How can you fight without actually fighting?
We Australians differ from our American cousins by the people that we admire as our heroes. Americans admire winners, brash, self-confident people who take on all comers and come out as victors in the battle of life.
But we, traditionally, admire little battlers, the kind of people that we meet in Henry Lawson’s stories, ordinary people who struggle to survive in the face of hardships, such as drought and flood, sickness and accidents, debt and bankruptcy, disaster and death. But despite all, they battle on and help each other out. They don’t give up but persist despite the threat of failure and defeat. They ‘win’ out in the end by their endurance of hardship. That’s why our national day is Anzac Day.
Paul regards himself as that kind of fighter when he says, “I have fought the good fight.”
He has this to say as he sits in prison halfway through a trial that ended up in his execution for his faith in Jesus. As he faces certain death, he looks back over the course of life since his conversion on the road to Damascus and thinks about all that he has done and all that has happened to him since then. Yet he does not complain about his unjust treatment, but regards his impending death as the culmination his life, a final sacrifice, a thank-offering that he will pour out in gratitude to Jesus.
Paul writes this summary of his life in a farewell letter to his young, timid, all too anxious spiritual son, Timothy, to encourage him to soldier on as a pastor in the face of opposition and persecution. Earlier in this farewell letter Paul had said: ‘Endure hardship as a soldier of Christ Jesus (2 Tim 2:3). Now Paul recalls what he had written in his first letter to him. At the beginning of it he had urged Timothy ‘to fight the good fight’ by ‘holding onto faith and a good conscience’ (1 Tim 1:18-19). Then at the end of it he had told him this: ‘Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses’ (1 Tim 6:12-13).
Paul also wants to encourage each of you today by saying, ‘I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’
What is the battle that we fight in as soldiers of Christ?
You don’t need me to tell you that we are caught up in a worldwide battle that rages around us. The danger for us is that we see it superficially as a moral battle between good people and bad people, or a social battle about sex and gender, or a political battle between different systems of government, or even a religious battle between believers and unbelievers. Even though the battle may have something to do with these conflicts, it goes far deeper than them, something that lies behind them and is the real reason for them.
It is a spiritual battle that rages in every human soul and engages the conscience of everybody on earth. We have had a glimpse of what it is recently with the sacking of Andrew Thorburn as the CEO of Essendon Football Club because of his faith in Jesus and his membership in a church that promoted what the Bible teaches about the sanctity of life and human sexuality.
We are all called to fight the good fight in this strange spiritual battle. It is a good fight because it has to do with our possession and retention of God’s good gifts. It is an invisible battle in which we do not fight against other people but against the devil and all his cronies. So in Ephesians Paul tells us this: ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but…against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’ (6:12).
It is an invisible battle between Jesus and the devil, the holy angels and the evil spirits. This battle is invisible for us because it takes place in our conscience rather than the world around us. It’s the battle for a good conscience with a good conscience. That’s where the battle is fought; that’s where the battle is won or lost.
It is by and large a defensive, peaceful battle. We are engaged in a defensive warfare rather than an offensive crusade against evildoers and the devil. When we are attacked in this battle for the conscience, we have the shield of faith to defend ourselves and others. We fight the good fight by siding with Jesus, calling on him in prayer to defeat our enemies, and relying on him to fight for us and rescue us. In it we serve as peacemakers who keep the peace and spread the peace that Christ won by his defeat of the devil by his death on the cross.
Our basic weapon in this battle is the shield of faith which protects us from all spiritual harm and danger. We remain safe as long as we hold that shield and stand on guard with it. We win the victory by keeping the faith that we have received and using it faithfully. By our faithfulness and persistence in faith we don’t just survive but become more than conquerors as we triumph over all the powers of darkness.
Well, how do we fight defensively in this spiritual battle?
Our success depends on our recognition of the devil’s strategy with us as disciples of Jesus. His basic aim is to destroy our faith by giving us a bad conscience. He wants to make us uncertain of God’s approval and certain about our failure to be the kind of people that we should be. He wants to destroy the peace that we have in our hearts through faith in Jesus.
He attacks us in three stages a process that he repeats again and again: by temptation, accusation, and condemnation.
First, he tempts us to sin against God and the people around us in thought and word and deed. Most commonly, he gets us to hurt those whom we love, the people who are closest to us, because we are angry with them or disappointed with them. We all too often feel that we are justified in sinning against them because they have let us down and hurt us.
Then, he gets to work on our conscience by accusing us of our wrongdoing and reminding us of all the other wrong things that we have done. He stokes up the fire of guilt and shame, so that we feel bad about what we have done and think the worst about ourselves. He makes us feel guilty about our wrongdoing and ashamed of ourselves as bad people, people who so bad that we can expect nothing but bad things to happen to us.
Then, at last, he brings out his trump card, his judgment on us who believe in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. He damns us as hopeless, worthless sinners who are not good enough for God and will never be good enough for him. In fact, he often even uses God’s law to condemn us, something that it was never meant to do because it was meant to show us what is right or wrong, expose our sin and lead us to repentance, and help us to live as holy people who please God by what we do in his service. He tells us that we are so bad that God cannot forgive us and love us, let alone approve of us and be pleased with us. He tells us that God does not accept us but will always reject us. By his condemnation of us, he tries to undermine our faith in Jesus and destroy our assurance of salvation. He wants to give us a bad conscience, a toxic conscience that locks us up in the dark prison of guilt and unbelief, anxiety and despair, utter confusion and joyless uncertainty.
We overcome the devil by our faith in Jesus as we run the good race together with him and all other believers. When Satan accuses us of sin, we can fight fire with fire. We can turn that attack on us against him by examining our conscience with God’s word and confessing our sin as we did at the beginning of this service. When Satan uses God’s law to condemn us as worthless sinners, we can contradict him with the gospel of Jesus. Like the tax collector in the parable we can pray: ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’ We can agree with accusation and reject his condemnation. We can say: ‘Yes, I have sinned! Yes, I should be condemned, but I am forgiven by God, because I trust in Jesus who died to take away my sin and guilt. I am righteous and holy before God. I am blameless and blessed, faultless and precious in his sight. There is now no condemnation for me because I belong to Jesus.’ When Satan attacks our faith, we can oppose him with our confession of faith and rout him by saying, ‘I believe in God, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.’ By holding on to the faith that we have received, we have a good, peaceful conscience that keeps us safe in the battle and gives us a foretaste of our final victory.
Well, my dear fellow soldiers, have you fought the good fight without doing any fighting at all? It may be hard to understand how this can be so, but it is really quite simple in practice, because it is something that you are already doing. Your presence here today in this service shows that you are good soldiers who have fought the good fight of faith. It shows that you have run the good race and kept the faith. Even though you may think that you have not done anything much by coming here to church today and joining in this service, you have in fact dealt out a heavy blow to the devil and the powers of darkness here in this part of Adelaide. You have defeated them peacefully without actually fighting at all. By your faith in Jesus and obedience to his word you have won a great victory in the spiritual battle together with the angels and all Christians around the world. So join Paul in his triumphant affirmation, his cry of victory: ‘I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.’
