The Christian Life: A Warfare — T. Austin-Sparks

Christ’s Temptation and the Nature of Spiritual Warfare

4th chapter of the gospel by Luke,. Gospel by Luke, chapter 4,. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil.

And he did eat nothing in those days. And when they were completed, he hungered. The devil said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become a note. And Jesus answered unto him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.

And he led him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. The devil said unto him, Thee will I give all this authority and the glory of them, for it hath been delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.

If thou therefore wilt worship me, it shall all be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he led him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple.

And said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down from him, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee to guard thee. And on their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against the stone.

And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. When the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him for a season. In the letter to Timothy, the first letter, chapter one and verse eighteen, This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that by them thou mayst war a good warfare.

Chapter six, The Good Fight. And in the second letter, chapter two, verses three and four, Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enrolled him as a soldier.

The Christian Life as an Age-Long Warfare

It is not necessary to inform you that the Christian life is a warfare, but it is a matter concerning which we need to have a realization. A great deal of difference between knowing a thing by way of information and realizing what that thing really means.

It is a matter, therefore, for our remembrance and our realization that the Christian life is a warfare. Moreover, the New Testament makes it perfectly clear that this warfare is an age-long thing. It goes right on to the end of the age.

It is shown right through the New Testament to be such. And the New Testament points on to the very end of this age and shows that it is characterized by spiritual warfare all the way through. Now the enemy with whom we have to contend has a very elaborate and comprehensive and detailed tactical plan for getting his advantage.

The Peril of Abandoning the Fight

And one of the major tactics of the enemy is to eliminate from Christians the very element of warfare itself. That is, to make Christians non-warring people. Really to take the element of warfare out of them or in some way to bring them to a state where that is completely eliminated.

There are far more spiritual casualties by not fighting than there are by fighting. There are many who get bruised and wounded and knocked down temporarily in the fight. And they may be casualties for the time being but they get up and fight again.

But the very land is strewn with casualties who are casualties because they didn't fight. And I say there are many more such. To change the metaphor, I was impressed again yesterday as I have very often been when flying with this fact that when a plane is climbing and when it is at its altitude and has all its power in action it is most steady.

It goes on steadily and meets the adverse forces in a triumphant way. But immediately the plane is thrown into the descending position and the acceleration is retarded and the power is reduced. The thing becomes the placing of the wind.

You rock about, shaken all over the place because this driving force has been lessened. And it is very like that. We become the placings of the devil. We get knocked all over the place. Yes, we become casualties when we cease to be positive or hence something of the fighting, warring spirit is reduced in us.

That is the perilous moment in the Christian life. And I repeat that the warring spirit in a Christian is a great protection. To be without it is a great peril. If we let go, fighting, Satan will do the same.

He will get us in other ways. Because that is the temptation. If we would not be so positive we could have an easier time in a way from the enemy. He will let down if we do in that particular form. But he will work in quieter and more subtle ways and catch us.

He is not giving it up. You want to have an easier time and get a no less perilous time stop fighting the devil. You find that he will follow suit. But it is, as I say, the peril of becoming a casualty of not fighting.

The Assault on Sonship and the Father’s Honour

We go to Christ's temptations. These three temptations of which we have just read. We note that the line was crossed at Jordan. The battle was set and begun. Then he committed himself. To the cross. As symbolized in the Jordan.

And when the anointing spirit came upon him that was the beginning of the battle. Now note the nature of the warfare as indicated by those temptations. First of all, the attack, the assault, was upon his relationship with the Father.

Is thou be the son. His relationship to the Father. The whole, that's an objective. Notice how the end of the account is given. Then the devil leaves him. Our version says for a season but the margin says until a season.

Coming back on that again. And he did come back on that right at the end. The hour of greatest weakness. He came right back on that again. The whole question of his relationship with the Father. I have no time this morning to speak about what that relationship really means.

A son for the Father. But I can just indicate this. That sonship by its very meaning, the very meaning of the word means that the whole honour of the Father is involved. True sonship means the taking up of the honour of the Father.

The most terrible thing about failure in sonship, whether it be in Christ or in the ordinary relations of life is that it dishonours the Father. It brings reproach upon the Father. It is shame heaped upon the Father.

The Father suffers shame by the failure of a son. And so it was with Christ the whole matter of the Father's honour and the Father's satisfaction was involved. And so the enemy focused his assault in the first place upon that, the relationship with the Father.

Remember that is always the nature of a warfare, of this warfare. You know it well. Our relationship with God is a focal point of constant attack and assault by the enemy. And it will be to the end because so much is at stake.

The World’s Offer and the Cost of Discipleship

And bound up with that relationship the enemy is always trying to drive a wedge between us and the Father. Then in the next place, relationship to the world. Relationship to the world. Offering him the kingdoms of the world glory and the authority on his terms, Satan's terms.

And so it became a question of whether Christ would let go this world as it is and all that it had to offer. All that it had to offer. Of position, rewards, of influence and everything that this world could offer him.

Whether he would let that go in its present form. To have it only on God's terms and to win it in God's way. You can see that that is a very real issue in spiritual warfare especially for young Christians.

You come up against that at once, immediately almost. You become a Christian, you're up against this. Now then, the world or the law. Whether you're going to have the world or whether you're going to have the law.

