Problems are for Solving

…able to stand against the wiles of the devil. (Ephesians 6:11b)

When I was younger I used to watch a lot of cartoons. I like the road runner. Once, though, WB did some character swapping and the Coyote turned up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. In this one he talked. He introduced himself as Wle E. Coyote, emphasis on the “E”.

He was supposed to be wily but not as sharp as Bugs. Just like in his attempts against the road runner, he was frustrated at every attempt. Because Bugs Bunny knows how to recognize and anticipate crafty methods.

Our enemy is artful and sly in his methods. Today I want to talk about one of them: conspiracy.

He plans against our welfare. He does not want us to grow.

Consider the following quotes from C.S. Lewis’
The Screwtape Letters (letters #6 and 7):

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train.

I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.

Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

These are letters from a demon to his apprentice, and the Enemy named is Christ. Christ is our enemy’s Enemy as He is our Friend and General.

The foe, Satan, wants to confuse us and direct us away from our mission. The more passionately he can direct us away from the Commission our General has left for us, the more effective his methods. He loves to stir up differences among us and we are to pursue the unity of His Body in the Spirit of Peace, rather than allowing our differences to divide Christ. Yes, they are there, and many of them are heartfelt and important. But are they more important than the unity of Christ’s Body? May it never be! So, my fellow soldiers do not let spite and passion rise up among us that divide us from one another. We are all fighting in the same war, on the same side if we are Christ’s. If we fail to recognize the wily methods of the Devil, we will fall into his traps.

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So we’re at war. And we’re to fight the war in the power of Christ’s might.

This begs the question: with whom are we at war? Whom are we fighting? Who’s the enemy?

The next verses in Ephesians 6:

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
(Ephesians 6:11-12)

Going first to verse 12: “for we wrestle not . . .” That “not” is important. This is not a flesh and blood war. This is a war against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

[I'm not going to cover all of these in one post—my goal is to give a thorough treatment to this passage in chunks that are under 700 words, preferably shorter. This accomplishes two things. First, it helps my half dozen readers to read without being overwhelmed and second it helps me to learn to be more terse in my writing. This post will be the longest of this section]

The devil. We are to stand and fight against the “wiles of the devil.” The ESV translates this word, “schemes.” The Greek word here is the one from which our English word “methods” is derived. We are to stand against the methods of the devil.

It’s only recently that I’ve realized a tendency I’ve had in the past to minimize the reality of the forces of evil. And many of us err in our assessment of Satan. Some make more of him than is true, almost making him into a co-god who rules apart from God’s sovereign providence, and others (and I have fallen into this camp more often) practically trivialize the efforts of the eventually losing side of darkness. This war is real, and Satan is a real, active, strong enemy.

In that great hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Martin Luther 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.

Luther refers to Satan as our ancient foe. He goes back a long way—further than we know for sure. And his methods, his schemes, are to work for our woe. He wants us to be sad and disorganized and filled with hopelessness. Satan is no lightweight either. Luther correctly describes him as great in craft and power. Remember that craft, when this hymn was originally translated, didn’t refer to knitting and scrapbooking, but to the vocations of craftsmanship like blacksmithing. Certainly many of our modern “crafts” were once crafts in the traditional sense (pottery comes to mind), but in the hymn Luther is referring to Satan’s craftsmanship. Satan has no equal on earth. Luther continues:

Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,

We don’t stand a chance against this guy. Our ancient foe has no equal. If we take confidence in our own strength.

were not the right man on our side,
the man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabbaoth, his name,
from age to age the same,
and he must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
his truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure,
for lo, his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.

Jesus is on our side, so we need not fear. Satan is a real enemy, but his doom is sure. And so we must stand, by faith in Christ, against of the methods of the devil—by putting on the whole armor of God, about which more later.

Douglas Wilson has a good post here (in parable form) about evaluating the media. I find his parables to be among the best of his writings—this one is well done.

On a semi-related note, my wife was laughing the other day about the irony of my writing about the Christian war on the heels of my post about the mistaken IRS letter regarding my fictitious residence in a combat zone.

Yesterday I posted about the glorious war that the Christian has been called to fight. This war doesn’t look like the wars we see, though it is just as difficult and dangerous for the combatants. Lord willing, over the next few days I’m going to write a series of posts based on Ephesians chapter 6, dealing with our fighting of the war.

Paul, having just finished an extensive section on the Christian walk including a description of various parts of the social order (husbands and wives, workers and masters, children and parents) , turns back to the heavenly perspective with which he began in chapter 1. He wants us to see the Christian walk from God’s perspective—as a war. This is the conclusion to his letter to the Ephesians, his final encouragement to them as they walk with the Savior.

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
(Ephesians 6:10)

I don’t usually use the King James, but because of the poetic flow of this section I like the way the KJV puts the passage. The added benefit is that the King James, being older English, has distinctive pronouns for singular and plural that have fallen away in modern usage, giving a clearer picture of the original.

