More on Spiritual Warfare

In recent posts I invited you to join me in researching the spiritual warfare that went on in the 20th century and continues to the present. All this is in preparation for a paper I have agreed to present to a group of pastors the first part of next year. 

Before going further, I want to take another look at what the Apostle Paul says about spiritual warfare, especially in Ephesians 6:10-20. 

Let's look at the question of wrestling in v. 12, a Greco-Roman sport that continues to the present. Learning to wrestle in that violent manner was part of every soldier's training in those ancient days. Wrestling, like much of ancient warfare, was a one on one affair, a contest between two in which each tries to throw the other. The contest was decided when the victor was able to throw his antagonist to the floor and hold him flat down. The particular Greek word the Apostle uses (palay) is found only here in the New Testament. It seems to come from a verb that means to scatter, throw or pour. In the ancient Olympics wrestling was a no-holds barred event known as the pankration ("all-powerful"). Things such as kicking, joint dislocation, bone breaking, hair pulling, strangling, and other brutalities were allowed. Biting and eye gouging were not allowed in national competitions. The sole object was to force an opponent into defeat, to make him give up. The loser often ended up maimed or even dead. 

The only place in the Bible where you can read about any kind of wrestling match is in Genesis 32:24-32, where Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious man who puts his hip out of joint. The Hebrew word for wrestling in that place is abaq. The word has the same sense of struggling, pounding and rolling around on the ground in a wrestling match like the Apostle describes in Ephesians 6. The Greek O.T. uses a verb form of Paul's wrestle noun to translate the Hebrew. 

So what was this wrestling match "with God" (Gen.32:28) all about? It was about an earlier conflict between Jacob and his brother Esau. By trickery Jacob, whose very name meant 'deceiver', was able to obtain to steal his brother's birthright as the first born and his father Isaac's blessing as well (Genesis 27:1-20). In fear of death, Jacob fled to his uncle Laban where he ended up marrying both of Laban's daughters and working for him for many years. Now he is returning home, blessed with many children and wealthy, but humbled and and renewed in faith. Upon hearing that his brother Esau was coming out to meet him with 400 armed men, he sends his family and servants on ahead, praying that Esau will not kill them all and remains behind on the bank of the Jordan River to struggle with God. 

Something very profound and meaningful happened that night as Jacob, the deceiver and sinner, struggled with his God. Instead of being destroyed by this face to face encounter with God, Jacob was blessed again. He said, "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered" (Gen.32:30). The encounter was so profound that Jacob receives a new identity and a new name. Henceforth his name is Israel, he who wrestles with God. 

Paul says we all wrestle, but not only with God. He says our face to face mortal battle is particularly also against the devil and his minions (Ephesians 6:11-12). Does that imply that we do not wrestle with God? Indeed not. It rather means that we who claim the new name 'Christian' (one of Christ's) have been wrestled to the ground and defeated by the Lord Jesus, the same Lord that met Jacob on the shores of the Jordan river. It means that we have given up on any hope of rescuing and redeeming ourselves from the folly of our sinful ways. Our only hope for this life and that to come is the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Christ has killed the old man in us and in this spiritual death we receive the blessing of new life, a new identity in Christ and the strength needed for that one on one wrestling match we each have with the demons sent against us by the devil. Strangely, the old sinful man arises again each day to align himself with the devil and the wrestling starts all over (Romans 6:1-12), both with God and particularly with the demon or demons assigned to us individually. 

Here then is also where we must start as we discuss those one on one attacks that come at believers, spiritual attacks that have their origins in the past century or earlier and that continue into the present. No one can merely be objective or 'scientific' as he looks at this struggle, for each one of us is existentially involved.