our minds with them all the time, for, in this constant bombardment with illusion and error that we face every day, it is easy to drift back into thinking the way everybody around us thinks. Unless we are finding our minds renewed by the Spirit, and refreshed by the reminder of what life is really like and what it is we are really up against, we will find ourselves acting just like everybody else. So, the first and greatest weapon of all is truth: Truth as it is in Jesus.
As we read the Gospels, we see that Jesus is a man who understands life. He does not act like anybody else because he really sees what is happening. He ignores much of the visible symptoms and strikes right at the heart, at the cause of certain events. That is why what he did was so different from the world around. If we are going to follow him, we will not adopt these methods, and fall heir to some of these fatal approaches to problems. We will begin to see things differently.
And, everywhere in Scripture, the Word of God links truth with love, "speaking the truth in love," (Eph 4:15). Love is a powerful weapon. When you begin to treat people with courtesy instead of anger, when you accept them as people with feelings like yours, and understand that they too are struggling with difficulties and see things out of focus as you yourself often do, when you begin to treat them as people in trouble who need help -- that is what love is -- then you change the whole picture.
That is one of the reasons why Christians must be very careful how they approach the homosexual community today. These are desperate, hurting people who have been greatly hurt by factors that they think are right, but which are very destructive. We need to understand that, and treat them tenderly and courteously, even though we oppose the convictions that they are trying to impress and impose upon us. Love is a mighty force. We pay lip service to it in quoting First Corinthians 13, but how often do we put it into practice?
Then linked to that, everywhere in Scripture, is faith. Faith is the recognition that God is present in history. He has not left us alone to stumble on our own way. God is at work. The Lord Jesus sits in control of all the nations of earth. "He opens and no man shuts. He shuts and no man opens," (cf, Rev 3:7 RSV). Faith believes that, and expects him to do something. In the 11th chapter of Hebrews we have the great record of the plain, ordinary men and women like you and me who found, by faith, that they could stop the mouths of lions, open the doors of prisons, and change the course of history. Faith is not a religious entity merely for churchgoing people. Faith comes right down and lays hold of ordinary, human events and changes the course of history through them.
Linked to faith is prayer. The power of prayer is everywhere held before us in Scripture. We are constantly exhorted to expose the situations in which we find ourselves to the prayers of believing people, both individually and corporately, praying together that God would move in and change things. Again and again the record testifies that events have been drastically altered by Christians who pray.
With that we would also link loving service. Scripture says, "Do good to those who hate you; pray for those who despitefully use you," (cf, Matt 5:44, Luke 6:27-28); and minister to those who treat you wrongly or misuse you. Do something good back. When is the last time you did that? That is what changes history, when Christians act differently. You will never find non-Christians doing that. Their demand is to get even, to demand justice. Christians are to remember that if we had justice all of us would be in hell. Therefore, mercy is what is required. To return good for evil is a potent weapon that we can employ.
Paul uses a very vivid word to describe the errors that we are attacking. He calls them "strongholds." That is a word taken out of the military life of the time, and it is used only once in the Scriptures. It describes a castle with its moats, its walls, its turrets and its towers, that is defended by a handful of resolute, determined men. History records that many times a castle like that has held out for weeks and months and years against an attacking force because it was so difficult to dislodge its defenders. So that word vividly describes some of the evils we are talking about this morning. Why is it so difficult to handle the homosexual issue today? Why do we find it so hard to get hold of this matter? The break-up of the home and the rising divorce rate is another stronghold of evil. Drug traffic is another. What do you do against these things? Paul describes in Verse 5 some of the things that lend strength to these powers of evil. He says,
We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Cor 10:5 RSV)
The first is arguments ("reasonings" is literally the word). It means the rationalizings by which a point of error is supported and defended. Have you ever noticed that when you get upset about some of the things that are happening in our day and you decide to do something about it, you are soon confronted with arguments that the other side uses to defend itself which sound almost unassailable?
I saw a pamphlet just the other day put out by the homosexual community in San Jose to defend their right to public acceptance of a homosexual lifestyle. It was headed with these words, "Dare We Lose Our Right To Love?" A right to love. What could be wrong with that? After all, don't people have a right to love? It went on to show that all those who are trying to take away this "right to love" in a homosexual lifestyle are narrow-minded, bitter bigots who are out to deprive other people of a very beautiful and wonderful thing. As you read it through, it sounds logical. Who doesn't want to retain the "right to love"? It is very difficult to answer these arguments.
But Paul says that is what the truth and love and prayer and faith will do. They will reveal that behind these arguments are vain suppositions, unrealistic assumptions that are not true. It can be demonstrated that homosexuality, for instance, is not really love. Honest homosexuals admit that they are not satisfied, their lives are not enriched by this lifestyle. Rather, they find themselves hopelessly launched on a search for something they can never find, and experiencing increasing depression and disappointment as they pursue it.
That is where a Christian can come with a loving touch, and a truthful word, and point out that that is exactly the case. That is what the Lord Jesus did with the woman at the well at Samaria. He dealt with her unending search for happiness in marriage by showing her that she was on a wild-goose chase that could never end in anything but utter frustration. But he had the true gift of satisfaction that he would give to her if she would take it. That is the Christian approach. It destroys these arguments, these reasonings.
The second thing Paul mentions is, "proud obstacles to the knowledge of God." Do you know what they are? If you read the writings that defend error in our day you will see, every now and then, some arrogant statement of the ability of man that is far beyond reality. You will read claims that men are smart, that they understand life, that they can handle all their problems, and do not need any help. These arrogant assumptions of right, or might, are what Paul is referring to, this strange insanity that makes men think they can handle the world, and handle life, without any wisdom beyond their own. Again and again you run into this, and people get offended if this is attacked in any way.
Then the final thing is a very personal matter, the thoughts that come into our own minds and hearts. We learn to, "take captive every thought to the obedience of Christ." The word Paul uses and the reference he is making here is to the imaginings of our minds. These are the fantasizings we indulge in, the daydreams of power and of accomplishment that we feed upon endlessly, the lustings by which we attempt to satisfy inward sexual desires by feeding upon pornography, mentally if not openly. You will never win the battle as long as you allow yourself to indulge in those kinds of fantasizings. That is why the apostle, with all realism, faces us with the fact that we must bring these things captive unto Christ, and no longer permit them to engage our minds and hearts. These are conquered by truth, by love, by faith, by righteousness, by prayer and service. These are the weapons of our warfare.
