HAVE YOU EVER SEEN "THE WAR"?

War is conflict. Essentially war boils down to someone wanting to have or to own something that belongs to someone else. As the Apostle James explained:

This principle holds true for all wars ... lusting for something that belongs to someone else, or over which someone else has asserted ownership.

It was Satan who lusted for the power and the status and the prestige that belong to God the Creator. And so Satan had said to himself that he wanted to take over God’s position and status.

To try to achieve this ambition, Satan organized all the angels under his authority into an army. Then Satan started the very first war by rising up from this planet Earth "above the heights of the clouds" and attacking God’s specific location in heaven.

The result was war in heaven.

We know the outcome of that war. Satan was conclusively defeated. In fact, his defeat had really been a foregone conclusion. Nobody can defeat the Creator God. Satan had become extremely covetous, and a covetous mind is always, without exception, an irrational and illogical mind. Keep this in mind if you ever have to deal with covetous people.

Now Satan’s mind had been permanently warped into wanting to have what belongs to someone else (i.e. what belongs to God). The mindset of wanting things, tangible or intangible, that belong to someone else represents a conflict that will always lead to war. A spirit of competition is a spirit of war, even if it may not seem that way to us.

War is the absence of peace. As long as we want what belongs to someone else, or we want abilities and status and power that other people have, we do not have real peace. Without contentment there is no real peace. And when there is no real peace, then that is the precursor to a state of war.

In the Family of God, which God the Father and Jesus Christ are in the process of building, there will always be 100% absolute and unconditional contentment. It cannot be any other way. No member of the Family of God can ever have even the slightest hint of a feeling that says: I wish I had what someone else has, I wish I had their job or their position or their abilities. That would be like the hand saying that it would rather be a foot or an eye or a nose. And such a mindset can never achieve real contentment. And it cannot exist within the Family of God.

God Almighty cannot afford to have any member in His Family who would even remotely entertain that type of thought. God cannot have anyone in His Family whose mind is desirous of personal advancement and promotion. It just wouldn’t work ... and it would sooner or later lead to war. The Family of God must be one unified body with absolute peace, contentment and acceptance amongst all. Think of it this way: a hand will always be a hand for as long as it exists; it can never become a foot or an eye. A hand has to fully accept its purpose for existence, which is to function like a hand, without competing with the foot or the eye for preeminence.

A human body could not possibly function correctly if a toe wished that it was an ear, or if a tooth wished it was an eye. Each part of the human body must fully embrace the function for which it was placed in the body, or the body will break down. Likewise, every member in the Family of God must fully embrace the purpose for which God will place us within His Family.

All the holy angels of God fully embrace the functions for which God created them. But Satan and his demons, on the other hand, did not fully accept the functions for which God had created them; they wanted more ... and that led to war. Wanting more leads to war.

This principle also applies to the Family God is creating.

As Jesus Christ prayed:

When there is no unity, then there is conflict. And when there is conflict, then there is war.

Now once Satan had rebelled against God and then been thrown back down to this earth, there was always going to be war on this earth, in one form or another, until Satan and his demons are permanently removed from the total environment that God has created. And so eventually Satan and the demons will be cast into "the blackness of darkness forever" (Jude 1:13), i.e. it will be an absolute separation from God and from God’s environment.

All of humanity is living in a permanent state of war. This state of war has been with us since the day we were born. That war is fought very viciously, but it is not fought with physical weapons. And it is not primarily fought on the physical level.

That war is fought primarily in the human mind. And that war starts in very early childhood, at a time when Satan has a staggering advantage over the small child’s developing brain and personality.

So let me ask you a question:

Have you personally ever been in a situation where the thought suddenly hit you: wait a minute! I am being attacked right now by Satan! I can’t see him, and I can’t feel him, but this situation and its ramifications that I am facing right now has "Satan" written all over it. Or has a thought like that never before crossed your mind in any situation?

