Welcome to the War Zone

I've been chewing on a portion of the Bible known as the "Upper Room Discourse" from the Gospel of John from the last year. One of the things I've noticed is that Jesus if getting his disciples ready to live in a spiritual war zone. Listen to this from John 15:

¹⁸"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. ²⁰Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. ²¹They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. ²²If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. ²³He who hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.'

Doesn't this sound like fun? I think that if most of us were asked why we became a Christian, we wouldn't say because we get to fight in a war where we'll be hated and attacked. Yet this is exactly what Jesus is preparing them for. He even reminds them that if they had stayed "in the world" as in a member of the community that is made up of those who are not citizens of God's kingdom, they would be loved by the world - aka nobody is shooting at you.

I asked my kids in family devotions how that sounded? They looked at me with bewildered eyes. Why would anyone choose to put themselves in harms way like that? Worse than that - why would Jesus choose us to be placed in harms way like that (verse 19)?

Perhaps there is another way to look at this. I described a scenario where a person goes to boot camp for 6 weeks. They're ridiculed, yelled at, sleep deprived, pushed to their limits. At the end of the camp, the drill instructor walks over and informs you that you have shown yourself to be a soldier with enormous promise and they are recommending you for special operations. You then go to a school where you train in the most recent techniques in modern warfare.

The day comes when you are being dropped in enemy territory for your first special operations mission. Sure, it's a battle, but you find yourself honored to be given such an opportunity to serve.

The Thursday night that Jesus delivers this discourse he can hear the missiles being fired by the enemy. Satan has entered Judas, Satan has asked to sift Peter like wheat (see John 13). Jesus even states that the prince of this world (Satan) is coming (see John 14). The battle rages all around and is just going to get hotter. The disciples initially will run like little children in only a few hours from this discourse when the angry mob comes to arrest Jesus.

Yet, not soon after, they will stand and deliver the truth of the Gospel in the face of enormous opposition. All of them except one will be martyred for the cause. Judging from the spiritual battle raging around Jesus that night, I'm certain that they sustained spiritual wounds as well. At some point, they realized that it was worth it. That, in fact, they had been specially chosen to endure the hardships that they would face for the purpose of battling for their King.

If you are a Christian and find yourself wondering why you are having to fight so many battles. Maybe even wondering if your doing something wrong in the way that you are carrying out your Christian life. Take heart, you have been especially chosen for special operations here on planet earth.

We'll talk more about the ways of this war in the following post . . .