Now, once these things are conquered, once we really face up to them, and no longer permit them to govern our lives because of the truth that God has shown us, then we must be quick and alert to maintain a promptness to deal with the return of any of these evil things. That is what Paul is referring to in Verse 6:
...being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Cor 10:6 RSV)
That means that once you have been delivered from your inner weaknesses which make you unusable in the spiritual warfare of our day, then you must maintain an alertness to deal promptly with any return of these things. I do not know anything more practical than this. Many people struggle for years against weaknesses in their lives and wonder why they can get nowhere. But they are trying to stop the act, not the inward thought that precipitates it. They permit themselves inward dalliance with ugly and hurtful things, ambitious projects where they see themselves as the hero on the white horse, always riding out to deliver the damsel from distress, winning the attention of all the multitudes around, or giving way to lust and playing it over on the record player of the mind. Then they wonder why they are so weak when an opportunity comes to indulge in an act. The battleground is our thought life, that is what Paul is telling us. When we win that battle then we must be careful to punish every disobedience after our obedience has been made complete, after we have learned what it takes to walk with God.
The problem is not the world. It is the church, isn't it? It is we who do not use the weapons at our disposal. Instead, we give way, and go along with worldly approaches, using pressure-group tactics, and petitions, to seek to overcome with legislation the wrongs of our day. May God help us to understand the nature of spiritual warfare. The weapons of our warfare are not those kinds of worldly tactics. They are mighty. The cause is not hopeless. We are not helpless; there is much we can do. Let a single Christian begin to act along the lines of the revelation of Scripture in this regard, and things will begin to change. Any one of us can begin to change things, in our lives individually, in our homes, in our communities, where we work, whatever. Let us begin to learn the truth about life from the Scriptures, to act in love instead of in rivalry and competition, to trust God that he will work as we work in faith, to pray, and to join others in prayer, that he will do so. Let us begin to live righteously ourselves, to see that we maintain integrity in the midst of these deviations, and lovingly serve those who are opposing us. We will find tremendous changes beginning to occur quickly as God allows these weapons to destroy the strongholds of darkness and evil around us. Do you know anything more challenging for our day and time than that? God has placed in our hands the opportunity to change our nation, our communities, our homes, wherever we are. May God grant that we will do it. You are the salt of the earth, (Matt 5:13a RSV). You are the light of the world, (Matt 5:14a RSV)
Thank you, Lord, for this honest look at who we are. Forgive us for our failure to believe it. Help us from here on to begin to use the weapons of our warfare, to act like we ought to be acting and react the way we should react. Call us to this great and challenging work of changing the world of our day by the power you have vested in us by means of the Holy Spirit and the truth of your Word. We ask it in the name of Jesus, our Lord, Amen.
From Expository
Studies in Second Corinthians, by Ray C. Stedman
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by Ray C. Stedman
This passage introduces to us a subject which is so often treated as unworthy of any intelligent consideration that I feel it necessary to remind us, at the beginning of this series, that the whole Scripture has been given to us in order to enable us to face life in a realistic, practical manner. To put it another way, God is not interested in religion, but he is tremendously interested in life. You cannot read the New Testament without realizing that the Lord Jesus did not care a whit for the Sabbath regulations of his day when they were set against the need of a broken man for healing. In that, he revealed the heart of God, for certainly God is not interested in stained glass windows, organ solos, congregational hymns, or even pastoral prayers half so much as he is in producing love-filled homes, generous hearts, and brave men and women who can live right in the midst of the world and keep their heads and hearts undefiled.
I am deeply convinced that we can only understand life when we see it as the Bible sees it. That is why the Word of God was given. In the world of organized human society, with its commerce, trade, business, recreation and all the familiar makeup of life, we are continually exposed to illusions which are indistinguishably mingled with reality. We are confronted with the distorted perspectives, twisted motives, uncertain hopes, and untested programs. But when we come to the Bible we learn the truth. Here reality is set before us -- the world as it really is. When we get down to the bare essentials of life, and strip off all the confusing illusion, we find it is exactly what the Bible records it to be. Here is where our perspectives are set straight, here is where we get our value systems righted, and our dreams weighed and evaluated as to whether they are real or only make-believe.
We may not like what we read here from time to time -- it is very likely that we will not -- but so much the worse for us. We shall only succeed in deceiving ourselves if we reject it. It is up to us to listen to the words of Jesus and his apostles, for they are the authority which corrects us, not we the authority that corrects them. Let us stop this really silly business of trying to sit in judgment upon the insights of the Lord Jesus Christ. We Christians must continually reduce every argument we hear today to this simple consideration: "Am I to accept this person's word, or the word of Christ? If this agrees with what he says, fine, it is truth. But if it does not then I must decide whether the challenging authority is greater or less than Jesus Christ." As Christians we are continually confronted with choices as to whether we will accept the puny, flimsy, uncertain authority of a mere man, or the certain, solid and clear word of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this passage the Apostle Paul is setting forth his analysis of life, especially as it relates to a Christian. This passage is so important that I propose we spend several Sundays together considering it. But today I would like to look at it only from a general, introductory viewpoint, and see what the apostle brings out about the nature of life in general, and then take a closer look at the specific character which he says a Christian life assumes. Let us read Verses 10-13:
Finally, he strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Eph 6:10-13 RSV)
It is very clear in that passage that Paul's view of the basic characteristic of life can be put in one word: Struggle. Life, he says, is a conflict, a combat, a continual wrestling. This is, of course, confirmed constantly by our experience. We should all like to think of life as romantic idealism, for most of us would like to think of ourselves as living in an idealistic world where everything goes right and we can spend our days in relaxation and enjoyment, with just enough work to keep us interested. This view is frequently embodies in some of the songs we sing:
"We'll build a sweet little nest,
Somewhere in the West,
And let the rest of the world go by."
Or, as it has been modernized,
"We'll build a nice little still,
Somewhere on the hill,
And let the rest of the world go dry."
Now it is not wrong for us to dream these dreams. These romantic ideals are a kind of racial memory, the vestigial remains of what was once God's intent for human life and, in God's good order and time, will be once again possible to humans. But the Apostle Paul is not dealing with that kind of life. He is coming to grips with life as it really is now, and he says life is a struggle, a conflict, a combat against opposing forces. If we attempt to draw aside, to get away from the struggle, we continually find ourselves being jarred back into reality. Some unpleasant fact intrudes itself into our beautiful world and refuses to go away.
