“The army of the Lord” is a phrase found only once in the NKJV of the Bible, and that in the Old Testament in Joshua 5:14, where Joshua, in the vicinity of Jericho, meets up with one who says of himself that he is the “Commander of the army of the Lord.” (NKJV) However, having said that, it is clear from many different New Testament passages that while the church is never called an army, it is clearly described as an army in that each Christian is considered a soldier, outfitted with battle gear, a weapon, and engaged in warfare. Since the church is composed of its individual members, each member a soldier, it follows that the church is the army of the Lord here on earth.
In the book of Philippians, Paul refers to Epaphroditus as his “fellow soldier.” (Phil. 2:25 NKJV) He does the same with Archippus in Philemon verse 2, and almost every Bible student is familiar with Paul’s admonition to Timothy where he tells him, “You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” (2 Tim. 2:3 NKJV) If we are honest, we realize that is an admonition to us as well if we desire to be a faithful Christian.
We ought to put emphasis on the phrase “must endure hardship” for it is easy to think in our day and age and in our country there is no hardship to be endured as a Christian. Wrong! Paul made it clear it is not a matter of whether or not we will be persecuted, but more a matter of when or where or to what degree, for he says, “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” (2 Tim. 3:12 NKJV)
There is, I think, a greater implication in Paul’s statement than we generally are willing to accept. We think if someone on the national scene has spoken against Christianity, and we hear about it, that we have been personally persecuted because we are a Christian. Yet, in the first century, when Paul was writing, there was no national news that you were going to get instantly, unlike today. The persecution Paul spoke about was far more direct and personal.
Paul was speaking to a single individual in his letter to Timothy and saying to him, paraphrasing, if you are a Christian and are living like it and talking about it--the command is to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15 NKJV)--then you are going to suffer for it. If we do not suffer for it (sooner or later), then maybe that says a lot about our failure to live the life as God intended it to be lived. That is the implied teaching of the passage; if there is no suffering personally, then there is likely no actual living of the life as Christ intended one to live it.
The Christian life is referred to as warfare. Paul says, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God … ." (2 Cor. 10:4-5 NKJV) Timothy was encouraged to “wage the good warfare.” (1 Tim. 1:18 NKJV) To Timothy, Paul says in the second letter to him, “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.” (2 Tim. 2:4 NKJV) This was in the very next verse after Paul told him he must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 2:3).
A lot of people enter into the Christian life sort of unaware. They are thinking love, peace, mercy, grace, and hope. They are not expecting combat and are ill-prepared and often unready and unwilling to engage in it. Yes, there is love, peace, mercy, grace, and hope in Christ, but one has to remember these are mostly things that are found within one’s inner being because of what he has become in Christ and what Christ has done for him. As far as the outside world goes, it is an entirely different matter.
You have to a large degree become the enemy to the world unless you are going to try and be a secret disciple and never speak of Jesus and just go on living like the world. If you decide on that course you will get along fine in this world but there is always the Day of Judgment to look ahead to. That will be a looking forward to “a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.” (Heb. 10:27 NKJV)
But, as I said, many are not ready for the combat. In the parable of the soils the one unprepared for combat is the one represented by the stony places soil (describing the heart of man) where when the seed was sown (the word of God) it was received and sprouted and came up but “when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he (the person with this kind of heart--DS) stumbles.” (Matt. 13:21 NKJV) He is neither prepared for nor willing to engage in the fight. The heart’s desire is only for the smooth things of Christianity, the blessings.
At the end of his life, Paul said he had “fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Tim. 4:7 NKJV) It had been a fight indeed. Remember when Paul was being converted? Do you remember the words of Jesus when speaking with Ananias about Paul? He said, “I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake.” (Acts 9:16 NKJV)
One can read about the life of Paul and his sufferings in summary in 2 Cor. 11:23-33. He talks about his beatings, imprisonments, being stoned, and many other things that came his way in his life as a Christian. It had been a fight, a lifelong fight after his conversion. And here is the lesson we need to learn from this, those of us who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, the battle Paul fought was a religious fight, the very kind many feel is too unchristian, or unchristlike, to fight.
