Christians fail, and the Church fails, when the wrong weapons are used. Failure is written across the shattered efforts of millions who name the name of Christ because they were unaware of the nature of the warfare in which they were engaged, or because they tried to contend using the natural weapons of this world rather than the supernatural ones God provides.
As to the nature of the warfare, the Apostle Paul says, “Our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Eph. 6:12, Phillips).
Even though we may recognize that the struggle in which we are engaged is spiritual, we so often sally forth with man-designed weapons. And so often we fail miserably!
Recognizing this tendency to fight the Lord’s battles with the arm of flesh, the Apostle Paul warns us, “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. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3–5).
No wonder we fail! We answer human arguments with human arguments; we meet organizations with organizations of our own, and worldly power with equally worldly methods; we oppose the wisdom of this world with wisdom of the same sort—anything that human ingenuity can devise with seemingly equal ingenuity. And we get nowhere!
The battle in which we are engaged is a spiritual battle for the minds of men, and there is no human wisdom by which we can win that battle.
The arguments against the divine revelation and the mystery of the Gospel are satanically clever. No man can defeat them through the natural processes of reason.
The human mind is capable of imaginations that plumb the depths of perversity and depravity. They cannot be countered by philosophies that originate at the human level.
Until and unless we realize that we cannot overcome “spiritual wickedness in high places” by our own natural resources, we are doomed to failure when we attempt to engage the enemy.
The limit of human pride and conceit cannot be calculated, for it extends to a resistance to God himself. That such resistance can be humbled and made captive to Christ is a fact to be treasured and is the ultimate hope of any witness for our Lord.
What are our invincible weapons? Are they available to all? How are they to be used?
The amazing thing is that they are not only available to all but are effective in the hands of even the humblest saint. But before we consider these God-given weapons, let us clear up some widely held misconceptions.
The Church is not in the world to convince men of its relevance to contemporary life. Rather it is here to convict men of sin through the preaching of the Gospel.
Nor is the Church in the world to win men’s allegiance to an organization. It exists for the purpose of winning men to faith in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, its purpose is not to proclaim a logic compatible with the world’s outlook. The Church is the custodian and the minister of spiritual truth as revealed in the Scriptures.
Because its warfare should be on a God-designed plane, the Church is effective only as it recognizes itself to be a spiritual organism, empowered by the Spirit. Therefore, the weapons of its warfare are credible only to those willing to accept and use them by faith.
These invisible and invincible weapons include:
The power of a risen and triumphant Christ.
The power of his Holy Spirit.
The power of the Holy Scriptures, the Sword of the Spirit.
The power of prayer.
The power of a life exhibiting the transforming presence of Christ.
The power of faith in the promises of God.
And finally, the power of unselfish love.
To the world, such “weapons” are meaningless. To those who use them in faith, these weapons are the power of God unto salvation and the means of spiritual victory.
The Apostle Paul, a man whose life demonstrated his complete surrender to his Lord, states his heart’s desire in a poignant affirmation (Phil. 3:7–11) in which he recognizes that the supreme witness to the Gospel’s power rests in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have that same witness today. Our hope rests not in a creed but in a living Saviour, one who overcame the power of death and through whom we have a similar hope.
How we need to realize that with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost there was made available to all believers a new and inexhaustible source of power! No men have ever had such privileges as our Lord’s disciples, but even they were instructed to wait for the Holy Spirit. Jesus told them “You shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you” (Acts 1:8). How many battles are lost today because they are waged by “manpower” and not in and by the Holy Spirit!
Then there is the power of the Word. How Satan hates the Scriptures and how consistently he has attacked them! In the entire armor of God the Scriptures are the only offensive weapon. Can we not learn from our Lord’s three thrusts of the Sword at Satan in the wilderness? Are we so ignorant of the validity and effectiveness of this weapon that we fail to use it when beset by the devil?
In the mysterious providence of God he has ordained the power of prayer. Countless saints know by experience that the impossible becomes a reality because prayer is powerful. By it the resources of Almighty God are brought to bear on problems and situations that confront us; we see and know that “prayer changes things.”
A surrendered Christian exhibits power—not anything that he is of himself, but the power of a new life in Christ—and through the witness of a redeemed life he stands in the midst of and also above all that the world can muster against him.
Also in the arsenal of the invincible weapons God has given us is complete faith in God’s Son—his person and his work. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith” (1 John 5:4b).
And finally, victory comes through Christian love, a love that is “patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, willing to yield to others, not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor. 13:4, 5, paraphrased).
Our God has provided invincible weapons for our warfare. Let us, like King David of old, put off the armor of another and go forth to the battle fully equipped by the Lord of hosts.
