We hear a lot about war and the word often has very negative connotations for us. Did you know that the Christian life can be described as war and battle and struggle? Becoming a Christian may seem to some as the easy way out, but it’s certainly not. According to Romans 7, becoming a Christian is enlisting for war. This chapter is one of my favourite chapters in the Bible because it gives me great hope knowing that even the great apostle Paul struggled and battled with sin.
What place does the Law, epitomized in the Ten Commandments, have in the Christian’s life? Are we free of the Law and not under obligation to obey it? If we seek to obey God’s Law are we not being legalists and fundamentalist? What does the bible mean when it says Christians are under grace, not Law?
Romans 7 answers an important question about the Law’s place in the Christian’s life. By “Law”, I mean the law given by God to Moses epitomized in the Ten Commandments.
How should Christians relate to the demonic world?
On the one hand, there a Christian sub-culture obsessed with demon possession and “deliverance” ministries. According to this worldview, there are generational demons, poverty demons, sickness demons and even demons that make one infertile.
The key to a powerful Christian ministry is to identify the particular demon involved and cast it out in Jesus’ name. T.B. Joshua is perhaps the most infamous adherent to this model of ministry.
On the other hand, there is a Christian sub-culture that dismisses the supernatural and the spirit-world.
According to this worldview, there is a rational, cause-and-effect, scientific explanation for everything that happens. Demon-possession was simply the uniformed explanation for illnesses in Bible times that were not understood. We know better now.
Joaquín Guzmán ( Nickname “El Chapo”, which means shorty) is a Mexican drug lord and been in the news lately. Forbes magazine called him the “biggest drug lord of all time. El Chapo was arrested in 2014, but he escaped from prison again in 2015 by exiting through a tunnel dug to below his cell. He was then recaptured by Mexican marines in 2016 after granting interviews to people like Sean Penn – because he wanted a movie made of his life. El Chapo escaped his prison cell, but due to his own foolishness and pride, ended up back in bondage.
The same may happen to us as Christians. We are freed from sin’s penalty, power and prison; and as free people we are told not to return to sin’s bondage.