Finally: “because of all that I’ve written so far, I want to end here” so to speak. And the apostle goes with the familial “brethren” calling to attention the family ties that we all share in Christ. This is not intended to exclude the “sisters” of the Ephesian church, but to emphasize the family relationship.

The command? Be strong. But not in your own strength—but in Christ. In the power of the might of the Savior.

So we’re going to fight this war. We must be strong. But we can’t. We need the Lord, and that’s where Paul’s been headed the whole time. All the examples of who we are in Christ and what Christ has done that he expounded in chapters 1-3: that’s to point us to Christ. The commands of chapters 4-6: to point us to Christ. We need Him and can’t do this on our own.

We need the power of His might.

The call is to rise up and stand—to be strong—but only to be strong in Christ. Because our strength fails and His never does. So before we ever take up the weapons of the war, before we get to know our enemy, we must stand up and be strong in Christ, and depend upon Him for everything. So have this attitude as you go to war: be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.

Last week I posted a note about a new album that I’ve been burning up. Not really burning up (though doesn’t that conjure up two entirely antithetical images? And wow–did I just use antithetical in an actual blog post?) literally of course, but listening to a lot.

In the fourth song, Hymn, Anthony pens the line:

Rise up o Church
And grab the sword
Stand up and fight
This glorious war

The whole verse that contains this line is fantastic. I can’t get all the words down for sure and I’m too lazy to run get the jacket and look and see if they’re there (I think they are), but the line just inspires me.

Rise up Church! Grab the spirit’s sword! Fight! We’ve been called to a glorious war!

And a war it is.

I’ve known those who are angry at the Church. Those who think she’s become the whore of Babylon or just filled with false teachers and so not only can but ought to be avoided.

But Jesus builds the Church. And He is. She is far from perfect, but she is His Church. And she is at war.

War conjures up many images for me, but the one that is conjured up right now is of a rag tag group of men fighting to save their homes from an oppressive invader. They didn’t ask for the fight and they don’t want to fight, and they would much rather be home living in peace. These men probably wouldn’t be friends in most situations. They come from different social strata and have varying educations and opposing opinions in a broad spectrum of topics. They probably would argue tooth and nail about all kinds of matters and would generally avoid being around one another.

Except for the pesky war. Because of this war, these men who wouldn’t be friends in a normal, peaceful situation become a band of brothers who are willing to die for one another. Because of the war, the unfriendly become life long friends. Because of the war, they learn to get along and in fact grow in love and devotion to one another, trusting their lives into each others’ hands.

And so to those of you who claim Christ’s Name as that alone in which you find your salvation I say this:

You’re at war.

And because you’re at war you need to tend to your weapons and your fellow soldier’s in this army of rag tag people that you often don’t like and that you’d rather were someplace else. Why? Because they’re not the enemy. They’re the ones that will watch your back when you’re asleep and who will engage against the foe for your sake, whether they agree with you about secondary and tertiary matters. So stop fighting in the camp, and take up the weapons that the Commander has given and fight the glorious war. I’ve got your back, even if I disagree with you. If you’re in the General’s Army, you’re my friend. Army, navy, baptist, presbyterian, whatever the label–if you’re Christ’s, I’ll watch your back.

Leithart.com | Perpetual War

According to Deuteronomy 20, any man who had built a house, planted a vineyard, or married a wife without enjoying their benefits and joys was excused from military service. While it was certainly possible for a 20-year-old Israelite to be unmarried and propertyless, it would seem that the military was largely made up of men who already had these benefits of peace. I base this on the supposition that men would be entering on an independent adulthood at 20, the same age they became eligible for military service. Also, I’m assuming that Israelite ages of marriage were comparable to other ancient civilizations; Roman girls, for instance, were considered marriageable at 12 and adults at 14, at which age men would begin to call them “domina.” Thus, Israel’s army would largely consist of men who already had some experience of the benefits of adult life in peacetime.

This has important effects on the makeup and psychology of the military. First, the men going to war had some sense of why they were fighting and what they were defending. Second, home, vineyard, and wife provided a triple anchor that kept an Israelite warrior from getting too attached to the battlefield. This was particularly important in the ancient world, when war was for some men was life, not an irritating interruption of life.

…necessary but not normal.

And by ‘normal’ I mean ‘the norm for life.’ I am not a pacifist. I understand that war and violence are very ncecessary at times.

But they are not what life is to revolve around. Those who are fighting in a war ought to understand what they are fighting for, and have a reason to go home when the war is over. I fear that is no longer the case in our country or many places in the world.

Men who have wives and businesses and homes and have to leave and go to war want to come home.

Young men whose sole occupation is war have no reason to do so.

There will be battles and war that are necessary–let us learn to send those into battle who know for whom they fight, and who want to return home to them.