Thoughts on the Spiritual Life - XXI - H. C. G. Moule

Chapter VI

CONFLICT AND PEACE

Eph. vi. 10-18; Phil. iv. 7.

The title of this chapter presents a contrast, but it is a contrast full of harmony. The Peace and the Conflict of the believing Christian are things intended, in their true idea, not to take each other by turns, but to be intertwined, to bear habitually upon one another, to make the secret of one tenor of life, and that a life of chastened happiness. Let us look into the matter, in a brief study of the conflict and of the peace in question.

I.

THE CHRISTIAN’S CONFLICT

Consider this first, and in the light of the passage quoted at the head of the chapter; with the recollection that it is a subject not only of importance, but of vital importance to every disciple. It is indeed “our life.”

1. The Ephesians passage asks to be read with full remembrance, first of its connexion. Have you ever remarked that connexion? To many readers, I believe, this picture of armour and soldier calls up the thought of dark and terrible eternal strife. It suggests, perhaps, the resolute confessor of Christ bracing himself to meet Satan in his open wrath; on some day of persecution, with its tribunal, its prison, its scaffold, or its fire; or at least at some time of peculiarly vehement and angry temptation of other sorts; amidst which the saint is solitary and terrified, and almost forcibly overborne. But as a fact the passage comes in, naturally and in sequence, to close and crown a long series of directions how to live at home, how to please the redeeming Lord in the sphere of home duties. Husband, wife, child, parent, master, servant – these are the words which have led up to the thought of the armour, the conflict, and the dark foes who press round the believer in the field.

Is this unnatural? It is indeed surprising for the moment, but not unnatural. I appeal to the heart of my reader, taking it for granted that for most of my readers the lot is cast, wholly or partly, in the life of an English home, or in some life closely akin to it; and I ask, is not home too often the scene of our greatest spiritual failures, our most manifest inconsistencies, our least resistance to the enemy, and accordingly his greatest successes over us? It is a deep fact, a far-reaching fact, that just where the path looks most commonplace and easy the enemy of our spiritual life is likely to set his most subtle ambush. Where we are habitually least upon our guard he is habitually most upon the watch. And then, on the other hand, this scene of so much possible failure is therefore capable, through grace, of being the scene of delightfully frequent and fruitful victory, victory of that gentle, humble and unobtrusive kind which is the truest and the strongest after all.