when God stands against us

“God, your God, is right there with you, fighting with you against your enemies, fighting to win.”

 

- Deuteronomy 20:4, MSG

 

There is a worship song called Open up Our Eyes whose profoundly simple message resonates with me. Over and again, it repeats the words, “Our God is fighting for us always / Our God is fighting for us all.” As of late, I’ve given much consideration to that statement. And I have realized that it speaks truth more deeply than we can know, though not in the sense we might immediately think.

 

At times, fighting for us means standing against us.

 

Balaam was a prophet. But as a man whose connection to God gave him something of a celebrity status, he was not above peddling his services to the highest bidder. As the people of Israel trekked toward the Promised Land, the king of Moab procured Balaam to curse them. So Balaam saddled up his donkey to meet with his would-be employer. Yet on the way, he encountered a detour: “God was furious that Balaam was going, so he sent the angel of the Lord to stand in the road to block his way” (Numbers 22:22, NLT). Scripture goes on to say that the angel stood there with sword drawn, ready to do whatever was necessary to stop him. “I have come to block your way because you are stubbornly resisting me,” the angel told him (verse 32). Needless to say, after a meeting with Jesus, the wayward Balaam had a change of heart and blessed the people instead.

 

Balaam’s is not a standalone occurrence. In the book of Revelation, Jesus dictated a series of letters to 7 of his churches. To Pergamum’s church he writes, “Repent, or I will come to you suddenly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (2:16, NLT). Why would Jesus say such a thing? This congregation had been infiltrated by false teachers who corrupted it with aberrant doctrine. Worse yet, the faithful tolerated their heresies. But Jesus would have none of it. So he sent them a message spelling out his intentions in no uncertain terms: “You are headed in the wrong direction, and I am prepared to fight if I must.”

 

It is imperative that we understand the heart which motivates this position. The portrait here is not of a God who is vindictive toward his people, seeking to punish their sin. Just the opposite, it reveals a God who seeks to vindicate them, proving them blameless. Even as he writes this, Jesus recalls the moment when, hanging on the cross, he absorbed the full wrath of God toward sin; he remembers quite clearly how he stole our sin. Not only did Jesus propitiate – that is, endure the penalty; he also expiated, meaning he removed the sin itself. When he said, “It is finished,” he left no condemnation and no sin to stain his people.

 

And so Jesus, intending to exonerate his already-ransomed saints, wields the sword of truth in their defense: “I removed your sin! So why are you returning to it? Turn back from believing these liars, those who would drag you back into condemnation, or I will wage war upon them.” Does this mean we no longer sin? Certainly not – and that is precisely the point. Notice that Jesus says to his church “I will fight against them.” There is a clear and important distinction here: “I will come to you and fight against them.” Within this body of the redeemed, there was still an element of worldliness and evil. And Jesus was willing to do whatever it took to purge it from them.

 

Pergamum, then, is an allegory of the individual believer. To a greater or lesser degree, each of us wrestles with the lingering residue of sin. Our responsibility is to repent of it, to oppose it, to fight against it. But when we openly embrace or tolerate it, as did the Pergamum faithful, Jesus must step in and do the fighting for us. When, on our journey to the land of promise, factions within seek to detour us from the straight and narrow for a path less demanding, our Savior himself barricades the way.

 

And I am so glad he does. I am grateful that his vast love for me leads my once-dead-but-now-alive Redeemer to wield a sword to excise the sin I cannot seem to kill. He is bent on making me holy, not only in my standing before God, but also in my daily life. He is furious in exacting vengeance on the sin that so easily besets me, and he is fierce in his devotion to me. This God who began a good work within me will continue it to completion (Philippians 1:6). “Our God is fighting for us always…”