It was a fight over doctrine, over who was right and who was wrong, over who would be saved and who would not, over the way to heaven. Too many people today see this as an exceedingly nasty type of fighting that drives people away from Christ, they say. Don’t talk to me about it. Your fight would be with Jesus, Paul, Jude, and others. Jesus and Paul were in religious debates nearly all of the time.
Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.’ And ‘a man’s foes will be those of his own household.’” (Matt. 10:34-36 NKJV) Paul got in trouble because he was unwilling to remain quiet about his religion and insisted on evangelizing and debating. Come to think about it, that was pretty much the same reason Jesus was crucified, was it not?
But, most of the talk today by the Christian community, as the world would define it, seems to be about getting along, how we are all going to the same place no matter what we believe or practice, and how it is so un-Christian to fight with one another. Some are willing to go so far with this approach as to say one does not even have to be a Christian to go to heaven.
Jude says he wrote “exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith.” (Jude 3 NKJV) One cannot do that and not debate religion. “We do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:3-5 NKJV) Christian debating (casting down arguments) is a part of the Christian warfare.
Debating is as far as it goes. No Christian, living as a Christian, would ever do harm to another. “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.” (Matt. 5:44 NKJV) Christian wars are a misnomer. The Crusades and other European religious wars were not Christian. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world.
When one looks at the armor a Christian is to put on to fight the Christian warfare,“put on the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11 NKJV), that he might stand and not fall one finds that he is given “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Eph. 6:17 NKJV) This is the word which is described in the Hebrew letter as being, “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Heb. 4:12 NKJV)
There are those today who would remake the sword of the Spirit into a butter knife. Just sharp enough to cut soft butter and that’s it. They do not want a sharp two-edged sword, one that pierces in the way described in Hebrews 4:12. The fear is that someone might get hurt, that is, get their feelings hurt. They are not going to wield any such sword, and so you can forget them as an active soldier in the Lord’s army. They will not debate the truth; they will not contend earnestly for the faith; they will not wield a two-edged sword.
One of the great failings of Christian understanding is to understand that until the heart is pricked with the sword of the Spirit (and someone has to wield it) there can be no repentance, no seeking of salvation, and no turning from error or sin to the truth. You may hurt a man’s feelings for a day, yet save his soul for eternity. Until a man is convicted of the truth in his heart, the truth of his own sin, of his own error, the truth of what God requires of him, there will be no movement on that man’s part and thus no salvation.
I will never forget the wisdom of an old, long-gone preacher of my youth, one I never met, who has now been gone for a few decades. He was talking to a man who had been convicted of the truth but who was nevertheless unhappy with the preaching, as this man felt the preacher had not spoken as softly and kindly as perhaps he could have, and this offended the young man. The old wise preacher made a comment along these lines--that preacher is the best friend you will ever have. He taught you the truth and convicted you of it. Obviously, this is a paraphrase, but that is pretty much the exact thought expressed and how true it was and is yet to this day. Many is the man who will speak softly to us and who will allow us to go to hell before they will offend us, but how many a man is there who will tell us the truth? Which of the two is really our friend?
I told my children when they were growing up that one of the worst things that happens with adulthood is that when you reach that point, there are few who are willing to tell you the truth, even when you are dead wrong. When we are growing up, we have parents, teachers, and other adults who do not hesitate to jump in and let us know we are in the wrong but once a man or woman reaches adulthood suddenly no one is friend enough to any longer tell us the truth about ourselves. They nod and say yes to whatever we say. The days of being rebuked for a bad attitude and wrong doing whether toward God or man have come to an end. We are thus always right and never wrong, and how dangerous that is.
I close with this. God has an army. A man is either going to be in it and be a faithful soldier and take the sword of the Spirit and use it properly, which means for something other than buttering his bread, or else he is not. Either way, there are consequences that follow. For the one who picks up the sword of the Spirit and then drops it and turns tail and runs the Bible says, “The cowardly…shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Rev. 21:8 NKJV) Since that is the case, the only real choice a man or woman has, accept it or not, is fight or die.
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