We Are at War

June 30, 2008 by admin.

In the name of our God, whose presence is always with us, dear fellow believers,

It’s taken many months of campaigning, but we finally have our two candidates for this fall’s presidential election. No doubt over the next few months we’ll continue to hear Senator Obama and Senator McCain debate about key issues that they feel will influence people and how they vote. These issues will include health care, gas prices, the economy, and the like. Another hot topic is sure to be the war in Iraq and our involvement in the affairs of the Iraqi people. It’s a pretty polarizing issue. Either you feel that we don’t belong there and should pull our troops, or you’re of the opinion that we should stay put until we accomplish our objectives. Either way, it appears as if we will be “at war” for up to and possibly beyond a decade once all is said and done.

Even though the battlefield is miles away, the reports of casualties remind us that this battle is very real and affects many people in our country. And yet there’s another battle closer to home, a war that is being engaged in every human being. We’re not facing an army from another country. But we are up against a very real and a very dangerous adversary — three of them, in fact. We’re battling the devil, the sinful world around us, and an enemy who’s all too close for comfort — the sinful nature that lives in each of us. On the other side of the confrontation is what we call our “New Man,” the part of us that desires to please our Lord, given to us and supported by God the Holy Spirit. The battle these combatants wage is hard, and the battle is long. As St. Paul reminds us this morning, every day, every hour, every minute of our lives:

“We Are at War”

I. The cause

II. The conflict

III. The victory

Our enemy didn’t invade from another country. We were born with it. It’s our inheritance from Adam (Ro 5:12), “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” There’s no way of avoiding this fate. Earlier Paul describes us all as “slaves to sin” (Ro 6:20). We’re at war because we were born with sin.

The New Man in us is frustrated having to coexist with the enemy we call sin. Sin causes problems (v 15), “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Earlier Paul reminds us that as Christians we “have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God” (Ro 6:22). And yet our sinful nature still brands us as sinners and slaves to sin. The New Man in Paul wouldn’t acknowledge what his sinful nature did. He wanted to do only what was pleasing to his Lord, and yet when he takes inventory of his life, Paul sees just the opposite. It would be like working on an automobile assembly line, watching a car creeping down the line take shape. Doors, fenders, windows, the engine, and the transmission are all in place. Workmen have applied the last coat of lacquer. All that’s left is the final step of rustproofing. But what comes off the assembly line is covered with a bunch of dents and scratches, displaying areas of rust and erosion. What could have happened? What went wrong? That’s what Paul must have been asking himself when he took inventory of his life.

The problem wasn’t with Paul’s New Man or with God (v 16), “And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.” The war within us isn’t God’s fault. As Christians we recognize the benefits of having God’s law to guide us and to show us our sins. The real culprit is sin itself (v 17), “As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” Sin is the intruder, the trespasser who doesn’t belong in us. And yet we appear virtually powerless to expel him from our lives. It’s as if we’ve become puppets, with Satan controlling the strings. Sin takes over, and since sin is still a part of us, we are responsible when our sins win out over our New Man.

The cause of our warfare goes deep beneath the surface. It’s like the old clock in the church that no longer kept the proper time. It usually went too fast, causing the people to think the pastor was keeping them too long. Finally the pastor made a little sign and posted it by the clock. It read, “Don’t blame the hands. The problem lies deeper.” The problem wasn’t the hands pointing out the wrong time. The problem was with the inner mechanism and springs. So it is with us (Mt 15:19), “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” That’s what causes us to go to war with God, for “the sinful mind is hostile to God” (Ro 8:7).

And yet God’s grace brings to our side a worthy opponent for sin. In 1 Corinthians we’re told (1 Co 6:19), “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?” We’ve always got company, because through baptism we’ve gained an ally. Just like the Lord assured Moses of his constant presence, so also we aren’t fighting alone. We know the cause of the battle — sin. Now let’s take a look at the conflict between sin and our New Man, supported by our ally, God the Holy Spirit.

