In God's Name, Bring It On!

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.  (I Peter 4:1-2)

 

            Two words leap out at me in this passage. The first is "arm." One arms for battle. It takes time. In fact, medieval knights in shining armor had to be helped into said armor. They had to practice maneuvering in it. Even without that armor, when they took up arms, they were picking up weapons with which to fight, and they had to practice in their use. I've thought off and on about the idea of taking up fencing or archery, or even learning to shoot a gun. It might even be fun to learn to throw a knife or otherwise defend myself. Two things stop me: money and effort. I don't really want to do what's necessary to make any of those arms anything other than a hazard to my own health. The same is really true of arming myself spiritually. I want to be a well-armed Christian soldier right now, miraculously. I want to overcome temptation and sin the way a smart house overcomes lights that were left on or a garage door left open. The press of a button hundreds of miles away solves the problem in 10 seconds or less and I can go back to enjoying my life.

            The second word is "attitude." This should be no surprise to anyone who has heard me ask for prayer about my attitude over the past several years. What this passage suggests to me is that I've been seeing attitude in a way that is only partly correct. I've said that if my attitude is right, then I can cope with my circumstances. That's sort of like putting on the suit of armor. If I am wearing it, then life can beat away at me and I can just stand there and take it. I suppose that's the sort of attitude that Superman should have ended up with in the old TV shows where the crooks invariably pulled out guns and shot at him. He could have stood there all day, but that wouldn't have stopped the bad guys. Stopping them meant he had to take action.

           Which  - for those of us who aren't from Krypton, means learning to use spiritual weapons in an aggressive way, not just a defensive one. We have to learn to wield the weapon of attitude when we are under attack by temptation and sin. The act of battle requires that we suffer because until we suffer, we are not done with sin, not exerting effort against it. Recently, someone expressed irritation at some circumstances. I don't know what those circumstances were, but I shared a story about a man whom God had commanded to push a rock. The man did so until he was exhausted, then he complained to God that he had pushed and pushed, but the rock had not moved. God told him that He had told the man to push the rock, not move it. The act of pushing did nothing to the rock, but it strengthened the man. This is the sort of aggressive attitude we need to develop, an attitude of faith that says that even if our circumstances don't change, even if our spiritual muscles get sore and we are exhausted in the effort, even if it feels like we're going to die pushing against that stone, that we will keep pushing because the battle makes us stronger. The suffering is proof that a battle is taking place. We should say, "In God's name, bring it on."