Yes, physically it is just another man or another woman that I am dealing with right now. But the person is so obviously irrational (i.e. their conduct is not based on ignorance of the facts, but on irrationality, or even on undisguised rebellion against God’s standards) in their attitude of wanting to hurt me or harm me or cause me problems, that it is a glaring tell-tale sign of Satan, the most irrational being in existence, wanting to attack me and to destroy me. And the person I am dealing with is at the same time totally oblivious to their own irrationality, unable to see how they are being used by Satan to try to get at me.

Consider the man Job.

Every single one of the calamities that hit Job (i.e. all his wealth being stolen or destroyed, and all his children being killed, and the severe physical pain he was enduring) was caused directly by Satan. Nothing in Job’s case was "time and chance". Satan attempted to destroy Job. But throughout this trial Job never recognized: wait a minute, I am being ferociously attacked by Satan.

While he was going through this trial, that thought just didn’t occur to Job. If anything, Job felt that God was responsible for his problems ... until Job came to a real changing of his mind (i.e. until he came to repentance). See Job 6:4, Job 9:17 ("He multiplies my wounds without cause"), etc. for Job’s wrong assumption that God was responsible for his problems. Job had not done anything to deserve the problems that came upon him. Job’s problems were due entirely to the war that Satan was waging against him. God had not caused any of Job’s problems.

Now, unlike Job, most of the problems that come upon you and me are due to our own foolish or careless speech or actions, right? And the Apostle Peter referred to this point in his letter, because it is such a common matter.

Here the Greek word translated as "buffeted" literally means: to be hit with the fist, to be treated with violence. The word translated as "faults" refers to transgressing God’s laws and falling short in our conduct.

So according to Peter the things we ourselves do will at times hit us in the face, so to speak. And then such occasions are not due to "the war". Then such occasions are only a matter of cause and effect ... when we reap the consequences of our own behavior and our own actions.

"But when we do well and suffer for it", to quote Peter’s words, then we are involved in the war with Satan. And that is when we actually need to "see the war" in which we are enmeshed, i.e. recognize it for what it is.

Let’s notice the things the Apostle Paul explained.

Paul could see that war very clearly. He knew that in his own mind he was engaged in a fight to the death. Paul recognized the conflict in his own mind.

He then elaborated:

And Paul realized that a war was going on in his own mind. That war was between two opposite ways of using his mind. Paul referred to each of these two opposite ways of using his mind as "a law".

Then Paul identified the war.

One thing Paul points out very clearly in this verse is that the war takes place in our own minds. But we should also recognize that in this war we are in fact fighting against an alliance of two distinct enemies.

Enemy #1 is "the law of sin which is in our members". This enemy we can also refer to as "a spirit of selfishness", where everything in life is seen through a lens of selfishness. It is an attitude of competition, always wanting to advance self in some way, even when it is at the expense of other people. This attitude takes advantage of every opportunity to promote self, to get more for self. This is the enemy Paul has focused on here in Romans 7. Our own selfish spirit is our first enemy. James identified this enemy for us in James 4:1-2, which verses we have already looked at.

Enemy #2 is Satan who has formed an alliance with our spirit of selfishness. And in this alliance Satan becomes "the senior partner", the driving force, the dictator. Satan’s involvement intensifies our spirit of selfishness. These two enemies are united in their hatred for "the law of God after the inward man", which law dwells within the mind of every truly converted Christian.

And so it is war to the death!

Paul referred to enemy #2 in his other letters. For example:

Let’s notice what Paul explained to the Ephesian people in the Church.

This is not a particularly accurate translation of the Greek text. Here is the Greek text for this verse, transliterated into our alphabet.

[Okay, I know, it’s all Greek to you, right? I feel the same way. :>) ]

For a start, in our translation we have the word "against" five times. In each place it is the Greek preposition "pros". "Pros" is used 726 times in the Greek NT text, and it is translated as "against" only 24 times, or barely more than 3% of the time. In over 96% of the places where "pros" is used, it does not mean "against". In fact, about 84% of the time "pros" is appropriately translated as "unto, to, with, for".

