Wrestling for Righteousness

[Steve Myers] The Bible puts the battle that we fight in our Christian life in terms of a wrestling match. That's one of the ideas that the Apostle Paul uses to convey the struggle that we find ourselves in as we battle to live a godly lifestyle. In Ephesians 6, he talks about this very fact. He says this, "We don't wrestle against flesh and blood." And of course, wrestling is a big deal in this world. We've got the WWE out there, and they've got their "Wrestle Manias" and all these types of things. And we know that those are quite the wrestling matches. In a way, we are in a wrestling match, as the Apostle Paul says, but it's not a physical match. We are wrestling with evil. We're wrestling with evil. And so Paul says, "We're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places."

So this is a spiritual battle. We are wrestling with evil forces that have turned their attention to subverting our faith, and so Paul makes this very clear. This is a wrestling match, and he probably had in mind the Greek method of wrestling where you have to stand and stay in these boundaries. We have a boundary of God's way that we have to stay within, and we have to stand because once a wrestler was taken down, it was easy to cause them to be pinned, to lose the match, to give up. So we have to stand. And so that's what he says to us, "Therefore, take up the whole armor or God." And in verse 14 he says, "Stand therefore." (Ephesians 6:10-18)

So don't get taken down. Don't be taken away with this idea that there's really not this big of a battle out there. There is, and we need God's help and His guidance, and as he says next, we need His armor to battle against these wicked forces. So in Ephesians 6, we are in a wrestling match, but we've got God on our side, and we've got the ability to have His armor to win that battle. And so if we do that very thing, then he says we will stand in that day. And we can look forward to that very fact. 

That's BT Daily. We'll see you next time.