Jesus started His public ministry with the declaration, “Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!” Matthew 4:17 If He said that today it might come out as, “Change your perspective. I got this. I am the Son of the King of Heaven, wherever I go is heaven on earth.”
The victories of Christ over sin and death are accepted as doctrine. It’s what defines us as Christians, but what makes us followers of Christ is how we act as liberators in the territories still occupied by a defeated enemy. The newsreels of the end of WWII showed the Allied forces coming into bombed out villages in Europe to the delight of the local populaces.This was Good News personified.
In the Pacific, stories of isolated Japanese soldiers still fighting long after the Emperor’s surrender continued to surface for decades. Sometimes these soldiers considered their eventual capture as a relief from the exhaustion of jungle survival, sometimes the shock of their invincible army being defeated was a bigger wound than the scars of battle.
2 Corinthians 10: 3-4 says, “we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God…”
The battle is first in our minds, in our feelings, emotions, and attitudes. The victory is in our spirit and sometimes we greet it like liberated partisans, and sometimes we resist it like outposts of justified rancor. Jesus says in Matthew 18:3, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”
We must come to Christ, the ultimate Liberator, and accept the chewing gum and chocolates of grace and mercy that He distributes along the road of His victory march, and we must share what He has placed in our hands.
Great post, Will!
That lizard tries to use those pockets if darkness to make us doubt the promises and power we have in Christ!
It’s been a bit of a theme this week, to press through with what we know instead of what we feel or what we see!