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Spiritual Combat, Highlighting Satan’s Pincer Movement
A Military Maneuver
Military leaders have studied the Bible to understand war or battle strategy. Very many times, God makes military allusions in scripture. Almost since the beginning of time, a war exists. The Apostle Paul calls for soldiers and he himself fights a good fight. What strategy does Satan use?
In his art of war, Satan often uses what armed forces call a “pincer movement.” It is like it sounds if you understand getting pinched. My dad would pinch me in church when I fell asleep, so I understand the threat and possible pain of a pinching. The pincer movement is a military maneuver where an opposing army attacks simultaneously on what experts call, “both flanks.”
In 1943, General George Patton led the U.S. 7th Army in a pincer movement against Messina, Sicily, as part of the Allies’ attempt to trap Axis forces before they could retreat to the Italian mainland. The pincer movement involved the British 8th Army moving up the southeast coast of the island, while the U.S. 7th Army moved east across the north coast. During the American Revolutionary War, the British used a pincer movement, also known as a “double envelopment,” in several battles to isolate New England from the rest of the colonies and gain control of the Hudson River Valley.
Satan’s Pincer Movements
How does Satan use a pincer movement to attack a believer on both flanks? On one flank, he attacks with a force of persecution or punishment. Satan threatens the believer to succumb to his pressure of persecution.
As the believer looks at the flank of persecution and moves away from it, Satan lures the same believer with the allurements of the flesh. He feels justified gratifying his flesh because of the poor treatment he experiences. You can see these two working in tandem in different places in scripture.
Anyone in the world of Noah saw what he endured as a preacher of righteousness. At the same time “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair” (Genesis 6:2). Those are the very two pincers of lust and persecution.
Satan brought the pressure against Israel from Pharoah with his harsh treatment of those people before the Exodus. He made their work harder by not providing straw for brick making. Israel also craved for the leeks, garlic, and onions that they had in Egypt.
Overall, the merchants of Babylon in Revelation 18:15 prospered through Babylon’s luxury under the leadership of the Satanic Antichrist. On the other hand, he makes war against and starves those who are against him in Revelation 13.
The Defeat of the Satanic Strategy
God uses many different examples in the Bible of Satan using the pincer movement in his war against God. Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12:11 of not being ignorant of Satan’s devices. Satan employs a strategic approach often likened to a military pincer movement in his ongoing conflict against God and humanity. This tactic involves attacking from two flanks simultaneously, creating pressure that can overwhelm and confuse the target.
The flank of persecution and the other of lust are not the only pincers he uses. Sometimes he couples lust with the intellectual onslaught of false teachers. Other times one side are those false teachers and on the other are the personal conflicts with believers either inside or outside the church. Very often Satan fights his war on two fronts just like the United States faced both the Japanese and the Germans on two different ones in World War 2.
Like all war and battle against Satan, believers must recognize what Satan does. They should engage in prayer and put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18). Believers can also find support and relief from their brothers in the church (Hebrews 10:24-25). They should focus on the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ, and their future of eternal rewards that awaits them.
The Law Enhances, Does Not Conflict, With Grace
Relationship Between the Law and Grace or Faith
In Galatians, the Apostle Paul argues for salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He opposes the alternative, adding even one work to grace. Paul provides several arguments in Galatians 3 for the churches of Galatia to combat corruption of a true gospel.
To understand the right relationship of the law to grace and faith, Paul gives a great clue with a question in Galatians 3:21.
Is the law then against the promises of God?
This is a rhetorical question as seen in his answer in verse 21: “God forbid.” The law is not against the promises of God. It does not conflict with the promises of God. In saying the law does not conflict with the promises of God, he says that the law does not conflict with grace and faith.
Just as a reminder, “God forbid” is the strongest negative in the Greek language. “God forbid” in a technical sense is idiomatic. An idiom is “a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase.” The translators decided a literal translation could not convey the original Greek, so they used the idiomatic expression, “God forbid.” In the context of Galatians 3:21, Paul says no way the law conflicts with the promises of God.
The Law Must Not Conflict with Grace and Faith
For someone to take the correct position on the law, it must not conflict with grace and faith. What position will create a conflict? In the second half of verse 21, Paul says that it is the one that makes the law necessary for life or righteousness. The law does not give life. Neither does it make someone righteous. Only grace or faith does that.
Number one, if the law gives life and righteousness, then grace does not. Number two, if grace gives life and righteousness, then the law does not. If the law and grace or faith do not conflict, then one must take choice number two.
