Fine Weapons

[B]y truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left … 2 Corinthians 6:7

The Apostle speaks of his ministry and of his trials, of his desire to present only hope and a good example to those who see him.  He would have his own life and testimony never be an obstacle to the faith of any other.  Whether is it revealing the loving Spirit of Christ while suffering in negative situations or sharing words of revelation, truth and knowledge with others, Paul wants his life to be nothing but Christ.  He would be true even while seeming an imposter to the scornful. 

What a different world it would be if Christians on the whole lived truthfully, by the power of God, never resorting to the weapons of the flesh to deal with difficulties and challenges, but relying solely on the spiritual arms and armor the Lord provides. 

I started reading Van Vogt’s classic, The Weapon Shops of Isher, and I love that slogan “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.”  Yet, we need not buy the weapons of righteousness.  They are ours by inheritance and right in Christ.  We need no legal language to protect this right for none may take these weapons from our hands, be we living or dead.  The armor of God may cause us to be mocked and ridiculed, persecuted, imprisoned, even put to death, but we will prevail for there is no defense against the sword of the Spirit, no missile that can sunder the shield of faith.    

The greater temptation we always face is not that we will fight on the wrong side but that we will fight the wrong battle with the wrong weapons.  Sodom, with its grotesque and gargantuan iniquities, calls us to reform and revitalize, to change the culture, replace the city council with men and women of integrity when God is telling us to leave and let the fire rain down.  We want to make better people of ourselves when the old man has been judged, sentenced, and put to death on the cross with Christ.  Azazel’s goat is lost and gone in the wilderness, and we are looking to put a tracking collar on the beast.

The battlefield is my own heart.  I am the problem.  Christ alone is the solution.  Over the door of my weapon shop, it reads:  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

My Liberation Theology

The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. -- Psalms 103:6

If we wrestle not against flesh and blood but with spiritual foes, it makes sense that oppression, that is, circumscription of or constraints upon our liberty would be spiritual as well.  

I’m a member of the NRA.  I have been for years and will be for many more years.  Personally, I am very conservative.  Politically, I am libertarian and vote Republican most often, occasionally voting for Libertarian or other third party candidates.  I spend a lot of time complaining about intrusive bureaucracies, government schools, and the oppressive, obsessive, statist control freaks that want to tell me how to live.  I don’t think they are any better or wiser than anyone they are trying to intimidate and control.  We ought to try and elect people who will leave us alone; nevertheless, politics is not capable of ultimately rescuing us from despots and tyrants.  We need to be free before we can enjoy freedom.

No one ever became a better person because he or she was restricted from doing bad things and harming themselves and others.  It’s true that sometimes people in prison, for example, turn their lives around, but that’s because they realize the bondage they are in, and they decide they are going to change their lives.  Being caged can get your attention, but it doesn’t, by itself, change you.

Liberty, freedom from oppression is more than just a state of mind.  We will never be free apart from Christ.  So long as we live by the old nature, we live as slaves of sin.  The Cross releases our will and allows us to freely choose to serve the Lord – because, as Dylan says, we’re going to serve somebody.  In fact, the process of learning to be a servant of God, becoming a disciple, is essential to our liberation.  

Even though our position has changed when we confess and receive Christ, our minds still have to be renewed.  We have, especially some of us, a lot of mental strongholds behind which the enemy hides and from which he attacks the new man.  Those have to identified, taken and destroyed.  We do that through disciplines such as prayer, worship, communion, confession, submission and obedience to authority, studying the Bible and fellowshipping with the saints.   

No one can really give another person freedom.  A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him (Ezra Pound).   Even Christ can only offer us our liberation.  The Lord makes it possible; He works righteousness and justice.  It is up to us, though, to decide we are going to accept and live in the freedom He is creating for us. 

No Particular Place To Go

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. -- Hebrews 9:24

I don’t have much time today.  Paul says we are ambassadors for Christ – someone sent on a mission into an alien environment.  He elsewhere depicts us as soldiers, standing our ground on a hostile field.  We are called by Peter, pilgrims and strangers, echoing Moses’ naming of his son, Gershom, saying, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.”  God invades and rules over the natural world through us.  The full extent of this mastery of the material is seen in Jesus whom the winds and seas had to obey. 

We understand how Christ was an invader in the Incarnation, but when He ascended, He became, in a way, an invader in the halls of heaven.  This may be the most overtly neo-platonic verse in the Bible – at least as far as I can recall right now.  You can read back in Exodus, when Moses was on the mountain, that he was shown the realities and, so far as was possible, outfitted the Tabernacle accordingly.

An aside:  the Tabernacle has long seemed to me to be “better” than the Temple as it better represents both Christ and us.  It was covered in skins, just as we are.  I am suspicious of the Temple as encouraging a strain of apostasy that remains today in a measure of inappropriate reverence for buildings.    Anyway.

The righteous dead went to a place called “paradise” or “Abraham’s bosom”.  It was a place of rest and ease, but it was not heaven.  Hades was a segregated gated community:  paradise on one side, gehenna on the other, kind of like Missouri and Illinois.  But when Christ descended into the realm of death, he “led captivity captive”:  But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.  Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”  (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) (Ephesians 4:7-10)

It sounds like Jesus broke the righteous dead out of their somewhat pleasant prison and took them with Him as He returned to heaven, where they (and we), apart from Him, had no place.  Jesus didn’t lie to the repentant thief on the cross.  He said, “This day, you will be with Me in paradise.”  He just didn’t add that it was only a weekend trip.  Then they loaded up the truck, and they moved to Beverly. 

Christ is now in heaven, in that reality which we think of as ideal, representing us, speaking and interceding on behalf of us.  That’s a good thing to know.  Moreover, I am not one who puts much credence in concepts like “soul sleep”.  Paul uses the euphemism “sleep” for the death of the physical body.  I don’t think that those who have died are no longer conscious – though I freely admit I could be wrong.  If I’m not, there’s no reason to think that those who are absent from the body and consequently present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8) are unaware of that which Christ is aware.  I believe that some of those who are now at home with the Lord could well be interceding on behalf of those who remain in their earthly bodies.   

That may not sound exactly earth-shattering, but it is pretty strong stuff for us Protestants.  I don't think anybody is praying to saints or Mary; they are asking the saints for agreement in praying to the Father.  "Pray for us sinners."  I don't see where that is much of a problem.  It would not surprise me to some day hear that an old Baptist preacher goes up every once in a while to remind the Lord to watch out for this old hillbilly.