We all know how this is. We must get back to work, our vacation is ended, or the death of a loved one intrudes itself upon us with all its ghastly emptiness and loneliness, or we remember some pressing decision we must make, some threat to our prosperity or health, some disappointment in another person. We are constantly drawn back out of our dreams of ease and enjoyment to face the rough, hard realities of life.
The apostle also says that this is a fluctuating struggle. We must learn to stand, he says, "in the evil day," by which he implies that all days are not evil. There will come times which are worse than others. There are seasons in the passing of life when pressures are more intense, when problems are more insoluble, when everything seems to come upon us at once. These are what we recognize as evil days. Sometimes it is an actual day, sometimes it is a week, sometimes months. But thank God that all of life is not that way. We are not always under pressure, we are not always being confronted with overpowering circumstances which call for agonizing decisions.
The reason we are not is due to the grace of God. All of life would be an evil day, and much worse, were it not for the grace of God which continually operates to restrain the powers that are against us and to allow times of refreshment, recreation, enjoyment and blessing. The truly tragic thing about human life is that we can take these times of refreshment, blessing and glory and enjoy them without a single thought for the goodness of God which underlies them and makes them possible for us, without a word of gratefulness or thanksgiving to God that these should be. This is the note on which Paul opens the epistle to the Romans. But, here, Paul says that these days, though they are not always the same in pressure, nevertheless constitute the general makeup of life. Life is an unending struggle, varying in intensity from time to time, but extending from the cradle to the grave. But he further goes on now to analyze and define for us the nature of this struggle.
We come now to that which is most important. For he says that the conflict is not against flesh and blood, i.e., it is not a human problem, it is not a struggle of man against man. It may be a struggle within man, but it is not between men. He assures us that it is not against flesh and blood. He puts it negatively first. I wonder what we would answer if we were asked, "What is the thing that gives you the most difficulty in life; of what does the struggle of life consist?" Many would feel that it is against flesh and blood. It is other human beings who bother us: There are, of course, the Communists. They are always causing difficulty. They can never let anything rest in this world. They are forever stirring up some kind of trouble somewhere. And then there are the Republicans or, if we are on the other side, the Democrats. They never let anything rest either. They are always making difficulties. In their bullheaded stubbornness and obstinacy they are continually refusing to see the light. There are those who oppose us in some of the newer political struggles of our day.
And let us not forget the Internal Revenue Service. Certainly they are devils, if there ever were any. And the county tax department! And do not leave out your wife -- and her family! Or your husband and his family. Then there are our neighbors, even our ancestors. It is our heredity which is at fault. It is because we are Scottish, or Irish, or Italian -- our family has always been this way, we have always had a hot temper. So the problem goes.
As we look at life in our superficial way we are tempted to say that our problem is other people, that we struggle against flesh and blood. But the apostle says that you cannot explain life adequately on that level. You must look further, you must look deeper than that. The problem is not against flesh and blood. Rather, there is set against the whole human race certain principalities and powers, world rulers of darkness, wicked spirits in high places. There is your problem, Paul says. Those are the enemies we are up against. And it is not just Christians who are opposed by these, but every man, everywhere. The whole race is opposed by the principalities and powers, the world rulers of this present darkness. There is Paul's positive explanation of the struggle of life.
I hasten to say that this declaration will only be fully believed and understood by Christians. The world either distorts this to the point of ridiculousness, or it rejects it as unacceptable to the intelligent mind. This evening it is Halloween, and Halloween represents the distortion of this great doctrine which the apostle has propounded. Superstition has always taken this great revelation and has distorted it, twisted it, reduced it to a ridiculous pantheon of goblins, witches, spooks, and ghouls. Naturally that sort of thing is rejected by anyone of intelligence because they know these things do not exist.
Though Halloween represents that distorted idea, I am not speaking about the way it is today. It has become nothing more than a child's party, a time of enjoyment for children. All children like to be scared and there is nothing wrong in that. I am not taking issue with Halloween as we know it, but I am saying that in the days when people took it seriously (and in places they still do) it represented a distorted view of the doctrine the apostle has revealed. Because it has suffered this distortion it is usually rejected by those who try to think seriously about life. The difficulty is that not only is the distortion rejected but the very truth behind it.
I am very well aware of the disdain, even contempt, with which this concept of the devil and his cohorts, this kingdom of darkness, these principalities and powers and wicked spirits in high places, is received in many circles. There are those who say, "Are you going to insult our intelligence by talking about a personal devil? Surely you are not going back to those medieval concepts and drag out a devil, and tell us he is the root of all our problems?"
Recently I spent an evening in Berlin discussing with four or five intelligent churchmen this whole problem. They were men who knew the Bible intimately. Though we never once opened a Bible we spent the whole evening together discussing various passages from the Bible. I never referred to a single passage, but what they were aware of it and could quote it almost verbatim. Yet they rejected the idea of a devil. They said there was no personal devil. They could not believe this. At the end of the evening they admitted that, in their rejection of the devil, they also had no answer to the conundrums which life was continually presenting them. We had to leave it there.
I am reminded of the story Billy Graham tells when he hears this idea that there is no devil. It is a story of a boxer who was engaged in a boxing match and was being badly beaten. Battered and bruised, he leaned over the ropes and said to his trainer, "Please throw in the towel! This guy is killing me!" The trainer said, "Oh no, he's not. He's not even hitting you. He hasn't laid a glove on you!" And the boxer said, "Well then, I wish you'd watch that referee -- somebody is sure hitting me!"
The questions we must ask when we are challenged with this idea that there is no devil are, "How do you explain what is going on in the world? How do you explain what is happening? How do you explain the entrenched evil in human affairs?"
Isn't it clear that we cannot understand life unless we begin here? We cannot understand history if we reject this proposition that the apostle brings out -- that behind the problems of the world, behind the evil which manifests itself in mankind, there is a hierarchy of evil spirits -- the devil and his angels. There is an organized kingdom of principalities and powers at various levels of authority who sit as world rulers of the present darkness, wicked spirits in high places.The world says to the Christian: "Why talk about this kind of thing? "Why do you not talk about something relevant? "Why don't you Christians get busy and do something that will be meaningful today?" They talk about being relevant! What could be more relevant than this teaching which puts its finger on the basic problem? What good is it to keep rushing around curing fevers, but never stopping to analyze the disease?
