The War Against Terrorism

By

Reverend Litton Logan

August 27, 2006

Scriptures:

Ephesians 6:10-20 (NRSV)

The Whole Armor of God

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. ¹¹ Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. ¹² For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³ Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. ¹⁴ Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. ¹⁵ As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

¹⁸ Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. ¹⁹ Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰ for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

Sermon:

            The author of the book of Ephesians is disputed.  Some New Testament scholars say it was written by or dictated by the Apostle Paul.  Other scholars maintain the book was written by a disciple of Paul and was most likely written just before or just after Paul’s death in Rome.  Who is this disciple of Paul?  We don’t know.  He honored his teacher unto his death and never made any public claims for himself that we know.

          As I said, a case can be made on either side of the question concerning the authorship of Ephesians.  I personally come down on the side of it being pseudonymous, that is, written by a disciple of Paul.

          Furthermore, it is believed that the book of Ephesians was a boilerplate homily that was meant for general circulation to the churches in Asia Minor.  If you will, the addressee line was blank and filled in as it was sent out to the churches.  Here again we find internal evidence to support this viewpoint as well as evidence from other sources.

          Such struggles over the authenticity and facticity of scriptures, its authors, dates, and times reminds me of a story about a famous admiral and an equally famous general, who went fishing together.

As the two men were fishing, a sudden and violent storm came up.  When it died down both eminent warriors had been washed overboard from their boat and were struggling helplessly in the water.

The admiral floundered, flopped, and splashed his way back to the boat and pulled himself up and into the craft.  Then he fished out the general, using an oar.

Catching his breath, he puffed, "Please don't say a word about this to anyone.  If the Navy found I can't swim I'd be disgraced.

"Don't worry," the general said, "Your secret is safe with me.  I'd hate to have my men find out I can't walk on water."

          Sometimes in our pursuits for religious certainty, we demand things of scripture and the characters of scripture that we shouldn’t.

Let me say this--the power and authority of scripture lies not in its history or fact, nor its authors, but in its divine truths.  Truth as ambiguous as its definition may be at times nonetheless has the power to claim our moral, ethical, and spiritual devotion when we encounter it.  We encounter the truths of our relationship to God and one another in scripture, and we are empowered by those truths to live the Christian life.

All this having been said there is an undisputed theme in the book of Ephesians that we Christians need to hear and internalize.  The theme is this: God has created a new humanity in Christ’s reconciling work on the cross. That is to say, those in Christ are new creatures before God as pristine and sinless as Adam and Eve before God. This newness before God in Christ is the defining characteristic of the Christian--morally, spiritually, and socially not our ethnic or religious origins.  The new creatures in Christ are the universal church of Jesus Christ everywhere and at all times.

          The writer also wants Gentile Christians to acknowledge their scriptural, moral, and spiritual heritage from Judaism.  Jewish Christians are to acknowledge their radical freedom in Christ from certain Jewish religious codes and to welcome Gentiles into God’s fold as equal participants in the promises of God.

          Many people today take great umbrage at the militaristic images in these passages of scriptures as well as other military metaphors in scripture, for instance the entire book of Revelation.  Many people believe that the militaristic images in scripture allude to some radical Jewish or Christian jihad.  I think those who take exception to the militaristic language do not understand the metaphors or the times of scripture and their relevance for us today.  Misunderstandings that can be as dangerous as a misunderstanding in a supposedly true story out of Los Angeles, CA.

For some reason not given in my account of the story, it seems that the Marines were backing-up the LAPD on a call that some people had broken into a store and were looting.  This may have been during some natural disaster.

At the scene, a cop told the Marines to "cover" him as he approached the store (to police, "cover" means to point your weapons in the direction of the threat, to Marines it means lay down a base of fire!).

The Marines promptly laid down a base of fire.  The Marines fired 178 rounds before they could be stopped.

One of the thieves, probably a little scared at this point, called 911 and reported, "Help!  They're shooting at me!”

          Some people will even carry their anti-military silliness to the point of demanding that certain hymns be removed from hymnbooks because they are deemed to militaristic—Onward Christian Soldiers comes to mind.  Others will demand changing the words of some hymns to remove militaristic overtones. God forbid that we Christians should offend the sensitivities of less enthusiastic religions or provoke religions that are more aggressive. God forbid that timid, self-indulgent minds be faced with anything uncomfortable. God forbid that Christian evangelism be seen to be too organized, regimented, or focused in bringing people into the Christian fold.  No sir, such things smack of an intentionality that seems contrary to our modern permissivism and pluralism.

Having said that let me say this, Christianity in its organized, religious forms is not going to win the day for God.  The thing that will bring the kingdom of God on earth, wherein justice, mercy, compassion, and love rule supreme will be people submitting themselves to God and to one another under the rule of love as Jesus Christ did.  The kingdom of God will not come through organized religion per se but through the submission of every human soul to God’s claim on their moral, spiritual, and social life through the Law of Love.

An underlying and crucial assumption in our passages today is this: There is a demonic war going on for the hearts and minds of people.  This war is being fought in the arena of human choices as human choices are influenced and guided by moral and spiritual principles and ideas.  To say that this is not a true war, alive and kicking today is sheer foolishness.  Again, I say, in the world today, there is a spiritual, ethical, and moral war raging that is eternally dangerous.  I believe the origins of this war can be found in the fact that human pride resists submitting itself to any authority higher than itself, unless force to do so, including the revealed will of God.  Humankind’s natural proclivity seems to be being gods unto our selves.

The author writes during a time when people—so-called Christian people—were saying that the God of the Jews is not the universal, good God of all creation but some inferior deity, who fouled up creation.  Proof of this foul-up by the Jewish god is to be found in human pain, suffering, death, and decay.