The translators here chose to translate it as "against" because of the word "wrestling". Wrestling is readily described as being "against" someone. But here this Greek preposition would be better translated as "with". Think of Genesis 32:24 in the Old Testament, where "a man" wrestled with Jacob until the breaking of the day, rather than wrestling "against" Jacob.

Next, where we have the verb "we wrestle" in our English text, the Greek text does not contain a verb for "wrestle" at all. Instead, the Greek text has the noun "pale", which word is only used this one time in the NT, and this noun means "wrestling".

Next, "tas archas", which is translated as "principalities", is the plural of "arche", and it means "the beginners, the first ones, those who started something".

Next, the expression "tous kosmokratoras tou skotous tou aionos", translated as "the rulers of the darkness of this world", literally means "the world rulers of the darkness of this age". This is speaking about the spirit beings who rule this whole present world.

Lastly, the expression "ta pneumatika tes ponerias en tois epouraniois", translated as "spiritual wickedness in high places", actually means "depraved spirits in heavenly places". In other words, where "high places" could perhaps refer to human beings in positions of high authority, "depraved spirits in heavenly places" cannot refer to any human beings. This can only refer to evil spirits (Satan and his demons), who have the ability to move through the air, and who had originally come from heavenly "places".

So putting the whole verse together, we get something like:

[Comment: I have here reversed the words "flesh and blood" because in the Greek text they are reversed, and the Greek reads "blood and flesh".]

Paul’s focus is that we are not wrestling with other human beings, who would obviously be flesh and blood. Our real fight is with Satan and his demons, who have ensconced themselves in all the positions of high authority in this present dark age, of which age Satan happens to be "the god" (see 2 Corinthians 4:4). They are the ones who started to challenge God’s power and authority. They are the real "world rulers" of this present age.

Armies typically have uniforms. A uniform does not identify the war; it only identifies which of the two sides you are on. Our uniform in this war consists of: the weekly Sabbath, the annual Feasts and Holy Days, adherence to God’s dietary laws, and God’s whole way of life.

When we accept this way of life, then we are putting on the uniform which identifies us as a part of the army that opposes Satan’s army. And so our uniform readily attracts enemy fire, because our uniform is easily recognized by the spirit beings that control this present evil age, and who then proceed to mobilize their forces against us.

The people of God wear their uniforms openly for all to see, and we then abide very strictly by all the rules laid out in the Geneva Convention (in analogy) regarding how to deal with our enemies. Satan’s army, by contrast, consists of terrorists who disguise themselves, and who use hostages against us, and who break all the rules with contempt, and who lie every step of the way. That’s the war in which we are involved with Satan.

Now in a war victories are won by both sides. When it gets to the point where one side always wins and never loses a battle, then the war is over, because the other side has been soundly defeated. In our war that point will be reached when Jesus Christ has "put down all rule, and all authority and power" (see 1 Corinthians 15:24). But that point is still far into the future, beyond the millennium.

So to get back to our original question: in our war we have all seen soldiers in military uniforms, because we have seen other people who also strive to live by God’s laws. But by itself that doesn’t give us a view of the actual war. For us to "war a good warfare" (see 1 Timothy 1:18) requires us to identify a battle with Satan while that battle is raging.

It requires us to recognize when we have walked into an ambush set for us by Satan. It requires us to recognize when an offensive is being launched against us. It requires us to recognize when Satan has thrown a hand grenade in our direction. It requires us to clearly recognize the absolute irrationality of those who fight against us. And it requires us to recognize the intense hatred for the ways of God and for everything that stands for the true God.

And I mean "see it" as clearly as the Apostle Paul could see that war. I mean, we can see beyond the human beings we are actually dealing with, to the point of discerning the evil spirits who are using those human beings at that specific point in time to try to harm us in some way.