This is what is going on in our day. There is a serious disease at work in the human race and it is constantly breaking out in little fevers. But if we content ourselves, as physicians, with running around from place to place giving aspirin for the fever, and never once inquiring what the disease is, and what the cure and remedy is, we have wasted our time. Talk about relevancy! This is what is relevant -- to listen to this analysis of what is wrong with the world, what its disease is, and what the cure is. That is what this passage so vividly and so accurately sets before us.
The fact is that the disease is growing so desperate that even worldlings, non-Christians, are recognizing the inadequacy of their diagnosis. Listen to Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist. He says,
We stand perplexed and stupefied before the phenomena of Marxism and Bolshevism because we know nothing about man or, at any rate, have only a lopsided and distorted picture of him. If we had self-knowledge, that would not be the case. We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and do not even know what is before us, let alone what to pit against it. And even if we did know, we still could not understand how it could happen here.
What a tremendously honest revelation of the ignorance of men in the face of life as it really is! Listen to this bewildered cry from one of the leading statesmen of his day, U Thant, former Secretary General of the United Nations:
What element is lacking so that with all our skill and all our knowledge we still find ourselves in the dark valley of discord and enmity? What is it that inhibits us from going forward together to enjoy the fruits of human endeavor and to reap the harvest of human experience? Why is it that, for all our professed ideals, our hopes, and our skills, peace on earth is still a distant objective seen only dimly through the storms and turmoils of our present difficulties?
Here are the world's greatest leaders facing the dilemma of modern life, and all they can say is, "What is wrong? What is the unknown element behind this? We cannot understand this, we do not know what is going on, we cannot grasp these things. What is it that is missing?" Talk about a relevant Scripture! This Scripture is the most relevant thing I know of today. For two thousand years it has been written down here. The Apostle Paul has given the answer to that baffled, bewildered cry for light from a modern statesman's heart. The world, Paul says, is in the grip of what he calls "world rulers of present darkness." What an amazing phrase that is! We shall look at it a little closer in subsequent messages. These world rulers of present darkness are headed by the devil, whom Scripture says is a fallen angel of malevolent power and cunning cleverness against whom Christians are called to wrestle daily. Now, that is not the claim of an isolated passage of the Bible. That is the teaching of the Bible from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, and especially in Genesis and Revelation.
The Lord Jesus himself put his finger on the whole problem when he said to certain men of his day, "You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies," (John 8:44). In that most amazing analysis, the Lord stripped the devil of his disguises and revealed his true character -- a liar and a murderer. What the devil does is because of who he is, just as what we do is precisely due to what we are. Because he is a liar and a murderer, the devil's work is to deceive and to destroy. There you have the explanation for all that has been going on in human history throughout the whole course of the record of man.
The devil has the ear of mankind. Scripture calls him, "the god of this world," (2 Cor 4:4). The world listens to him, to everything he says. But the devil does not tell the world the truth but a lie, a very clever, a very beautiful, a very attractive lie which makes the world drool with desire. But the end of his lie is destruction, murder, death! -- death in all its forms, not only ultimately the cessation of life, but also death in its incipient forms of restlessness, boredom, frustration, meaninglessness, and emptiness. Whom the devil cannot deceive he tries to destroy, and whom he cannot destroy he attempts to deceive. There is the working of the devil.
We are going to see much more about this and it is important that we do so, for this is the struggle of life. This is the explanation for it, and the only adequate explanation for what is going on in our day which has ever been offered. The intelligent thing is to understand it and, understanding, to come to grips with it, and thus to be able to walk in victory -- as Paul says, to be able to stand in the evil day.
"Well," you say, "This is all very depressing. I would rather not think about it." So would I, but I have discovered that you cannot get away from it that way. There is only one way to handle this struggle and that is to "be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might," (Eph 6:10 KJV). That is the way of escape. There is no other. This is a call to intelligent combat. It is a call to us to be men, to fight the good fight, to stand fast in the faith, to be strong in the Lord right in the midst of battle, in the midst of the world. You can hear the trumpet call in this, can't you? We are to take this seriously and to learn what life is all about. We must learn to recognize how these dark systems work, and how they appear in life and where they are going.
More than that, we must learn the processes of overcoming them -- not by flesh and blood, not by joining committees or mustering some kind of physical struggle against these forces. Paul says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, not fleshly, they are not of the body. Our weapons are mighty, through God, unto the pulling down of strongholds and bringing into captivity every thought -- there is the arena: it is the realm of thought; it is the realm of ideas -- bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. That is victory!
Do you think that is not challenging? That is the greatest challenge any ear can ever hear! Do you think that is not demanding? That demands more courage and manhood than any other cause which has ever been known in the world! Do you think that is not exciting? That is the most exciting call which has ever gone out to men anywhere! "Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might!"
Our gracious Father, thank you for a truth that shatters us, startles us, wakens us, prods us, disturbs us. Thank you Lord, for a word of reality which speaks to us in the midst of our complacency and lethargy and stirs us up to see life as it really is. How easily we would drift on in futile weakness, never raising a finger against the deterioration of life and the destruction of body and soul, were it not for this word of challenge which calls us back, wakes us up, and makes us to see. Lord, teach us how to bow in humility before this word and say to the Holy Spirit, "O Great Teacher of God, open these Scriptures, teach them to us, make them real." In Christ's name, Amen.
From Expository
Messages in Ephesians by Ray C. Stedman
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by Ray C. Stedman
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Eph 6:10-13 RSV)
In our introductory message we saw that this passage is the answer of Scripture to the cry of leaders in our day who, in utter bafflement and bewilderment, are asking questions such as this: "Why can we not solve the basic problems of human life? "Why can we not understand ourselves? "Why is it that we are so ultimately helpless and powerless in the matter of changing human nature? Why is it that each generation has to fight the same battles fought by the previous ones?" Paul's answer to these questions is to go behind the merely human antagonists, visible to the world and reported in our newspapers, to what he calls "the principalities and powers, the world rulers of this present darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places," i.e., the kingdom of evil.
