For some months I have wanted to write a few lines concerning what Bible calls “the weapons of our warfare.” (2 Corinthians 10v4)  Isaiah, the prophet of God, spoke in the midst of much national and international upheaval, perilous times when God’s people Israel were tempted to make alliances with one empire so as to protect themselves against another acting in a predatory way towards them. 

Repeatedly God instructed them to go another way, they were to get right with Him and trust Him and not make alliances with the powers and weaponry of any nation nearby.  He would uphold them, protect them, bring them through and deal with their enemies.  There were occasions when they did this and the Lord scattered those opposing them, they went home with their tails between their legs.  It was warfare; the surrounding peoples threatened the very existence of God’s nation provoking them to fight with carnal weapons in order to survive.   The temptation to take a low way, to form confederations with the godless around about them was subtle and powerful and the Lord reminded His people that, ‘My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  (Isaiah 55v9)  The way of Jesus is far above the ways of man, our struggle is a spiritual one; His Name is not only higher than any other, but so is the way He conducts the fight. 

He did not strive and contend for His kingdom rights with physical sword.  It is true that Peter His disciple took up a sword in an effort to defend his Lord, but he never did it again, he was changed; he became a man of other weapons, they were spiritual ones and not carnal.  These disciples became men of the bosom of the Jesus Who counseled that we should turn the other cheek and resist not evil with evil, everything Jesus said enforces the truth that we are not to go to war with physical weapons in an effort to preserve and extend His Kingdom; we are called higher, we fight with weapons mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, we go to war with the same love, faith, patience and longsuffering meekness as Jesus did and overcame.  There is a pacifism that is absolutely that, weakly passive, it is a spirit of non involvement and neutrality, it lies down, it evades, hoping that the trouble will pass, usually it does not perceive the real issues and does not allow itself to get angry with sin and injustice.  I am not advocating that kind of passivity. 

We are called to fight, Christians are to be warriors, but we are to know our weapons, believing in their power to vanquish the enemies, we are commissioned to share in the battle against sin and all the forces that degrade mankind.  The children of this world continue to fight with their carnal weapons, they know nothing different, but they shall not win the struggle against evil, but we are the children of God, we are of heaven and are to fight with the weapons of light and love.  We are not called to the inactivity of passively “taking it on the jaw,” in Bible language, “turning the other cheek.”  We are to see that the very act of turning the other cheek is a mighty spiritual weapon in itself and can be a manifestation of His overcoming life!  I know this is a matter about which the Lord’s people have disagreed through the centuries, but it does not seem to me that the people of God are called to carry arms but that does not mean we have empty hands and nothing to fight with.  We have the spiritual weapons with which our Lord Jesus overcame. 

Years ago, when I traveled first in India, I made it my business to read as much as I could about Gandhi and the way he led the non violent struggle that eventually brought liberation from the colonial power of the mightiest empire then on earth, the British.  He used weapons and they corresponded with those of Christ, not that I am saying Gandhi was a Christian but he used patience, longsuffering and was prepared to take imprisonment and blows for loves sake and although it took a good twenty years the British relinquished the “jewel of the empire.”  Somehow Gandhi and his followers reached the conscience of the British people, and although there was reluctance amongst some, they let India (and Pakistan) become self-governing.  The question might be asked, would Gandhi have had similar victory over Nazism, was there a conscience in the German people to which they would have appealed?  Yes, I am sure that there was a conscience present and God was there too, ever ready to influence unto good, nothing is impossible to Him. 

I have just finished reading one of the most unpleasant books I have ever come across, it is called “Orbit of Darkness.”  It is made up of many short chapters; they follow the influence of a Roman Catholic Priest who offers to die in place of a fellow prisoner condemned to death by starvation in Auschwitz.  The impact his passive resistance, his loving service to his fellows in the death cell is the theme, and in contrast the author intersperses chapters graphically describing the evil and degradation into which some German, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish sunk in the course of the second world war.  The priest was a light shining in the darkness, he was no passive neutral but warred with the weapons of self sacrificing love and patient care and forgiveness towards his tormentors.  This book by Ian MacMillan is fictional, I do not recommend reading it but it conveys two things for sure, one is the nightmare of darkness and sin and the other is power of love as a Jesuit priest sacrifices his life for a fellow-prisoner. 

Let me recommend some books at this point.  We have heard of the River Kwai in Thailand, the deprivation and cruelty experienced by prisoners of war who were building the Burma Railway was horrendous, but there were Christian’s amongst them, using the weapons of our warfare, so much so that a move of God took place right in the midst of the cruelty and squalor.  A book by Ernest Gordon published originally under the title “Miracle on the River Kwai” now republished entitled, ‘To End All Wars,” is a magnificent testimony to the overcoming power of Christian love and self-sacrifice and the way these were manifested against all odds.  If you want a contrasting book, then “King Rat” would be a good one, the carnal weapons of a self serving man is its central theme as prisoners of war lived, this time in Changi Prison. 

Try to obtain a book by Geoff Bingham, “Love is the Spur,” (New Creation Australia) he was in that same camp and describes how he and others discovered and proved God’s way of warfare and saw the victory of love overcome in the lives of many men. I know we do not usually think of love, patience, longsuffering, light, truth and righteousness as being weapons, some of them we regard (rightly) as fruit, but they are mighty weapons too.  No weapon prospered against Jesus; He outlasted everything arrayed against Him.  We are to take up our weapons, metaphorically speaking we are to fill our hands with them, a believing wife towards her difficult husband is to do so, in the work place where tensions frequently abound and in our churches where relational difficulties threaten to mar fellowship we must fight the fight of faith for we are the Lord’s warriors.  He has equipped us with patience and love and we should let righteous anger against sin have its appropriate place in our armory too.   How Charles Wesley captures all this in his paraphrase of Psalm forty five when he writes describing the power of God’s love, is it not this love that has laid hold on you and me and made us no longer enemies but His lovers?

                        Sharp are the arrows of Thy love,

                        And pierce the most obdurate heart:

                        Their point Thine enemies shall prove,

                        And, strangely filled with pleasing smart,

                        Fall down before the cross subdued,

                        And feel Thine arrows dipped in blood.