Chapter 15: Why Should We Fight?
Rebecca Talks:
The question we get from so many people is "Why should we fight?" So many Christians today are living exceedingly comfortable lives and quite naturally they don't want their comfort disturbed. They say, "Why should we even have to fight? After all, Christ won the complete victory for us on the cross. So why should Christians have to think about becoming soldiers and warriors? All Christians have to do is claim the victory Jesus has already won." This is the issue I wish to address here.
Let us first look at what Jesus Himself had to say about this subject when He was here on earth. I don't think we can go to a better source.
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his Father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth Father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth Son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 10:34-39 Please note where Jesus said in verse 34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
This cuts directly across the "peace and love gospel" that is being taught so widely. Then in verse 39 Jesus says "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Christianity involves violence if we practice it the way God wants us to. Losing our lives does not involve peaceful co-existence with the world.
"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the Father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above this master, nor the servant above his Lord."
Matthew 10:16-24 We must "endure to the end." Jesus certainly doesn't promise us a "free ride" as so many people think.
"For 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." Ephesians 6:12 Here Paul is placing the emphasis of our fighting in the spiritual world. In Matthew 10:14-16 Jesus is talking about the physical world and physical persecution. Paul here is emphasizing the spiritual world. The two are linked, but in our day and in this country, physical persecution is not yet very strong in most areas. I have no doubt that such persecution is coming shortly. In the meantime our battle is primarily in the spiritual realm.
"Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." II Timothy 2:3-4 "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend [to fight for] for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." Jude 3 Why should we fight? The obvious answer is because God wants us to. These and many, many other Scriptures make God's will plain.
But, many people ask, "Why would God want us to fight when He has already fought the battle for us?"
I have sought the Lord earnestly for the answer to this question. Of course, in thinking about all of this, I had to ask myself the same question. Why have I suffered and lost so much to fight in this battle if it is not necessary? I wish to submit to you here the answer the Lord gave to me for this question. The basic reason, is because I have made a commitment. You see, unfortunately, when the gospel is preached in this day, it's preached "Jesus died for your sins, ask Him to forgive your sins, and everything will be wonderful." Nothing is said about the fact that you can't get Jesus to forgive your sins without making a commitment to Him. The way the gospel has been preached for so many years is that salvation is a one-way street.
Jesus does it all and you don't have to do anything.
That's not true. That's not what Jesus Himself said. He said that if you do not take up your cross and deny yourself, and perhaps even get killed for your belief in Him, you're not worthy of Him. He says He's going to give salvation to those who endure to the end. He makes no promise to give salvation and eternal life to those who don't endure. This concept is repeated by Paul many times in the book of Hebrews. For example:
"But Christ as a Son over his own house; whose house are we, ifwe hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end."
Hebrews 3:6. "For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end."
Hebrews 3:14 We can't be saved by works, but salvation is more than just saying "Jesus please forgive me" and then going on our merry7 way. It is a total and complete commitment to Jesus. We literally sell ourselves to God just as much as people in satanism sell themselves to satan.
We are then a debtor. We are bought and paid for and we no longer belong to ourselves. We no longer have any rights. We are servants. The word commitment is neither taught nor practiced today, most people don't even know what the word commitment means.
Commitment is not a "work." Commitment is a contract, it is a literal selling of yourself. Paul says in Romans that he is a debtor. (Romans 1:14) Christ bought Paul even as He bought us.
Salvation is a sale, it is a transaction.
Commitment is not a work, it is actually a sale.
Jesus bought and paid for us, otherwise we would belong to satan and would go to Hell.
The only way out is through a sale. What a terrible price Jesus had to pay for us!
I don't think enough people understand this.
The amount satan attacks us seems to be directly dependant upon how we abide by this sale - that is, the level of our commitment to the Lord.