In the last message we looked briefly at some of the reactions to this view of life. We saw there are some who are ready to reject this, who refuse to believe in any unseen powers, whether good or bad. They reject the whole idea of any kind of spiritual kingdom at all and say there is neither God nor devil. Of course anyone who wishes to do so is free to make that decision, but when they do they reject the testimony of Jesus Christ as an authority in these areas, and the testimony of millions of Christians through the centuries, as well as the intelligent and thoughtful conclusions of many men who are not Christians, all of whom recognize the existence of a spiritual kingdom such as this. Anyone who chooses to take that purely voluntary position does so as a matter of his will, for there is no evidence that would support him in this. He must ultimately face the fact that he has no answer to the problems and conundrums of life. He has nothing with which to explain the questions which constantly come before man in his daily living.
To pin our hope only on man himself is to be continually disappointed in this constant struggle of man to improve himself. This is why those who subscribe to such a position ultimately assume a spirit of stark pessimism as they look out upon life. You can see this reflected in many of their writings. H. G. Wells, who in the last decade or so was an outstanding proponent of this theory that man was able to improve himself, sank deeper and deeper into a morass of pessimism as he watched the world scene until his last book, finished just before his death, revealed his utter despair by its title: Mind At The End Of Its Tether.
Then we saw that there are others who believe in a kingdom of good, i.e., they believe in God and perhaps the angels, but they refuse to accept this proposition of the existence of the devil. They say they can accept the existence of God and of heaven and the things that make for good, but they utterly reject the idea of a devil. This is a completely irrational position. Anyone who subscribes to that position has no logical basis for doing so, for the same revelation which tells us about God tells us about the devil. The same authorities (Christ and his apostles) who speak clearly about God, speak as clearly about the existence of the devil. Even the very language that we employ to describe the kingdom of God and its makeup reveals the existence also of another kingdom. Why do we say, for instance, "the Holy Spirit"? We are thereby recognizing there are unholy spirits as well. We cannot make that distinction unless we recognize the existence of unholy spirits. Such a position really reveals a desire to throw out of the Bible that which does not appeal. If we go through our Bibles in that way, throwing out everything we do not like, we finally come down to a residue that is left, and what is left is simply what we happen to prefer. On the basis of that approach to the Scriptures, the only authority, really, is myself, what I think is right, what I choose to accept. Revelation is narrowed down to a tiny, circumscribed area which we personally, for some reason or another (mostly emotional) choose to accept. And then, of course, we are no longer discussing the question of whether or not there is a devil. We are discussing the authority of the Scriptures. We have moved over to a quite different proposition.
Now I say all this because I realize there are many who are ready to reject this teaching without even giving it an intelligent consideration. Our whole approach to this will find value only as men and women take seriously the presentation of Scripture in this respect. No other explanation comes to grips with the problems of life as this one does. No other explanation of the evil of the world takes in all the aspects of human life. I do not hesitate to make a statement as strong as that. Anything else is superficial, if not artificial. Anything less is shallow and inadequate, if it is not inherently wrong and unreal.
In looking at this passage, therefore, we must expect to learn much about this kingdom of evil, these wicked spirits in high places whom Paul says lie behind this insoluble problem of human evil. Notice that the apostle implies that the only ones who can successfully battle against these dark forces are Christians. "For we are not contending against flesh and blood..." Who are the "we"? Surely this is not man in general, but these are Christians who are indicated in the word "we." It is we Christians who are not contending against flesh and blood. The world struggles on this level, but the Christian wrestles against principalities and powers. Now this is not a position that is peculiar to Paul. This is a consistent teaching all through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible indicates that all men are victims of these invisible forces. All men everywhere, without exception, are victims; but only believers can be victors.
Jesus himself makes this point absolutely clear. There is a story in Luke 11 of our Lord's reaction to the challenge that was presented to him as he was casting out demons. This activity of our Lord is an area of his ministry which is continually questioned by those who choose to approach the Scriptures intellectually. They do not like this business of casting out demons, and explain it in various ways. We will say more about that later on in this series, but in the biblical account certain ones said of him that his casting out demons resulted from his relationship with Beelzebub, the prince of demons, another name for Satan. They said it was by Satan's power, by Beelzebub's power, that he was casting out demons. (Beelzebub, by the way, means "lord of the garbage." The Jews regarded hell as a cosmic garbage dump, and in a real sense they were right, for that is exactly what hell is -- a wasted life, a garbage dump.) The god who reigned over this garbage heap was the devil, and because a garbage pile always attracts flies, they called Beelzebub the lord of the flies. (There is a modern novel written on that theme.) So certain people were accusing Jesus of casting out demons by the authority of Beelzebub, the lord of the flies. Jesus said, "No, you are quite wrong, and the reason you are wrong is that if that be true, then obviously Satan's kingdom would be divided against itself," (cf, Luke 11:18). His argument is simply this: Satan never does that. Satan never fights against himself. Satan is too clever, too cunning, far too astute ever to divide his forces in that way, for if he did, he knows that his kingdom would fall. Therefore, Jesus is suggesting that any man who is under the control of Satan has no possibility of deliverance apart from an outside, intervening force. Notice how he puts that in Verse 21 of Luke 11:
When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace; (Luke 11:21 RSV)
Who is the strong man? Satan. What is the palace? The world. Who are the goods? Mankind, everywhere. In the three verses which present this figure of the strong man there are three great principles which emerge: The first, found in Verse 21, is that man, alone, against Satan, is powerless and hopeless. This is the unchanging position of Scripture. John says, "We [Christians] know we are of God, but the whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one," (cf, 1 Jn 5:19). This is the position of the Bible, that the world has fallen under the control of Satan. Not the world of trees and mountains and lakes and seas; that is God's world. We sing, "This is my Father's world," and we are right, but the world of organized human society has fallen under the control of Satan, and there is no possibility of an escape apart from an intervention from without. For, as Jesus says, "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace;" (Luke 11:21 RSV). There can be no threat from within to Satan's control.
That is very revealing, for there our Lord is putting his finger on the reason for the continual failure of the usual methods human beings employ to correct evils and wrongs, the usual methods of reform. They fail because they do not come to grips with the essential problem. All our methods of trying to correct the evils we see in human life are simply rearrangements of the difficulties. We succeed only in stirring them around a bit until they take a different form. But our methods never can solve the central problem of evil because they do not come to grips with the power of Satan.
