Proverbs 16:17 ESV
The highway of the upright turns aside from evil; whoever guards his way preserves his life.
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The Christian has many foes with which he contends, and they come in three flavors: the world, the flesh, and the devil (Eph 2:2-3). None of them can be treated with contempt; none of them are weak enemies. The world is without, the flesh within, and the devil forever against us. Our enemies are an army about us at all times, an overwhelming tide which would bear us to destruction. We walk now as weak men in a world so much more terrible than we ourselves, and we wonder: how then shall we live?
The world is no gentle enemy to God’s people. It comes to us with a steel gauntlet and a sweet tongue, threatening out of one side of its mouth and tempting from the other. Christ did not jest when He warned His disciples of the world’s hostility, that “they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles” (Matt. 10:17-18). Of the original disciples, bar Judas only John died a natural death, and he was exiled at the time. The world is harsh and hateful towards those who proclaim Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2), as we in the West are beginning to learn all over again.
The world brings another danger, though, and that is its call to our flesh. On this earth, no many is yet purified to perfection. We still desire sin; we will lust and fear and covet and hate and envy. As Paul declared to the Romans, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Rom. 7:15,18-19). We in our flesh and on this earth are sinful, fallible people, desiring sin and submitting to that desire. We are sinful at heart and in deed, in dire need of repentance for both. It is not damnation, not to those whom God has saved by His inexorable love (Is. 63:9), but it is a stain upon our souls and upon the witness we bear to Him.
Amidst all this, moreover, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). The means of his influence are not given to us in detail in Scripture and therefore lie beyond the bounds of righteous curiosity, towards the ‘knowledge that defiles’, 1 the occult. Nevertheless, from Job 1-2 we can derive some facts. The spirits of evil, cast down from heaven (Luk. 10:18), are granted by God a certain influence upon the earth, to cause and motivate evil upon it. This influence is upon the inanimate and the human (Job 1:13-21), open (Mark 5:1-20) and quiet (Job 40:6-18). These forces are not to be despised; we have a mighty foe in them, a foe implacable, cruel, and cunning without ceasing, a foe who, as Lewis portrays admirably in Perelandra desires only the complete annihilation of that which glorifies God.
Against all these, though, we have no right to despair. To put it simple: what counts all this, when God stands as our Savior? “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). As Paul himself goes on to state, against us can be arrayed all the forces of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, rulers, and angels, just to start with (8:32-39). Yet all these, because God is for us, shall not suffice to “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39). God’s will is our shield and our support, our ever-present help in battle (Ps. 46:1).
By no means, though, may we simply laze our way through life, setting on God our responsibility. We are to rest in Christ, yes, but a Christian rest is active, ever striving to imitate Him (Eph. 5:1). He does not call us to indolence; He calls us to live lives fitting to the grace we are given. This work is of God as He makes us truly able to serve Him. When we stumble, He lifts us, and as we walk, He gives us strength to go forward (Is. 40:29). Whereas in justification He gave us faith all of Him, in this sanctifying He grows us through suffering and healing towards righteousness and strength of our own, not as salvation to our souls but as beautification to that which He has already saved.
It is thus that we “work out [our] salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). We walk the narrow way, guarding our steps that we might not stray, trusting in God always that our course be straight, that when we, sinful men still, depart from that way, then He will return us to it, once more to glorify Him. We declare the work of His glorious grace in our salvation by our lives, proving to the world and to all who see the salvation already accomplished and applied. It is a hard path; it is often a long path (too often a short one); it is a path of thorns and fire and persecution. Yet when we walk it, our paths turns to life eternal, being set there by His glorious grace.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
1 – Quoted from St. Patrick’s Breastplate.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.