Job was totally committed. Only God can know the degree to which you have sold out to Jesus. God knew Job's heart, He knew Job was totally committed to Him. That's the reason God was willing to take up satan's challenge because God knew that Job would stand. God knew that Jesus would stand, because when Jesus was here in human from, (Philippians 2) He was totally committed to the Father. Therefore God the Father knew that His Son Jesus Christ would stand to the point of death, which He did, and not just His own death, but He suffered terribly for all the rest of us. satan hates Jesus more than anything else because Jesus now has the legal ownership of the world and shortly will take up that ownership and will dispossess satan of his kingdom. We don't have any concept of just how intense and deep satan's hatred for God is. You see, the instant we make a conversion, a commitment asking Jesus to purchase us, we become Jesus' property - then satan hates us the same as he hates Jesus. That's the reason why, the moment we are truly saved, we are head-over-heels in a phenomenal battle. satan plans to destroy us. Jesus told us that.
"If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord.
If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.
If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin."
John 15:18-22 There are two key points here. Jesus is telling us very clearly that the instant we become identified with Him as we will when we become His property (I.e. servants), then the world, which is currently under satan's control, will hate us in exactly the same manner as it hates Jesus. Secondly, so many people say, "Why should I have to suffer or die, after all, Jesus won the victory on the cross and suffered for me, therefore suffering is not necessary for me." But what did Jesus say? He said, "I have said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you..." (verse 20) Anyone who tells me that he should not have to suffer because Jesus did it all on the cross is really saying that he is greater than his master! The master in this instance being Jesus Christ. He is absolutely going against the words Jesus himself spoke. This "no suffering, health and wealth" doctrine which is being taught across our land is a doctrine of demons; let's label it for what it is.
The gospel is not really being presented in full.
When have you heard any evangelist get up and say "You can have salvation, but only under one condition, that you are totally committed, totally sold to Christ, you don't have any personal rights, you no longer belong to yourself, you no longer have any right to anything. You will become a servant. You are in essence signing your own death warrant because satan will hate you and try to kill you.
You ARE gaining eternal life and citizenship in Heaven. You give up your life here on earth to gain eternal life in Heaven." How many preachers do you know who present this? How many tracts present this? NONE!
Why does satan and the world hate Jesus so much? Because once He came they "... now have no cloke for their sin." (vs. 23)
"[Jesus speaking] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
John 3:19 We must understand that when we accept Jesus as our Savior, our Lord and our Master, we are accepting citizenship in Heaven and death here on earth. I personally don't believe we can really have salvation under any other conditions. Total commitment is what Jesus demands over and over again throughout the gospels. I'm afraid that there are an awful lot of people who are going to find out that they are not really saved. The gospel has never fully been presented to them.
This is why you cannot separate warfare from salvation. True salvation is going to put you into direct conflict with satan. I know I came into direct conflict with satan the day I made a total commitment to Christ in my freshman year of medical school. Four years later when the Lord asked me if I was willing to commit my life to Him to be used in any way HE chose to directly fight against satan, I really wasn't making a different commitment. The Lord was challenging me as to how willing I was to stand by the commitment I had originally made. He was opening my understanding to what was involved in that commitment. By identifying myself with Christ, I had made satan my bitter enemy. Over and over and over again Jesus tells us that we must follow Him to the point of dying. Let us look at a couple more Scriptures.
"If any man come to me, and hate not his Father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:26-27 Now what does it mean to bear your cross?
Most people interpret this as putting up with "bad" things that come their way, if they think about it at all. Let's look at Matthew 16:
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works."
Matthew 16:24-27 I submit to you that the cross is an instrument of death. It's not just bearing trials here on earth, the cross means literally our death. So then what does it mean to die?
To me this means that in making this commitment to God I have committed everything that matters to me into His hands.
All belongs to Him. The instant I do this I know that satan is going to petition God for it and, as in Job's case, Father may very well grant satan his petition. To me, dying daily means that I am literally, day-by-day, going to lose everything that I love on the face of this earth.
God does not always require that of everyone, but most people are simply not willing for this sort of commitment, they are not willing to take up their cross.
Once Christ purchases us we become aliens here on earth and there is a barrier between us and everything here on earth - Jesus Christ.
Nothing here on earth belongs to us. This is very painful. The cross is probably the most painful method of dying. So what we are doing is committing our-self to a life of pain, taking up our cross daily is painful; it is just that simple. This is not the way most people wish to present the gospel, but this is how Jesus presented it. Let me make one point clear, you cannot do the work of the cross, only God can.