Man under Satan is not a happy being. He is forever restless and peevish and discontent. That is why the world continually reflects those qualities. Man sees the problems his kind of existence creates, and he is always trying to remedy them. He keeps busy trying to solve these problems which break out, these difficulties which are reported in our newspapers, but all his efforts achieve is merely to shift the pattern till they take a different form. Then man pats himself on the back and proudly says, "We have solved this problem!" But he has only moved to a different symptom of the same disease. As C. S. Lewis so aptly put it, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs will make a good omelet." When the full cycle of problems is run through, it begins again, and we say, "History repeats itself."
What are the usual methods of human reform? You can list them easily. Almost invariably they are legislation, education, and an improved environment. Every problem we face is usually approached by using one or a combination of these three. Legislation is law, it is merely the control of the outward man. It has nothing to do with and cannot do anything to the inward man. It does not change the basic nature of man, but merely restricts him so that he does not manifest certain qualities under certain conditions. Education is one of the worst things we can do to a deranged personality, to a twisted mind. The position of Scripture is that all of us are born with twisted mind. Some of us are more twisted that others -- they are the ones that we call "twisted minds!" To educate a twisted mind is but to make it more clever in its wickedness, and this is what results. The educated criminal is a far more clever, more subtle more difficult criminal to catch. The educated mind, approaching human personality problems, only throws over them a very clever patina of knowledge which serves to cover over the real difficulties. Education does not basically change man, it makes him more clever. Improved environment does not change him, either. I do not know how long is going to take human society to learn that when you take a man and lift him out of the slums and put him into a nicer environment you do absolutely nothing to the man himself. In a little while, given time, he will make that new environment a slum as well.
These are the usual approaches to reform. I do not mean to suggest we scuttle them. They all have certain values, but they do not come to grips with the basic problem. This is why, after a lifetime of trying to change man with these methods, those who are knowledgeable thinkers in this area always end up with a terrible black outlook of pessimism. Listen to these words by the late Bertrand Russell, the atheistic philosopher:
The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, toward a goal that few can hope to reach and where none can tarry long. One by one as they march our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death. Brief and powerless is man's life. On him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls, pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way. For man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gates of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day.
Those eloquent words catalog the sheer despair into which man falls when he is far from God. There is a growing sense of despair everywhere you turn today. It is the unconscious realization of man's helplessness under Satan. Now look at Verse 22 of our Lord's words in Luke 11:
But when one stronger than he assails him and overtakes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil. (Luke 11:22 RSV)
Who is this stronger one? It is Jesus. He is speaking of himself. He says when a strong man, fully armed, guards his palace, his goods are at peace, and nothing can be done about it, least of all by the goods themselves. But when one who is stronger comes, he breaks the power of that strong man, and frees his slaves. Here he declares a second principle -- Christ's victory, made personal to an individual by faith, breaks the power of Satan. Here is the "good news" of the gospel. We sing it:
He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.
In the mystery of the cross of Jesus, and in the power of his resurrection, applied by faith, we men and women who have been born into a society which is under the control of the satanic mind discover that the force which ruins us is broken, and its power to grip us is loosed, and we are set free. There is no other power which can do it. That is why this Christian gospel is such an exclusive thing. That is why Christians are perfectly justified when they say there is no other answer to the problems of man; there is no other power which can touch the basic problem of human life. There is only one "stronger one" who has come into the world and has come to grips with the power of this dark spirit and broken his power over human life.
How many there are throughout the Christian centuries, and also here this morning, who can testify to this. Not only the prostitutes and alcoholics and dope addicts, not only those who have been gripped by the power of evil habits, but also those who are held by the power of evil attitudes -- temper, lust, self-righteousness, bitterness, and pride. The strongest chains are not those around the body, but around the mind. The writers of Scripture make that clear. They say, "The god of this world has blinded the minds of them who believe not," (cf, 2 Cor 4:4). That great document on human liberty, the Epistle to the Romans, opens on that level. Paul suggests that the greatest antagonism against the gospel does not come from the uneducated but from the educated, those who, "thinking themselves to be wise, become fools" (cf, Rom 1:22), and change the glory of God into a lie. The mind becomes blinded and the result is darkened minds, which are outwardly cultured and respectable, but are blinded in these areas which touch the deep-seated problems of human life.
Now the gospel is that Jesus Christ has come to set men free. John says Jesus came into the world "to undo the works of the devil," (cf, 1 Jn 3:8). There is no adequate explanation of his coming, apart from that. Paul says he came "to deliver us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of his love." Paul himself was chosen as apostle to the Gentiles and, in that dramatic conversion experience on the Damascus road, he said to the Lord whom he saw in the glory, "What will you have me to do?" (cf, Acts 9:6 KJV). Jesus replied, "Stand upon your feet, for I will send you far hence unto the Gentiles, to open their eyes and to turn men from darkness unto light and from the power of Satan unto God," (cf, Acts 26:16-18).
This is what the gospel is for; it has no other purpose. If we try to channel it first into smaller areas of life, such as applying it to social concerns, we only reveal how far we have mistaken its purpose. The gospel will ultimately find its way there, certainly, but it must make its first impact upon this basic problem of human life. Mankind is in the grips of a power which it is helpless to do anything about. The only one who can deliver us from it is Jesus Christ. He has already done so in the mystery of his cross and through the power and glory of his resurrection. When a man or woman believes that, and commits himself upon that basis, he discovers that the whole thing becomes practical and actual in his experience. This is what we call conversion. That is the beginning of the battle.
Do you Christians ever think of yourselves this way? You say, "My sins have been forgiven," but do you ever go on to say, "I have been delivered from the power of darkness, brought out of the power of Satan into the kingdom of God." Do you ever think of yourself that way? Or are we like those Peter mentions? -- who "have forgotten that they were once delivered from their sins," (cf, 2 Pet 1:9). Our Lord reveals one other principle in this passage in Luke, Verse 23:
He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. (Luke 11:23 RSV)
He is saying here that no neutral ground is possible, and no mere profession is sufficient. There is no third group possible. Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me." There are always those who say,
"I understand something of the gospel, and I must confess that I believe there is much of value in the Christian faith. I am a friend of Christianity. I believe that it has a great moral impact to bring into our world, but I do not care to go so far as personally 'receiving Christ.' I think I will remain neutral."
