Flesh and Blood

A rented house, a soldier attached to the prisoner inside it, and a letter going out. Paul calls himself an ambassador in bonds at the end of this passage, and the tradition puts him in Rome, in the hired house where Acts leaves him. The armour he lists piece by piece was very likely standing in the room.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood gets used to move a problem out of the human world altogether. The husband is not really the problem, the manager is not really the problem, it is spiritual. Take the sentence at its own width. It makes no claim that no flesh and blood is involved, and this letter has just spent three chapters on lying, stealing, anger kept overnight, bitterness and evil speaking, all of it addressed to people doing those things to each other. Paul names names elsewhere without hesitation: Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil. And the verse locates the fight, the rulers of the darkness of this world, in the world where you get up in the morning.

Nor is anybody ordered to advance. Look at the verbs around it. That ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. To withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore. Four times in four verses, and every item on the list is worn rather than swung except one, and that one is the word of God.

A lid made out of this verse costs somebody something every time. The wrong gets renamed a spiritual attack, the man who did it walks off unnamed, and the person it was done to is handed a prayer list instead of a hearing. Or it runs the other way, and whoever is in front of you gets promoted to enemy, which is the one job this verse takes off them. Whoever is at the other end of the conversation you are dreading is flesh and blood. Paul's last request in this passage is that somebody would pray about his mouth.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 311 is Drawing Near with Assurance (Hebrews 10:22).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two