“Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3).
In Part 1 we traced the importance of warfare in the economy of God, looking at being a warrior through the lens of the Old Testament saints, angels, and Jesus Christ.
This leads to an obvious question for Christians in the New Testament age: Does this apply to us? And if so, what does being a warrior look like?
There are two fundamental passages in the New Testament on being a soldier: 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 and Ephesians 6:10-17. Both passages teach that the New Testament Christian is to be a soldier and fight wars; however the realm of our warfare is not physical but spiritual.
This is not to say that Christians cannot or should not fight physical wars (i.e. serve in the military). There is no New Testament command for or against participating in physical wars. But irrespective of whether a Christian fights in physical wars, his true warfare is spiritual.
All of us live in two realities, the physical and the spiritual. The physical world is the one we experience on an everyday basis. It is the one we can see and hear and touch and smell. Our earthly bodies and every other material thing that we experience in this life are part of the physical world.
The spiritual world, on the other hand, is not something that we experience in a material sense. But that does not mean it is any less real. The bible teaches us that the spiritual world is more “real” than the physical, in the sense that the spiritual world superintends the physical (for example, see Genesis 1:1, John 1:3, or Hebrews 11:3).
Everything we know about the spiritual world we learn from the bible, and we believe it as a matter of faith.
Let’s take a closer look at 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. Here is how I would paraphrase it: All of us walk in the flesh (the physical world). But we do not war in the flesh. We war in the spiritual world, and the weapons of our warfare are spiritual weapons. In other words, the weapons that the New Testament Christian uses to fight wars are not physical weapons, but spiritual. Does this mean that they are in any way less real or less important? Absolutely not. Every evidence from the bible suggests that our spiritual weapons and our spiritual battles are more important than physical ones, even if this is not immediately obvious from our worldly perspective.
What does spiritual warfare look like? What do we use our weapons for? 2 Corinthians tells us that the weapons of our warfare are “divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.”
What does that mean? How we interpret this passage largely depends on the definition of “fortresses” and “speculations”.
The Greek word for “fortresses” is ochyroma. It means a castle, or a stronghold. But Strong’s also adds that figuratively it can mean an argument, and the Blue Letter Bible gives this definition: “the arguments and reasoning which a disputant endeavors to fortify his opinion.” Given the context, I believe this is exactly the definition the Apostle Paul intended. The Christian is to use his spiritual weapons to destroy strongholds of arguments/reasonings.
The Greek word for speculations is logismos. Strong’s defines this as a computation, reasoning, or thought. The New King James translates it as “arguments.” Paul is saying we are destroying arguments/reasonings and “every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.”
Both “fortresses” and “speculations” have to do with our reasoning and thinking. This means that spiritual warfare takes place largely in the arena of thoughts and ideas. Spiritual warfare is learning how to think about things that are worthy to think about (Philippians 4:8).
It is about identifying truth vs. falsehood. It is about developing biblical convictions so that we do not succumb to deception. It is about knowing good vs. evil, and understanding who defines it. It is about learning how to view life the way God views life, esteeming the things that God esteems, and finding detestable the things that God finds detestable (Luke 16:15). It is in these areas that we destroy fortresses and speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.
As we walk through our fleshly lives we are constantly bombarded with ideas. Because this world lies in the power of the devil (1 John 5:19), we can be sure that much of what we are exposed to, subtle or obvious, is a lie. Spiritual warfare consists of filtering the ideas that we are exposed to everyday through the truth of Scripture. All of us view life through our own unique lens, and all of us have our own narrative that we tell ourselves about the events that happen to us. It is very easy to let that narrative slip into nonbiblical thinking. It is easy to become presumptuous. Or tell ourselves that we are victims. Or that a sin we are struggling with is not a big deal. Or believe we are owed something. Or want to take justice in our own hands. Or, or, or. I don’t know about you, but for me, when I don’t take every thought captive, this is where I go. And I hate to say it, but it happens in a nanosecond.
Revelation 19:11-21 describes the victorious coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus appears from heaven sitting on a white horse, and He is with His armies from heaven who are also on white horses. They wage a battle against the beast and the false prophet and the kings of the earth and their armies. Sometimes I wonder who will get to be in Jesus’s army. Will it just be angels? Will believers get to take part? Maybe it is a mix of both? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I do know that it would be pretty amazing to be on a white horse with Jesus and the rest of His army on that day. And if I get the chance I’d like to be as ready as possible. We prepare by learning how to fight now, which means we purpose every day to put on the full armor of God and destroy fortresses and speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.
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