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On Being Christian - War should be Waged Ceaselessly and Courageously
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| Every talent requires practice to nurture. Every student requires study to gain knowledge. Every soldier needs endless training to succeed. So too is the point of this chapter - that your war against the temptations of this world, the desires of this body and the ruin of the enemy will be unending. The hater of mankind will not stop attacking you (either subtly or openly) and so your untiring effort to resist the attacks must also be unending.
When Joshua of the Old Testament ended his days, he had led the Israelites to conquer all of the Promised land. Both mighty and vast kingdoms fell to the Israelites under Joshua's lead - who merely followed the will of God. "And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites under tribute, but did not completely drive them out."(a). The Lord God has a purpose. For if He completely removed the Canaanites from the promised land, the Israelites may become soft, weak and eventually stop bearing fruit for God. God has the ability to purify us, as He does have the ability to completely rid the world of sin, sinners and all temptations of sin. "I also will no longer drive out before them any nations which Joshua left when he died,so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord."(b). You can train a soldier only so much before he needs a real foe to hone his skills. So God allows these temptations of the world to exist in our life that we may continue to struggle against them. As we have stated before, it is not an issue of winning the battle - it is the unending fighting and resisting that we struggle with by which we will be judged. "He does not destroy all our passions at once, but leaves them in us, letting them fight against us till our very death, for just the same purpose, namely, to prove our love for Him and our obedience to His will, and to train us in spiritual warfare." God does this for the following reasons: (1) to prevent us from falling into carelessness and negligence and teach us to be respectful to what we have been given (salvation through the cross); (2) to remind us that the enemy is ever ready to attack us, least we find ourselves surround by the enemy's clever plots against us and fall victim to our own passions, pride and vanity; (3) so that we may continuously turn to God for help, hope and mercy; (4) so that we should not boast of our successes and remain humble within His care; (5) to prove whether we keep honor to God even in the midst of our darkest hours; (6) to encourage our strict observance of God's commandments; (7) to learn from our own experience the great value of virtue for as we lick our wounds from the enemies attacks we are reminded that the enemy seeks only our death; (8) in order that constant warfare should give us the possibility to gain greater and greater crowns; (9) that we should glorify God and shame the devil by our patience to the end; (10) that we should get accustomed to warfare during life and so not fear it in the hour of death. As we showed earlier, God allowed the enemies of Israel to exist for the purpose of keeping Israel devoted to God for protection and safety. "Thus, since we are always surrounded by so many enemies, whose hatred of us is so bitter, we can expect no peace or respite from them." Please remember my fellow fighters of the good fight, they hate us. Just as the enemies hated the Israelites for stealing their land, so too does the devil hate us for Jesus took us back from death's slavery. ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Based on the writings of Saint Nicodemus in Unseen Warfare.
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