Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 311 · November 7
Flesh and Blood
“For we wrestle 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.”
Paul writes this letter as a prisoner, and at the end of the passage he calls himself "an ambassador in bonds," and Acts says that in Rome he lived "with a soldier that kept him." If that is where he wrote from, the armour he lists piece by piece was close at hand.
Today's verse, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood," is often used to lift a problem out of the human world altogether. People say the husband or the manager is not really the problem, because it is all spiritual. Yet the sentence leaves the people in the picture. Two chapters earlier, this same letter dealt with lying, stealing, anger kept overnight, bitterness and evil speaking, and every one of those is something people do to each other. Elsewhere Paul names a man without hesitating: "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil." And the verse places the struggle against "the rulers of the darkness of this world," which is the same world you get up in each morning.
Nobody is ordered to charge forward, either. Look at the verbs around the verse: "that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil," then "to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand," and then "Stand therefore." That is four times in four verses. Every piece of armour on the list is there for protection except one, "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."
Using this verse to close a matter down always costs somebody. A wrong gets renamed a spiritual attack, the person who did it walks away without being named, and the person it was done to is handed a prayer list when what they needed was a hearing. Or it goes the other way, and whoever is in front of you gets promoted to the enemy. That is the one thing this verse will not let you do to them. The person at the other end of the conversation you are dreading is flesh and blood, and the real enemy is bigger than they are, so you do not have to fight them. You are told to "be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might," and to stand in the armour God gives. Paul's own last request in this passage is for prayer about his mouth, "that I may open my mouth boldly." Ask for the same, and trust God to hold you up while you stand.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 311 is Drawing Near with Assurance (Hebrews 10:22).