“Bring home the troops!”
This is not only the cry of anti-war protesters and political campaigns, but also the current cry of many churches and pastors.
No more fighting over doctrine or truth. The cry is simply to love one another and not cause waves. The thinking is we are to be united, not judgmental.
As Pastor John MacArthur aptly wrote in the introduction of his book, “The Truth War”(2007),
“We also happen to be living in a generation when many so-called Christians have no taste for conflict and contention. Multitudes of biblically and doctrinally malnourished Christians have come to think of controversy as something that should always be avoided, whatever the cost. Sadly, that is what many weak pastors have modeled for them.”(p. xxiii)
The apostle Paul, in writing to young pastor Timothy, reminded Timothy that not only is he a soldier, but a soldier of Christ Jesus at that. And as a soldier of Christ Jesus he was to please his commanding officer, Jesus Christ(2 Tim. 2:3-4) Like Timothy, all pastors are soldiers under God’s command.
But in the battle for truth, for divine truth, for eternal truth, for Biblical truth, I ask, “Where are the soldiers in today’s pastorates?” “Where are the soldiers in today’s churches?”
If you are called to be a pastor, you are automatically enlisted in Christ’s army. You are to engage the enemies of the truth. Why? Because it is a truth war. Your commanding officer, the Lord Jesus Christ, asks you to boldly, courageously, and unequivocally stand for the truth of His Word. How? By preaching the Word, despite the fact that many, in fact most, will turn away from it(2 Tim. 4:2-4).
Spurgeon put it best.
“The Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point of the spirit of the gospel.
Yet nevertheless, the church on earth has, and until the second advent must be, the church militant, the church armed, the church warring, the church conquering. And how is this?
It is in the very order of things that so it must be. Truth could not be truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once suspect that it were not true if error were friends with it. The spotless purity of truth must always be at war with the blackness of heresy and lies.”
(The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 5, London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1879, 41.)
So I ask. Are you up for the challenge? Or are you going home with the rest of the troops?