Paul gives several other related arguments for grace alone and faith alone. (1) The salvation of Abraham came by grace alone through faith alone 430 years before the Mosaic law came. (2) When the Mosaic law came, it did not replace (“disannul,” verse 17) grace alone through faith alone, but enhanced it. (3) When the seed (Jesus) arrived 1500 years after the Mosaic law in fulfillment of the promises, He superseded the law. Jesus wouldn’t supersede the law if it was necessary for life and righteousness. It wasn’t.
How Does Jesus Supersede the Law?
Superseding is not abolishing or destroying. I like the word as a description. One might use fulfilled or transcended. The law continues enhancing the promises even with the arrival of the seed. How?
Galatians 3:22 says. The law concludes all under sin, so that they will believe in Jesus Christ for life and righteousness. Galatians 3:23 says that faith does not come to someone until the law locks him up. The law still concludes a person under sin. It still locks up a sinner, so that he looks to Jesus Christ as His only possible deliverance, and believes in Him. Christ comes into the prison of sin and redeems the prisoner who believes in Him.
Unconditional and Unilateral Promises
As you’re reading, you might be asking, what are these “promises” of which I write? They are the promises of the seed made by God that would bring blessing to Abraham’s descendants and all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3, cf. Genesis 3:15). Also, God will impute righteousness to those who believe the promises (Genesis 15:6).
The promises of God of which Paul speaks are unconditional and unilateral. Abraham was asleep (unconscious) when God made that contract, agreement, or covenant with Abraham. Abraham did nothing, no works. This is the point of Galatians that the promises were superior to the law in that they required no mediator. Angels and Moses were mediators of the law. The promises involved only one — God.
When denominations say, “No, you’re involved, people,” they conflict with grace and faith. Now their adherents are required to continue “in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10, cf. Deuteronomy 27-28). They add a mediator to the promises, when there are no mediators for the promises. This brings conflict between the law and grace, to which Paul writes, “God forbid.”
A Right Understanding of the Law
What you hear from me is not a rejection of the law, but a right understanding of it. The law continues. Christ superseded it, but it still enhances the promises of God. The rest of Galatians 3 and into chapter four lays that out. Everyone still needs and should want the moral law of God and the spirit of the ceremonial and judicial laws.
Galatians 3:19 says the law “was added because of transgressions.” John Gill wrote that the law
was over and above added unto [the promises], for the sake of restraining transgressions; which had there been no law, men would not have been accountable for them; and they would have gone into them without fear, and with impunity; but the law was given, to lay a restraint on men, by forbidding such and such things, on pain of death; and also for the detecting, discovering, and making known transgressions, what they are, their nature and consequences; these the law charges men with, sets them before them, in their true light and proper colours; and convicts them of them, stops their mouths, and pronounces them guilty before God.
Saved men, those who received the promises of God, are not under the law. That means they are not under the condemnation of the law. It does not mean they are free to disobey the law. Grace frees us from the condemnation of the law, not the law. Unsaved men still abide under the condemnation of the law. Since the law does not give life and righteousness, they must receive the promises. In other words, they must by grace alone believe alone in Christ alone.
Men Seek Signs and Wisdom, But God Saves by the Foolishness of Preaching the Gospel
1 Corinthians 1:18-32: The Foolishness of Preaching
In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul said God uses the foolishness of preaching to save. God saves people through the foolishness of preaching. Paul started out this section in verse 18 by saying that “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.”
It’s not that the cross is foolishness or that preaching is foolishness. People think it is foolishness and Paul is saying, “That thing they think is foolishness; that’s what God uses to save.” God uses a means that does not make sense. Because people think the gospel is foolishness, they become offended from it.
Of all the offenses of the gospel, Paul gives at least two. (1) The Cross, and (2) Preaching. The cross is offensive. It is this way also in at least two ways. (1) Someone on a cross needs saving. Saving comes by a powerful means. (2) The cross would be to say that Jesus is the Savior or the Messiah. I’m not going to write about that in this post. Instead, preaching.
Rather Signs or Wisdom
Paul in essence asks, “Why use preaching when Jews seek after signs and Greeks after wisdom?” (1 Cor 1:22) He divides all men into these two different methodological categories. Jews and Greeks need signs and wisdom, not preaching. In my thirty-five plus years of ministry, I agree that every audience of ministry breaks down into those two general categories.
