“We wrestle not against flesh and blood…but against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

(Ephesians 6:12)

 

How often we all are like the frightened man, who, awakened by the sound of someone stealthily moving about in his bedroom, reached for his revolver, shot in the direction of the noise, then flicked on the light to discover that he had killed, not an intruder as he had thought, but his own brother.

When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was celebrating his 92nd birthday, one of his callers to wish him well that day was the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That was in the early, dark days of the Roosevelt administration. Banks were closing. Economic depression had gripped the land. Fear reigned in my hearts. As the President said goodbye, he asked the wise old Justice for a word of advice. Oliver Wendell Holmes replied: “Mr. President, you are in a war. There’s only one thing to do in a war. Form your battalions and carry the fight to the enemy.”

This is good advice, courageous counsel, for a President and for every private citizen. For we all are always with a fight of some sort on our hands. And in a war the only thing to do is to marshal our forces and take the fight to the enemy.

But who is our enemy? Before we can wage an effective war we must know the nature of the enemy. Too often we have fired in the dark and hit, not an intruder, but a brother.

No wiser counsel was ever given the Christian soldier concerning the nature of his ultimate enemy than St. Paul’s word to the Ephesian Christians: “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.”  Or, as Mr. Phillips has translated from the original: “I expect you have learned by now that 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.”

St. Paul was in prison in Rome, when he wrote these words. Some of the time he was chained to the side of a Roman soldier. Did Paul consider the Roman guard his enemy? The evidence is that he made friends with his guards and led some of them to faith in Christ. Was Paul’s enemy then, Caesar, before whom he hoped to stand for judgment? The records on the pages of the New Testament are that some of the members of Caesar’s household were worshiping with the Christian congregation in Rome. Or, did Paul look upon the Jewish leaders who had brought charges against him and had him thrown into prison as his enemies?

No. Paul singles none of these as his enemies. Rather he writes: “For us Christians, our enemy never is anyone of flesh and blood. We fight against organizations and powers that are spiritual.”

One Sunday morning Dr. Grier Davis said to his congregation in Ashville, North Carolina: “The decisive battle in everyone’s life is fought within. The powers that defeat us at last are not other people. We do not go down in defeat because of the circumstances that surround our life, not because outward pressures are too much for us, but because we lose the battle with the powers of evil which corrupt and debase and destroy us.”

But St. Paul further identifies the enemy not only as spiritual rather than physical, but also as powerful, clever and highly organized. “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.” What are principalities, powers and rulers?

The New Testament Scholar, Archibald Hunter, says we do not need to swallow whole St. Paul’s “demonology” in order to grasp and accept the deep truth contained in this estimate of the nature of the enemy of the human soul. What Paul is saying is that people as individuals and groups and societies encounter evil in this world not just in abstract forms, nor even in the more formidable force of long ingrained evil habits and enslaving addictions, but also in highly organized and demonically powerful forces of culture and thought forms, and business and political powers. These pressures and strictures and values when enthroned in social custom and practiced over generations grow terribly powerful in their influence over the thoughts and behavior of people. They control, direct, and dominate human life, as principalities, powers and rulers.

Jerome, in a letter written shortly before the Fall of Rome stated: “It is our sins which make the barbarians strong, our vices which overcome our soldiers . . . If only I had a watchtower so high as to view the whole world, I would show you the wreck of a world.”

So, now for us, the need is urgent, as Alfred Noyes long ago wrote:

“Search for the foe in thine own soul,

The sloth, the intellectual pride,

The trivial jest that veils the goal

For which our fathers lived and died:

The lawless dream, the cynic art,

That rend they nobler self apart.”    (The Searchlights)

In last week’s Time magazine, George Soros, one of Time’s selected “Most Influential Americans”, was quoted as sadly observing: “The cult of success has replaced a belief in principles.” “Society has lost its anchor.”

However, important as it is to identify the real enemy and to know his nature and strength — even more important is the consideration of how to stand and contend victoriously with such a known and formidable enemy. And St. Paul’s advice here for the Christian soldier is superlative: “Stand therefore, not trusting in yourself, but in the Lord, and in His boundless resource. Put on the whole armor of God.”

Let us not bog down in the detailed analysis of just what each piece of the Christian’s armor signifies: “the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the sword of truth.” Of course, such outfits of armor have gone out of style long ago. But faith, and love, and hope and truth and readiness to begin a mission of reconciliation — these have not gone out of style.

In a word, St. Paul is counseling the Christian to put on Christ by faith. “Don’t trust in yourself,” he is saying. “Be strong in the Lord and in his boundless resource — not your own strength which is but feebleness. Begin with Christ and His spiritual resources: the love of Christ in your heart, the mind of Christ in your thoughts, the compassion of Christ in your relationships with family and friends and enemies . . . His willingness to suffer for the redemption of others, even your estranged kinfolks and colleagues, and his obedience to the Father’s will, even unto death.”

And why this slavish allegiance to Jesus Christ? Because He is our only revelation of what complete human obedience to the purposes of the Almighty means, and He is the fullest outlet of the divine love and power for our lives to draw upon. When spiritually we have put on His armor, then the marvelous grace of God, flowing through us, will work out all the new and creative aspects necessary for us to cope with the gruesome business of overcoming the real enemy — sin and evil and death and destruction in human personalities and human society. The real enemy will then be destroyed and God’s people will be saved.

Dante, in his “Inferno” says: “I, gazing, saw a banner, that whirling ran so swiftly that it seemed to me to scorn all repose, and behind it came so long a train of folk, that I could never have believed death had undone so many. After I had distinguished some among them, I saw, and knew the shade of him who made through cowardice, the great refusal.

The great refusal, or the ready acceptance of Jesus Christ — this is the soul’s moment of truth, not just for Judas Iscariot, but for every one of us. This is the great divide on which turns each human situation into victory or defeat, into heaven or hell. “Choose you this day, whom you will serve.” And not just any day, long, long ago, or just now in this moment, but in every split second — choose whom you will serve — God or the devil.