Daily Manna · Day 291 · October 18
Mighty Spiritual Weapons
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God.”
A man lies awake having the same argument he had last night. He wins it again, in detail, with all the good lines in the right order. But by breakfast the other side has started over, and the same old sentence about him is sitting in the same chair.
The objection to a verse like this is fair, and worth saying plainly. Talk of spiritual warfare is where a lot of sensible people lose interest. It can sound like an excuse to blame invisible forces for ordinary problems, and it has been used that way often enough to earn their doubt.
So look at what Paul is really fighting when he writes this. He is defending his own work against critics in Corinth, and he reports what they were saying: "For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." So the battle is over arguments about him. His words are the words of a siege, "the pulling down of strong holds," and in the next breath he names what is being torn down: "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." The word "imaginations" here means reasonings, ways of thinking. He finishes with "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." So a stronghold is an idea with walls around it. It has been held so long that it no longer looks like an opinion. It looks like a fact about you.
That is why you cannot win the argument at night. "Carnal" weapons are merely human ones, the ones you keep reaching for: cleverness, effort, a better case. They do not take a wall down. What takes it down is slower, and it comes from outside your own head: God's truth, brought to bear on that thought until it bows to Christ.
May the sentence that has been holding that ground be named for what it is. May God give you His words, words you did not write, to answer it with. And may the pulling down be slow and steady enough that you can trust it, because the weapons are "mighty through God."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 291 is Abundantly Pardon (Isaiah 55:8-9).