The Weapons of our Warfare

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

2 Corinthians 10:3-4

Truth is the chief weapon of the Christian. The glory of Christianity is that it introduces truth into any situation. It reveals reality. Jesus Christ came to tell it as it is, and he did so. Invariably, always, he told it as it is. He let people know the facts about life and about man. He unveiled reality, he tore away the illusions and delusions under which men labor. He ripped off veils. You can watch him exposing the faulty thinking of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and all the other groups with which he came in contact, including his own disciples. Here in the Word of God, in the truth as it is in Jesus, we have a powerful weapon, the greatest one there is in many respects, telling things the way they are.

Truth is the stock in trade of a Christian; that is, if he accepts the Word of God as the truth about life, and if he proclaims it, and demonstrates it in his own life, he himself is a mighty weapon for setting men free and for solving the ills of society. Not only truth proclaimed, but truth demonstrated: The weakness of the church is that it has often been too content to simply proclaim a portion of the truth and never give itself to the demonstration of it. But a Christian, above all others, ought to be characterized by openness and honesty.

This modern world of ours is generously supplied with pitchmen and con artists and those who have axes to grind. These people are enthusiastically and persistently using the big lie on us. Hence, it is an arresting and refreshing experience to meet a person or a group that is authentic and transparently open.

That is what every Christian ought to be, and every Christian group. No Christian has the right to a private life. Our lives are to be lived openly before all men, transparent, a spectacle unto all the world. Christians are to be demonstrations of the truth. The church where Jesus is openly confessed is a potent commodity, particularly needed in our disillusioned, jaded civilization. Many weary people want to find a place where God's Word is revered, taught, and translated into daily life. Not a church posing this week as a circus, next week as a sociological supermarket, next month as a pietistic political polarization within the ecclesiastical community; but a church which purports in its proclamation to be what it is — the body of Christ — a fellowship where God's people come together for renewal, for the teaching of God's word, and for spreading the gospel.

Father, grant that I may see the challenge of the hour in which I live, and realize that I have been uniquely called to proclaim the truth. Help me to give myself to it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.