For most of us, the picture of a blood-spattered warrior striding exultantly off the field of battle strewn with corpses is a distasteful one. This is especially true for us in North America, who have known so little bloodshed in comparison to the rest of the world. However, we need to put this in another perspective. Think about the prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp. Striding up the barbed-wire gates comes a blood-spattered, smoke-begrimed GI, who with one burst of his submachine gun blasts the locks off the gates. Does he look distasteful to those prisoners? Not in the least! He is the most beautiful thing they have seen in years! He means freedom; he means deliverance; he means life...can you imagine any of them saying, If you had just talked to them gently and rationally, I am sure all of this unpleasant violence would have been unnecessary? Hardly! On that field, there was only one approach, a fight to the death. The same is true in the spiritual world. There can be no negotiation with sin, for it is the sworn enemy of all that God is. It is sin that killed the Son of God, and it is sin that will kill all of Gods creatures if it can. The idea that we can have a negotiated peace where God holds one part of the creation while sin holds another is ludicrous. In the end, ether the righteous God will rule the world or sin will. The same thing is true of the human heart. The thought that we can have forgiveness of sin by the blood of Jesus while continuing to practice that which killed him is ludicrous. Christ the warrior comes to destroy sin and set us free. - John N. Oswalt, Isaiah
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 21:10:19 +0000