WAR OF THE WORLDS
But I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I am present with that confidence, wherewith I think to be bold against some, which think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.
2 Corinthians 10:2-6, KJV
The immediate background to the text is this: The Corinthian congregation was richly and graciously blessed by God’s gifts but remained childish and pride-filled [see 1 Corinthians 1:4-7; 3:1-3; 4:6-8]. This made them easy prey for false teachers who came with a perverted gospel [see 1 Corinthians 9:1-2 and 2 Corinthians 10:5—11:15]. Paul says he will deal with these gospel perverts as soon as the Corinthians have a change of heart and behavior [2 Corinthians 10:6].
The pride-filled Corinthians didn’t like the way Paul went about his business but they never understood! For Paul this was no religious game and congregations of Christ were not gatherings of ancient but nice Rotarian types—for him it was war!
In his war in Christ’s name and for His sake Paul doesn’t war “after the flesh” or use “weapons of the flesh.” He doesn’t lie or brag or seduce or slander or envy. Neither does he preach/teach his heritage or accomplishments and so make Christ a slave to culture or nationalism or self-serving ministers. [Later when he does list what he has experienced and endured, he feels like a fool but he does it because he is compelled to do it to defend his gospel—2 Corinthians 11:9-31 and later.] Paul had a single message [1 Corinthians 2:1-5], a fool’s message [1 Corinthians 4:9-10 with 1 Corinthians 1:18-25]. In him the Lord Jesus was again playing the fool—God’s fool—before the mocking world.
Paul never sees his work in establishing little assemblies as anything less than his unceasing brawl with a world-spirit, with an evil-age. He believed that he was at war with a cosmic force, an evil “god of this world” [2 Corinthians 4:3-4] and his weapon—his only weapon—against this massive anti-God and anti-life cosmos was a Story! A true Story, the Story of God as he has come to us in and as the blessed One, the Lord Jesus.
By this he makes war!
It alone subverts the structures that now in human experience serve the world-spirit that narrows people and leaves them without hope and imagination. This satanic force renders them slaves, incapable of seeing a new world, and the entrenched cultural way of life and its behaviors become all there is and can be expected. In their blindness they think they can fine-tune reality with political or social or psychological or economic or humane programs or a combination of these and more. If they can do this they can make reality worthy and worthwhile.
But in their more lucid moments, whether they are presidents, prime ministers or “peons” they know these efforts are futile if the world is to truly benefit. All the fine ventures smash on the rock of human corruption and human corruptibility—there must be some other power that will re-create the world or it will spin on and on in its slavery and growing despair.
These human structures [such as governments] are not evil in themselves; they are God’s creation [Colossians 1:15-16] but they have been hijacked and in the ceaseless experience of humans they have become satanic, demonic. And how is it that God dealt with them and will finally unveil his having dealt with them? He dealt with them in a single person—the blessed Lord Jesus [Colossians 2:15]. He alone has defeated the corrupted powers and now lives in the New Covenant People whose business, as the “Body of Christ,” is to embody and proclaim the Victory [1 John 5:4-5] that is of God in the Lord Jesus.
Paul says that is the war he is engaged in [2 Corinthians 10:4-5]. The satanically driven powers wherever and whenever they show themselves are to taken captive not by bombs or shrewd politicking. Only the truth of God made present in gospeling is the kind of power that meets such power and overcomes it. Such powers aren't fought by "weapons of the flesh," can't be defeated by weapons of the flesh—whether those weapons are psych programs or programs of social bonding or humane behavior. Only God can overcome "the world," only his power "saves" [in all the ways that "saves" can mean—Romans 1.16] and it saves because in it his faithfulness is unveiled. And that faithfulness involves redemption from sin in order to bring about the new world and the destruction of the old in its entirety.
It is the gospel that brings all schemes and plotting and shrewdness into captivity and lays them at the feet of the Lord Christ. It is the gospel that opens the hearts and the eyes of the blind and the alienated. It is the gospel that transforms the mind so that it is able to see new possibilities, new worlds and sing new realities. It is the gospel that delivers people from the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of God which alone creates and sustains vibrant hope of a future worth rejoicing in and working toward in Christ-imaging righteousness.
When a teacher or preacher rises to speak the gospel, however tiny the gathering or weak the listeners [and the speaker] an eschatological battle begins in the war they declare against the satanic, demonic cosmos. This is no delightful little homily about us all being nice to each other and the Wallmart checkout lady—this is a no quarter asked or given engagement with an enslaving power that the blessed One hates with a perfect hatred.
When as one we raise our voices in song or bow our hearts in prayer or read the Bible or let our monetary gift fall from our grasp or eat and drink in eucharistic sincerity the Lord’s Supper we renew our declaration of war as a congregation of Jesus Christ.
Offer weekly suggestions about marital improvement, child-raising, monetary wisdom or how to get along with one another and such—offer these, week after week after week, as a substitute for the gospel? Offer these as a steady diet when there’s a gospel to bring our hearts to their knees in thanksgiving and repentance, joy and living hope and commitment? Offer these as a steady diet when there’s a gospel that can sustain and mend our hearts that are shredded by bereavement and loss of one awful kind or another? Offer these, “nice little moral pointers,” from verses here and here when the gospel lies before us in the Bible and in the Supper of the Lord?
A pox on them!
Call for gospeling!
Give God’s People the gospel!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.