good soldiers

2 Timothy 2:3,4 Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.

At the onset of the Civil War, one of the greatest frustrations of President Abraham Lincoln was the unwillingness of his generals to engage the enemy. Repeatedly, Lincoln sent dispatches to General McClellan, the chief of staff of the Union Army, to attack the Confederates. But McClellan didn’t really have a plan and seemingly no intention of actually fighting. He continually built up his army and his arsenal into far superior numbers than the Confederates, but never engaged the enemy, prompting Lincoln to remark that “if he isn’t going to use his army, perhaps he won’t mind if we borrow it a while.”
Today, one of the greatest temptations facing the church is to never really go into battle. We never preach against sin, and rarely even identify sin. We never preach separation from the enemy’s camp. Our strategy seems to be to win over the world by making them feel comfortable and not offending them. Unfortunately, not only does the world end up missing the point of salvation, but our own fellow citizens of the Kingdom become complacent as well and squander the blood that was shed at so dear a cost for the sake of our freedom.
There is a war going on out there and we have been saved and called to be soldiers in the service of the King. Our struggle is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” It says in James that “whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” We haven’t been called to be spectators to the battle or friends of the world. Like the Apostle Paul said, let it be said of us that we fought the good fight, and defended the faith.