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Proverbs 21:31
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The picture is of an army officer who knows that war is coming. He is worried maybe at the thought of what will happen and perhaps he is afraid, but his fear is calmed when he remembers his horse. It is a powerful animal, a battle-hardened horse, trained not to shy away from the sound of gunshot or the yelling of the troops. It will plunge into the battle seemingly unconcerned about the danger, and carrying its rider high above the fray of the ordinary foot-soldiers. That is what he places his trust in and that is more encouraging to him than any invisible help that God will give him. It is not that he trusts in God as well but that he is placing his hope entirely in carnal means. This is a foolish policy for life, but it is also foolish for the Christian to adopt this policy in his battle against sin. Why is safety a prime concern? Because we cannot avoid the battle; we are born into a war zone. Sanctification can be viewed as a fight with the world, with the flesh, and with the devil. How will we prevail? It is a fight too great for us. Only the Lord is a match for our enemy, Satan. For this reason, all our efforts are brought to God in prayer, because we depend on him. We do not engage in the battle without the full armour that God supplies. Nothing else is adequate for a fight like this. The full armour of Ephesians 6 must be put on piece by piece with prayer. It is Christ who fights for us, but the way he fights is not distinct from us but through us. If the battle was between Christ and Satan alone, then the battle would already be over, for Christ has defeated the devil single-handed. The ongoing battle is for our sanctification which must involve us, for it must be our faith that is tested, our self-control that overcomes, our righteousness that prevails. In this way, Christ gives puny men and women a victory over the enemy of the human race and eventually God will crush Satan under our feet. In this way the humiliation of the devil will be complete, because he despised mankind and sought to destroy us for ever, but God has taken the weakest of creatures and through the work of our Saviour and of the Holy Spirit, he has conquered the most formidable of enemies ever created.
Application
Let none turn to false methods for obtaining this victory which God has not prescribed. All formulas for sanctification which leave out the involvement of the individual Christian and try to avoid the battle by handing it over entirely to Christ are not God’s ways who tells us to ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure’ (Philippians 2:12-13). We have to do the mortifying of our sin; we have to do the putting off of the old man and the putting on of the new. We are the pillars in the Lord’s house which must bear the strain.
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