Jesus says this is impossible. There is no neutrality. "He who is not with me is against me." He who has not received the deliverance wrought is still under the bondage and control of the dark powers of Satan. There are no exceptions. This is why Christ is the crisis of history. He spoke of himself that way -- as the divider of men. He is here, dividing this congregation. In this audience, as he looks at it, there are only two groups. There are those who are with him, wholly with him because they are of him -- they have received him, they know him, they love him, they have partaken of his life -- and there are those who are against him. "He who is not with me is against me."
But neither can one say, as some are tempted to say, "Well, if this is the case, then I want to be a Christian, but I do not know about all this inward control. I am willing to go along with the outward forms. I'm willing to join the church. I'm willing to give my name to this, to join the Christian crowd, and to do all the right things, but inwardly I still believe in directing my own life and running my own affairs." Jesus says you cannot do that, either. "He who does not gather with me scatters." There is one thing which will reveal whether you are with him or against him, and that is the influence of your life. What is it?
Jesus Christ has come into the world to gather together the children of God. His force, his influence in the world, is a gathering influence, breaking down divisions, binding hearts together, reuniting families, making people to live together in harmony, breaking down the barriers of race, healing wounds, bringing nations together. But there is also a force which scatters, which divides. What is it? It is self-centeredness. This is the most divisive force known in human life. When men come together, the thing that splits them up into smaller groups is their vested concern in their own affairs. They are self-centered.
Therefore the great question of life is: What is basically the character of your life? Is it self-centeredness, or is it self-givingness? Are you with him or against him? Are you gathering with him in a healing, wholesome ministry or, when you join a group, a family, an organization, a company, or a nation, are you a divisive factor? Do you split people up? Do you make them quarrel with one another, come to odds with one another? What about your own family? You say you are a Christian. All right. Are your children drawn closer to the faith because of you? Or are they breaking away from it because of you? Our Lord here cuts right to the core of life. Man's life is absolutely laid bare and is judged finally on the basis of its relationship to him. The evidence of that relationship is the influence that we exercise.
I am going to leave it there... The question each must ask himself is, "Am I a victor, or a victim?" We are helpless to do anything about this ourselves. Nothing we can do in ourselves can change this situation. Man is not free. He is not able to carry out his own decisions except in a limited area, and it is his illusion of freedom which makes him imagine that he is a free, unrestrained individual. According to the Bible, man is under the unbroken, absolute control of an evil force which, quite apart from his knowledge, is controlling his thoughts and his reactions. We are absolutely helpless to do anything about this until that power is broken by the acceptance of the One who has come to destroy the works of the devil.
That is what communion is all about. To eat the bread and to drink the wine, which are symbols of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, and not to be delivered by the Son of God is to perform a blasphemous act. But if Christ has set you free, then to partake of communion is a heartwarming experience. It is to remember anew that deliverance which has come and has broken the chains of Satan, destroyed the binding power, torn away the darkness and let in the light, thus making it possible for us to be men and women as God intended men and women to be. If you have not known that deliverance you can know it now. Perhaps you have had to say, "If what you have said be true, then I am still an unbeliever. I am still under the power of Satan." Then the gospel comes to you now, and this is its message: In one moment of time you can pass from death into life. In one moment of commitment, trusting Christ and his work, no longer reckoning upon anything you are trying to do to make you good enough, you can say, "Lord, here am I. Save me." You pass in that moment from death into life. That is what conversion is.
In the quietness of this moment there may be many who will want to make that decision, who will say, "Lord, if this be true, if this is the reason why human life can never progress beyond what it has in these centuries of struggle and darkness, then I no longer want to be a part of that. I want to pass from death into life. Lord Jesus, save me." In those words you will open the door which permits him to do his saving work.
Our Father, we pray that many who have been seeking for answers will, in this present moment, pass from darkness into light, from the power of Satan into the kingdom of God, and be delivered, set free. For us, Lord, who have already experienced this, and know something of the reality of this delivering power in our life, we pray that we may come to this Table with deeply grateful hearts. We ask that we may never forget that we have been set free, that Jesus did this for us when we could do nothing for ourselves. May we celebrate this feast of love with a heart filled with love for him who loved us and gave himself for us. We pray in his name, Amen.
From Expository
Messages in Ephesians by Ray C. Stedman
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by Ray C. Stedman
In this present series we are seeking to understand the evident bafflement of the world leaders today who are trying to grasp and solve the problems of our human situation. We have already noted that the clearest thinkers among the world leaders acknowledge abject defeat when it comes to really grasping the problems we face. The statesmen of the world have long ago abandoned any attempt to formulate long-range policies. They are content now to grapple with each problem as it arises. The policy of the nations is to play each situation by ear and to do the best they can under the circumstances, for the problems of the world have long since grown so complex and so difficult that no one can anticipate what is coming.
Further, we have seen that we will never understand and comprehend what is going on in our world for these many centuries until we accept the biblical diagnosis of life. Paul puts this diagnosis very plainly in Ephesians 6:
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Eph 6:12-13 RSV)
We have noted already that our experience confirms the suggestion of this passage -- that life is basically a struggle. Life never conforms to the rosy idealism of our dreams, or to the romanticism of our songs. We saw, further, that the explanation of this struggle lies deeper than we ordinarily think. The common view of our struggle in the present world situation, as in every situation of the past, has been that we are engaged in conflict against flesh and blood, against other men and women. But Paul says the battle is not against flesh and blood; it lies deeper than that. The basic problem is that this is a battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, and that man himself is the battlefield. The battle is visible not only in the wars, revolutions, and crime waves which oppress us, and fill our newspapers, but it is also seen in the inner tensions and fears of individual lives, in the neurotic problems and mental illnesses which afflict us today, in family fights and church struggles. It is even visible in nature, where all of life competes in a ruthless, deadly struggle to survive.
We saw that the whole race, according to this passage, has fallen under the control of satanic forces, whom Paul calls, "the world rulers of this present darkness" -- a most significant phrase. Jesus confirms this in his figurative description of Satan as the strong man who, armed, rules his own palace and keeps his goods in peace. The picture of the Bible from beginning to end is that all human beings, without exception, regardless of how clever or educated or cultured they may be, if without Christ, are the helpless victims of satanic control. Under the control of satanic forces human beings are uncomfortable and unhappy, but also completely unable to escape by any wisdom or power of their own.