On the one side you have the desire for good. On the other side we find the failure to carry out that good (vv 18,19), “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.” Our sinful nature is rotten to the core. We want to do good, but our sinful nature overrules us. It’s like wanting to put up beautiful shining Christmas lights to adorn our lives, only to have sin keep pulling the plug.

It seems that even our best efforts are always overcome by sin (vv 20,21), “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” Sin is responsible for turning “all our righteous acts . . .[into] filthy rags” (Isa 64:6). Sin taints everything we do. It’s like the sleeping dog lounging alongside us. It may seem harmless enough, but as soon as we make our move to do something good, that dog awakens and attacks, destroying any good intentions we might have had. Such is the conflict we face.

And yet our New Man continues to do battle, even though it appears to be a losing one (vv 22,23), “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.” As Christians we, like Paul, take pleasure in finding ways to please God. And yet we, too, find “another law” that often leads us instead to do things that are pleasing to the devil. It often seems as if our entire body is under the devil’s control, as he infiltrates our minds and takes us prisoner. In the end we might say that we feel like a boxer knocked out in the opening seconds of the fight — we’re defeated before we ever get a chance to fight! It seems as if our demise is inevitable.

Our conflict against sin and Satan is never-ending. It’s like pulling weeds in your garden — they keep coming back, no matter how many you pull. Satan keeps coming back, no matter how often we try to “pull” him out of our lives. When we go to war with him, be assured that there will be no cease-fires, no days off, no vacations from the battle. Peter tells us (1 Pe 5:8), “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” He keeps tempting us into those pet sins that we find so hard to resist, and we end up giving in so many times. The worst thing we could ever do would be to underestimate our opponent. So let’s recognize the battle we’re in and the enemy we’re up against. If you don’t feel the heat of the battle, then you’re really in trouble because Satan has tricked you into a false sense of security. You sense a peace that you can’t obtain on your own. With Satan there is no such peace. We’re always in for a fight, battling for our eternal soul.

Yes, we may lose many of these battles, but there’s still some great news. We’ve won the war! It wasn’t our doing. But the victory has been achieved for us — all by the grace of God in Christ Jesus!

First of all remember your own inability to overcome sin (v 24), “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” When we see the losses brought on by sin, we’re dejected, but let us never despair. That’s because even though we may lose some battles, we’ve won the war. We know that eventually our conflict will end, and it will end in victory. That’s why we share Paul’s desire (Php 1:23), “I desire to depart and be with Christ.” We long for the day when the fighting will be done and we will be at peace for all eternity.

That day will be possible, not because of what we’ve done, but only because of our Lord (v 25), “Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Why do we say “thanks be to God”? Because “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). God gave us the victory over sin and Satan, just as he had promised way back in Eden when he told the devil (Ge 3:15), “He [the Savior] will crush your head.” The Lord kept his promise and sent his Son: “Jesus,” the God-man, the one who mediates between us and our Father in heaven; “Christ,” the one anointed by God to fulfill all the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament; “our Lord,” the one who’s always in complete control, before whom “every knee should bow” (Php 2:10). That was Paul’s Savior. He is our Savior as well.

We are at war, but remember (1 Jn 4:4), “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” Our enemy is tough, there’s no denying that fact. He’s impossible to defeat by ourselves. It’s foolish to even try. Many still do, as they attempt to moralize, rationalize, or even sympathize their sins away. But ignoring the battle won’t make it go away. The only solution is to repent and believe — believe that even though your enemy is strong, your Savior is stronger! He carried the entire weight of the world’s sins to Calvary, and there he disposed of them for all eternity. Now that same Savior picks us up and carries us through our daily battle with all our enemies. With him we know that the victory has already been won. Because ours is guaranteed to be a winning battle, we have the strength to keep at it. As we shall soon sing, (CW 537:1), “Onward, Christian soldiers, Marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus Going on before.” And as we march on, we do so as winners, because with Christ in the lead, we can’t lose!    Amen

–Rev. Jonathan Rockhoff

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