There were so-called Christians teaching that Jesus wasn’t human and didn’t really die on the cross; he only seems to die.  In fact, it really wasn’t Jesus on the cross but some surrogate.  Jesus didn’t come to redeem the world through his death on the cross but simply to bring the latest installment of divine, secret knowledge to guide human souls to the next plane of spiritual enlightenment.  Jesus was just one among many revealers over time sent with secret, salvific knowledge from the real and good god of creation, not the god of the Jews. 

There were people espousing libertinism and aestheticism as a part of their religious life that was confusing those young in the Christian faith as well as tearing churches apart and leading people down the wrong road and away from God’s Christ.

People were saying that what consenting adults do with their bodies is okay because the soul or spirit and the body are not really connected.  The soul is eternal and trapped in the evil, material world of the flesh that the god of the Jews created.  Souls then must acquire secret knowledge from the good god of Gnosticism to find their way back to their original state through various reincarnations of the soul. Yet, others were saying that marriage and human sexuality were evils to be avoided at all costs so a person could concentrate solely on subduing all human desires, which distracted one from finding salvation through the secret knowledge. Of all the things we can say about Gnosticism the most important thing to be said is that it was a belief structure devoted to personal salvation through human efforts.

Such misrepresentations of God and human nature were not to be taken lightly or treated with tolerance or deference.  No, sir.  Christians were to be like Roman soldiers donning the accouterments of battle, going out and facing the enemies of the Gospel.  Christians were to proclaim and witness to the truths of God revealed in Jesus the Christ.

Am I safe in saying that in today’s world that there are people who are saying God is not a good god because of the so-called problem of evil, pain, suffering, death, and decay in the world?  This is Gnosticism of old revisited. (I would like to offer a study on this topic.) Are there not so-called Christian people who condemn, harass, harangue, and criticize other Christians because of their beliefs about the nature and work of Jesus Christ?  Are there not people today who maintain that Jesus was not the Christ of God but rather a supernormal, great moral and spiritual teacher among many great moral and spiritual teachers, who died rather than compromise his moral and spiritual insights?

My friends, the principles and principle sets, which the author talks about, are the terrorism of the soul for our day as much as for his.  The adherents of these anti-God, anti-Christ principles, and their teachings are just as much a terrorist threat today as they were in the author’s day.  The difference is that the average Christian today is not willing to do battle in the cause of Christ.  No, they would rather wave the banners of so-called religious tolerance, which is often nothing more than a euphemism for permissivism, spiritual cowardice, or a lack of spiritual commitment, than put on the armor of God and do battle with the principles that are anti-God anti-Christ.

Please look at the scriptures closely.  The author is not talking about battling people, storming buildings, or invading nations. The author is not talking about a bunch of jack-booted, religious fascist at the forefront of some Christian juggernaut.  The author is talking about Christians putting forth God’s principles of life and relationships made known in Jesus Christ in opposition to those principles that are anti-God and anti-Christ in their daily lives.  Christians are to do this as well-trained, well equipped, and well-disciplined soldiers.

Many of us claim loudly and long that Christ is alive in the world today.  Christ is alive in us and in the church as the body of Christ.  All nice highfalutin words, but the declining statistics in the body of Christ in America is telling a different story.  Religious statistics tell us that old-world Gnosticism with its denial of the uniqueness of Jesus as God’s Christ and the goodness of God is alive and well under the name of New Age Religion and Spirituality, or modernism, wherein people get to design their own religion and demand God approve it. 

New Age Religion and Spirituality is a modern, old-world belief system, I might add, that advocates all the extremes in libertinism and estheticism of old.  Many adherents to New Age Religions are very comfortable with acknowledging various divine revealers, channeling the dead, preaching reincarnation, and participating in other Gnostic practices.  These alternative spiritual pursuits are luring many immature and marginal Christians away from a true understanding of Jesus Christ because other Christians are not willing to stand up for Christ and are not able to defend in word and in deed the principles of the Gospel. 

Many Christian denominations have tried to formulate Christian, mass-media campaigns; cutesy, pop-religion outreach programs, and other non-personal efforts to attract people to their Churches.  Notice I said attract people to their denominational churches not invite people to experience a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.   To date such things have had limited success.  Why in God’s name don’t we go back to the basics—back to the way the Christian Gospel started and won the day for most of civilization in the first place—personal evangelism?

When individual Christians strap on the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; when Christians live and model righteous living in the face of its unpopularity; when Christians devote themselves to study and rightly understand and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ; when Christians reach out to the world in the faith that God will work in them, with them, and through them to bless and heal; when Christians will wear their salvation as highly polished battle helmets that you can see for miles; and when Christians know and understand scripture to the point that God’s Spirit and power in scripture becomes an internal reference for all their thoughts and choices in life as well as the words they use to address the evils of this world, then and only then, will we see progress in the anti-God and anti-Christ war.  A war raged between God’s principles and principalities of life and the principles and principalities of human arrogance, pride, and demonic self-determination.

I will tell you that the military images in to day’s scripture are not offensive but defensive.  The writer wants Christians to know that the cosmic battle to reclaim a fallen nature has been won in Jesus Christ, but the earthly battle for the hearts and minds of people is still raging.  Therefore, Christians defend yourself, defend the faith, defend the great church of God in Jesus Christ.  We must equip ourselves with God’s truths; we must avail ourselves of the power of the Holy Spirit; we must live and witness to the righteousness of God, and we must not be timid, bashful, or reticent.  In boldness comes the victory, the kingdom of God, and the salvation of the world.  Boldness in Christ wins the Day!  In addition, we don’t negotiate with terrorist.  Let us stand our ground, well equipped, well trained, and well disciplined, because He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world.