But the good news is that some have been set free, some have been delivered. Through the coming of that "stronger one," Jesus himself, who came, as John tells us, "to destroy the works of the devil" (1 Jn 3:8b), deliverance is obtained. Through the amazing mystery of the cross and the resurrection, Jesus has broken the power and bondage of Satan over human lives. Those who individually receive and acknowledge this (i.e., those who believe, for Scripture always addresses itself to belief), are set free to live in the freedom and liberty of the children of God.
But they are not set free to live unto themselves. That is a common misconception of Christianity. Many believe that Christ has come into their lives by means of the cross, and the things which have bound them and blasted them and ruined them have been stricken away, and they have been set free. All too frequently they feel they have been set free to do as they please, to live as they want to live. But they are set free in order to battle. That is the call which comes to all Christians. We are not set free in order to enjoy ourselves. We are set free to do battle, to engage in the fight, to overcome in our own lives, and to become the channels by which others are set free. Thus there comes this call to us in this closing chapter in the letter to the Ephesians:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, (Eph 6:10-11a RSV)
We must now give closer attention to the actual conduct of this battle. If this conflict is the basic problem of human life, how much devolves upon us in conducting or fighting this battle? How do you do this? Paul's answer is in one phrase: "Put on the whole armor of God." Full provision has been made that you might win in this battle. This is the amazing thing we must learn. It is something we seldom take seriously. God has made full provision for us to fight these great and powerful forces which hold the world in their grip. But it would be a mistake to start there, to begin with the armor of God. If we start there, we find that this figure of armor strikes people with a note of unreality. It does not sound real. It is like a game they are playing, and there is no sense of the importance of this. We must end up talking about the armor of God, as we shall in this series, but we cannot start there.
We must start by seeing what it is we are opposed by. Armor is made for defense, and we will see no value in these pieces designed for our defense until we see what we are defending against. Let us realize something of the cleverness, the cunning wiliness of the forces against which we are battling, and we will begin to appreciate the armor with which we have been provided. Therefore we shall start there. Today, I want primarily to look at this phrase of Paul's, "the wiles of the devil." The first step for any soldier in training is to be introduced to the strategy and weapons which the enemy will use against him. The devil is a very cunning and wily strategist. Martin Luther is quite right when he writes,
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great,
And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
The record confirms that. Read the Old Testament and you will see that every saint, every prophet, every patriarch, every one of the great and glorious kings of Israel was defeated at one time or another by the devil. The wisest and greatest of men are absolutely helpless and futile in attempting to outwit the devil by themselves. Yet, as we have already seen, the Bible indicates that it is quite possible to walk in victory.
James says, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you," (Jas 4:7b). Think of that! This clever, cunning strategist who has held the world for centuries in defeat, whom no man is able to out-maneuver, will flee from you when you learn, like Paul, not to be ignorant of his devices.
Now the questions we must ask are, "What is the general strategy of the devil? How does he plan to do this? How is it that he keeps the world in such bondage and such powerlessness?" The only one in all history who has ever consistently and unbrokenly defeated the devil, not only in his life but also in his death, is the Lord Jesus Christ. He put his finger squarely upon the strategy and the tactics of Satan when he said, "The devil is a liar and a murderer from the beginning," (cf, John 8:44). The strategy of the devil is to murder. The tactic by which he accomplishes this is to lie. If we consider these phrases carefully we will see how accurate they are.
How does the devil plan to oppose the work of God in the world? Well, by murdering, by destroying. One of the names given to the devil in the book of the Revelation is "Apollyon," the "Destroyer." What does "destroy" mean? It is to create chaos, to lay waste, to ruin, to make desolate. There you have the explanation for the whole tragic story of human history: A destroyer is at work among men. Our God is a God of beauty, harmony, order, and perfection, of love, of light, and grace. There is enough evidence left in the world of nature, including our own being, and in the world of ideas, to see this marvelous symmetry, beauty, and perfection of God. God is a God of harmony and order. The world was created as orderly, and than along with it.
But into this scene a destroyer came. It is his delight to smash, to mangle, to twist, to mutilate, to disfigure, to darken and blast in every way he can. It does not make any difference whether it is bodies or souls, flesh or ideas, matter or spirit, the aim of the devil is exactly the same in every case: It is to distort, to blast, to twist, to destroy. That is why the devil can never offer anything positive to human life. He can make nothing. He has never made anything and he never can make anything. All he can do is destroy what God has made. His power is totally negative, completely destructive in every way.
What are the tactics the devil employs to accomplish this dastardly destructiveness which is so abundantly confirmed as you look around at life and read your newspaper and review the story of human history? How does he do it? Well, by deceiving, by lying, by distorting, by counterfeiting, by play-acting and masquerading, by illusion and fantasy. This is what Paul calls "the wiles of the devil." Read through the Bible and see how many times the work of the devil is referred to in that manner -- the snares, the traps of the devil, the illusions, the stratagems, the wiles. We shall content ourselves now with a general survey of these wiles. In our next message we hope to take a much closer look at the actual tactics the devil is employing in your life and mine to defeat us and keep us in weakness, to ruin and lay waste our lives.
The Bible makes clear that the tactics of the devil fall into two major divisions. He attacks the human race both directly and indirectly. He is capable of a direct confrontation with human beings, and an indirect approach. And through these two avenues he maintains his world-wide control over the race of men. The Bible indicates that there are fallen hosts of angels called demons, whom Paul calls here "the principalities and powers, the world rulers of this present darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places." Now "heavenly places" does not mean far off in heaven somewhere. "Heavenly" means "the realm of the invisibilities," i.e., the invisible realities of life. The devil and his hosts are not visible. That is what he is saying. The devil's activity is in this realm of the invisible reality of life, the heavenly places where God works, as well as the devil.
In the Bible, we are told very little of the origin of the devil and his angels, these principalities and powers. There is enough to suggest that here was a being created originally as an angel of might and strength and beauty and power. There is a brief reference to the fall of this great angel, whose name was Lucifer, and who was lifted up by pride. Pride is always the mark of the devil. Lifted up by pride, he chose to rival God and, in doing so, he fell from his station of might and glory and beauty and became the devil. He drew a third of the angels with him, and these constitute the principalities and powers, the organized ki