10:3
We now get to the heart of the teaching, and this teaching is about spiritual warfare. Paul has been repeatedly warning the Corinthians not to live by the world’s standards, also “we do not wage war as the world does”. Notice first that this is about waging war. Christianity is not just about being nice! Kindness and gentleness are to be ever growing parts of our character, but there is more to it than that. If don’t think so, then life will pull us up short pretty quickly. There will be those who attack us without any justification, using the most underhand methods. There will be people whom we love and pour ourselves into but they refuse to change, or things happen to them that stop them finding freedom in Christ. Being kind is not enough, but having realised that we are involved in a war we must not use the world’s methods. We must not use lies and deception, we must not seek to pull people down. We must not make false boasts.
10:4
So does denying ourselves the world’s weapon render us powerless? Absolutely not. We have weapons, but godly ones, rather than worldly ones. These weapons have “divine power to demolish strongholds. Truth and grace would sum up the nature of these weapons. We should also be aware that they have “divine power”. The power of God is at work in and through the church, when His people are faithful to Him. If we decide to be faithful to the world we immediately lose all power, as is sadly demonstrated in the parts of the church today. We should be encouraged. For these weapons have power to demolish strongholds. We need to appreciate the place of weakness and power in the kingdom, and Paul will say much more about this later, especially in chapter 12. For now let me just say that there will be times when we feel incredibly weak, but the power of God is not dependent on our strength, indeed it delights in our weakness. And we are to live our lives dependent upon God’s power.
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