It very often becomes a very clearly divided question when you become a Christian. And you're right up against that. In very many practical ways, that present. It's present. And it becomes a warfare right on to the end.

It's never to the end of our lives a pleasant thing. A pleasant thing to our nature to be shunned by the world discounted by the world and to have the world holding back its favour and its price. Because, because we are Christians.

The Church Versus Formal Religion

It's got to be settled. It comes into the back. You see how hurriedly I'm passing over these things only hinting at them. And then the third place the battle was focused upon the relationship with the church.

Look into the pinnacle of the temple. The temple. Why did he take him to the palace? Well that's the world. It's another realm. It's some other place. No, it's the temple. Lord Jesus had come with the object of securing his church.

Here's the issue. It's a religious one now. It's a religious one. Not the world now. It's a religious one. It's not God now immediately. This is something else. And here you have represented by the temple the popular religion.

The established religion. The traditional religion. The formal religion. Yes, and the dead religion. The devil doesn't say so. And now the suggestion is made that he can capture the religious world. If only he will do this thing.

He can capture the religious world and a place in the religious world. He can capture a reputation. He can capture influence in that world. He can make a name for himself in that world. He can get applause in that world.

Acceptance of the following in the religion. But Jesus always in his life drew a distinct line between traditional cold, dead formal religion and the living church. He submitted himself to the church.

He said, I will build my church. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. The devil knows he has an intuitive knowledge of things. He knows what that church is destined to mean in his undoing.

And so if he could just turn Christ away from that specific object of the church onto something religious as an alternative. He has scored a tremendous relationship to the church. No, Christ is not being put off that.

And don't forget, dear friends, the enemy is always trying to get up to accept something that is less than God's full thought concerning the church. To be religious. To become, yes, formal, professional Christian.

To drop down onto that level and to be robbed, deprived of the tremendous significance of the body of Christ. Again, I hint at this. I want to come to another three-fold application of this. But these are three realms of the battle.

In relation, our relationship to God, our relationship to this world, and our relationship to the church. The battle rages on those three realms. We've got to fight it through. But then look, as to Christ personally, in himself, first his body.

Attack upon his body and what seems to be its clamant need. And there is a direction, dear friends, in which the great issue arises in the very bodily realm whether the dictates of our bodily life. I say our physical life are going to be paramount or whether the will of God is going to be paramount.

Sometimes that issue arises. That is why the apostle says, I beseech you to present your bodies a living sacrifice. Your bodies a living sacrifice. Because so often the body is the thing which rises up and dictates our course.

What we need for our very physical life it seems. What is demanded? What is good for us bodily, physically? Sometimes it's a matter of point of rest. Oh yes, these bodies need rest and God knows that.

And Christ took account of that with his disciples. He knew the need of physical rest. But there are points, I say, and times when this whole question has got to become a spiritual one and not just a bodily one.

Where are physical weaknesses? It may be some indisposition can become the dictating thing and we lie down under it, accept it, put out of the battle. Whereas even then at times, not always, by that time we are called upon to say yes, I don't feel very fit, I don't feel very well, the body seems to say I ought to do this, that and the other.

But there's some spiritual issue at question and therefore I lay hold on life. I lay hold on life. And it's so often is it not true that when we stand on our feet and gird ourselves for that very physical battle, the life comes in and we do what we would not have done if we'd given way to the body.

You see the point? It was a question then at that time of whether the body was going to dictate or the spirit, or the Lord, the Father, in the realm of the body, and then in the realm of the soul. As I pointed out, this offering of the kingdoms of the world was an appeal to his soul.

Ambition, Selfhood, and the Father’s Will

Ambition. Ambition. Oh the tragedies of ambition in this world. Parents for their children. Their ambition for their children has so often devastated the spiritual life. And our ambition in this world is to get from there, get to the top of the ladder to be something, to make a name and every other form of our own natural life, our selfhood, heal to selfhood, name, position, influence.

And there's nothing wrong nothing wrong with doing a good job of getting on, but if it is at the cost of doing the Father's will, and if it is at the suggestion of the devil and the drawing out of our own soul or self life, there's an infinite peril.

And we've got to really do this and fight out this issue. Now what is it that is dictating? Is it my own selfhood? My own soul? Or really, is that all subject to what God wants? And that is very often a very keen battle, isn't it?

Worship and the Governing Place of God

And then as to his spirit, worship, that's a whole temptation, doesn't it? The spirit is that part of us where God gets worshipped. God's seekers, true worshippers, who worship him in whom my enemy will get us off God in our spirit.

Anything! I have to learn more and more keenly and clearly what it means. And not by the governing influence that you see how from that very moment, that was a primary issue in the life of the Lord Jesus himself.

All the way through from this committal, mental and inclusive battle, you see how that arose again and again. The enemy was trying his life upon some other basis to get us off of that ground. And all this raises one big question.

What is going to prevail? The enemy comes along physical lines. He comes along emotional lines. He comes in all these different ways. But there's one issue in it all. It's a battle. Who is going to prevail and what is going to prevail?

The Lord Jesus came back every time to the devil. It's what the Father had made known as to his will. After all, it is written he was only saying another word. I know what God has said. That's the argument.

Not the argument even of my physical needs and conditions. Not the argument of my well-being in this world at the point of my inward life with God.