Humanity 2.0: The Battle

In my message yesterday from Eph. 6:10-20, I said something like this:

Paul uses a military illustration to once again tell us that through the gospel God has us provided the necessary armor, the necessary power for standing firm.

This point is worth emphasizing because I’m not sure how many of us are really hearing what this passage is saying.

Yes–we have an enemy. Yes–there is a battle raging. Yes–we need to arm ourselves. But let’s make sure we understand the nature of the battle we are fighting and the kind of weaponry we’ve been given to fight with.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our battle is not against Osama Bin Laden. Our battle is not against people of Islamic faith. Our battle is not against homosexuals. Our battle is not against other churches who are not just like us.

Our battle is against the unseen forces of evil standing behind all the evil activity in this world. That includes the evil activity we see in our so-called enemies as well as the evil activity that manifests itself in us.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood. Therefore we do not wage war the way the world does. Followers of Christ do not wage war against evil with guns or missles or legislature. The Kingdom of God does not come into this world riding on American tanks, nor is it advanced by passing amendments.

In the battle against evil we take our cue from Jesus and recognize that the victory over sin and death and evil was fought and won from the cross. We do not wage war as the world does. We have been equipped with the armor of God, which means that the only weapon with which we have been given to fight is the gospel, which is a message of life-giving, self- sacrificing, peace-making, enemy- embracing, enemy-forgiving love.

I want to caution us against reading this passage as justification for attacking whoever the enemy du jour happens to be. The cosmic battle between good and evil cannot be reduced to a flesh and blood enemy. When we reduce it the evil we think we are attacking in someone else may actually be what is energizing us.

One of the mistakes 1st century Jews made was to assume that Rome was their enemy when in reality their real enemy was the power of evil that stood behind the evil activity of Rome and behind the evil activity of the hard-hearted Jewish religious establishment that helped nail Jesus to the cross

If we want to follow Jesus, we must be ready for a fight, but we must also be ready to fight a totally different kind of battle using a totally different kind of weapon.

I made these comments more from a Christian perspective than an American one. They are not always one in the same. This is a distinction we need to be making more often.