In other words, those people who inflict pain upon themselves thinking this is the way of the cross are completely in error. We are servants, we simply obey the commands of our master, we do not decide what suffering we must bear.
I suggest that everyone making a commitment to the Lord sit down and take a sheet of paper and write down every area of his or her life that they can think of. Such things as schooling, career, who your friends will be, if you will have any friends, what will happen to your family, what will happen to your physical body, where and how you will live, what will happen to your reputation, if you will have any money, etc. This is not an easy commitment to make.
As soon as you make a commitment like that you are going to be tested and tried on it.
You're not really going to grow in faith if you don't make a commitment. Yet, faith is a pure gift from God so that you can make such a commitment in the first place. The two are strangely interrelated. As you stand on your commitment throughout testings I'm convinced that God gives you more and more faith as you go along. Your faith grows and is strengthened.
Faith is really saying "I have made this commitment, I have entered into this contract, and I'm going to stand by it."
You cannot permit satan's doubts to dwell in your mind regarding your commitment. You must throw out any doubts immediately. As you are being tested and tried, you need to understand that everything that happens here in the physical world has an effect in the spirit world. For every time satan says "I petition for this girl's parents" for example, and Father says "Alright, go ahead and take them." (this means bringing about their physical death, satan cannot touch their souls) and I still serve the Lord, then there is a victory won in the spiritual world which drives back the spiritual forces of darkness so that more souls can come to Jesus Christ. There is always an effect on the spirit world. We have no idea what happened in the spiritual world because of satan's defeat in the case of Job.
Job had everything wiped out at once. satan does not usually work in that manner. When everything is taken away in one day's time it is clearly a supernatural act. satan doesn't usually work that way in our lives. He takes one thing here, one loved one there, you just begin to get recovered from the grief of it and then he takes another one. He is a master at causing agony.
As you stand firm, no matter what the circumstances and continue to serve God, understand that this is a part of the literal physical dying brought about as a result of daily carrying your cross and being a hated alien in this world. We are living a literal living death from the moment we accept Jesus Christ because our life is now established in the spiritual realm and we have eternal life through our soul and our spiritual bodies. But this physical existence is now all dying to us.
That's why the instant you become saved you're in warfare against satan. There is no other choice.
"... as dying, and, behold, we live... "
II Corinthians 6:9 People will say, "You're really coming across hard." God says in Isaiah:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55:8-9 The plain fact is GOD IS GOD. We cannot question Him.
"Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?... From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." John 6:60 & 66 What happened to Job? After all of this had occurred to him, what happened to him? You see, through all of this Job had an opportunity to catch a glimpse of God, and immediately when he did, NOTHING ELSE MATTERED.
Once Job caught a glimpse of God he did not care anything at all about everything that had happened to him. In the book of Revelation where it says that Father is going to wipe away every tear from our eyes, I know, from personal experience, that when we get one glimpse of God himself absolutely nothing else will matter. It is an incredible thing. God himself is vastly wonderful and great beyond anything we can imagine. God is pure power, pure love, pure justice, pure holiness, pure greatness, pure beauty. With one glimpse of Him our relationships, everything we might have or hold dear fades into insignificance. Nothing pertaining to us matters to us once we glimpse God.
"Then Job answered the Lord and said, 'I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.'" Job 42:1-6 Note here where Job says "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (vs. 5-6) Job didn't have anything to repent for. The earlier part of the book makes it very plain that in everything Job did not sin.
"In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." Job 1:22 "... In all this did not Job sin with his lips." Job 2:10 But the instant Job got a glimpse of God as He really is, nothing else mattered. It just didn't matter.
My prayer is that the Lord will reveal Himself as only HE can do, both to myself and to everyone reading this book. We could not possibly receive a greater blessing. The Lord calls many people into many different types of service, but all of us will, one day, be attacked viciously by satan. When that day comes we must be prepared to stand up and fight. If we do, and if we endure to the end, Jesus ivill give us that crown of life and we will have the indescribable blessing of seeing God just as He is in all of His glory.
"And I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
Walking in the permanent light and peace of Christ.