When you think of signs and wisdom, that might seem like two items people should like and want. They are two biblical words. In a very technical sense, a sign is a miracle. Almost exclusively, I think someone should view a miracle as a sign gift. I will get back to that.
Wisdom. Isn’t Proverbs about wisdom? We pray for wisdom. How could wisdom be bad? Proverbs 4:7 says, “Wisdom is the principle thing.”
Signs and Wisdom
Signs
Signs are something evident in a way of supernatural intervention. If there is a God, won’t He do obvious supernatural things? “If He doesn’t do those, why should I believe in Him? I want to see some signs. Wouldn’t He give me those if He really wanted me to believe in Him? That would be easy for Him, if He really did exist. If God did give me signs, I would believe. Since He doesn’t, then I won’t believe or I don’t need to believe.”
The absence of signs is not that God is not working. He works in thousands of different ways in every moment. They are all supernatural. We even can see how God is working in numbers of ways.
People would say they want more than God’s providential working. That isn’t enough. They want God to make it easy for them to believe by doing something amazing and astounding like what they read that Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the Apostles did. People desire direct supernatural divine intervention.
Churches feel the pressure to fake signs, because people want them. They aren’t signs, because they’re faking them, which redefines even what a sign is. Churches also conjure up experiences that give an impression that something supernatural is occurring. People can claim a sign from a lowered expectation of what a sign is. Even if it isn’t something supernatural, people want to feel something at church that might have them think the Holy Spirit is there. This is their evidence for God.
Wisdom
Wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1 isn’t God’s wisdom, but human or man’s wisdom. This could be what people call “science” today. It is scientific proof or evidence. They need data or empirical evidence. This is very brainy arguments.
God is working in the world. It is good to talk about that. This is known as the providence of God. He upholds this world and all that is in it in many various ways. I love that.
A lot of evidence exists out there for everything that is in the Bible: archaeological, scientific, psychological, logical, and historical. People will say that’s what they need and that’s what makes sense to them. Even if they’re not saying that, it makes sense to believers that they need intellectual arguments.
Jews and Greeks in 1 Corinthians 1 represent all apparent seekers in God. If churches and their leaders are seeker sensitive, they would provide signs and wisdom. In a categorical way, that’s what they do. They use the preferred ways of their audience, rather than what God says to do. Apparent seekers are not the source for a method of salvation. God is.
You could give analysis as to the place of signs and wisdom as categorical approaches for ministry philosophy. Churches are rampant with both. Paul is saying, eliminate those as methods. Use the God-ordained method only.
God wants preaching as the method of accomplishing salvation. People are not saved any other way than preaching. Many reasons exist for this, some given in 1 Corinthians 1 and others in other biblical texts.
Suzerain-Vassal Treaties & the Books of Moses: Joshua Berman
I had the privilege of interviewing Jewish scholar Dr. Joshua Berman, professor of Hebrew Bible at Bar-Illan University in Israel, on the fact that the books of Moses, the Pentateuch, follow the late second Millennium BC format of a suzerain-vassal treaty. This fact strongly supports the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and, hence, the existence of genuine and unavoidable predictive prophecy in the Bible, and, thus, the Bible’s Divine authorship. Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the suzerain or great King, and Israel is the vassal, the subordinate dependent on the suzerain.
When my wife and I visited Egypt last year as part of a faculty tour of Egypt led by evangelical scholar James Hoffmeier, we had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Berman in Luxor, Egypt, on the issue of suzerain-vassal treaties (he prefers to be called “Joshua.”) Joshua Berman explains the issue quite clearly and effectively, so if you find the terminology “suzerain vassal treaty” scary, watch the video below of the interview, and I suspect you will both understand the issue and see the value of it for Christian apologetics.
I have posted about apologetics videos recorded on this trip to Egypt in previous posts on this blog, such as this one on the famous Merneptah Stele.
Ironically, when I debated president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker, on the Old Testament, Mr. Barker claimed that “The Israelis over in Israel … the archaeologists are throwing up their hands saying, ‘No, there’s nothing. None of these stories has any archaeological evidence at all.’” Barker’s assertion was always ridiculous, as was demonstrated within the debate itself, but the interview with Dr. Berman provides even more evidence for the foolishness of Mr. Barker’s argument.
After the interview with Dr. Joshua Berman, other scholars, including Kenneth Kitchen (On the Reliability of the Old Testament), James Hoffmeier (The Archaeology of the Bible), and Meredith Kline (Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy) are also quoted. You can learn more about archaeological evidence for the Old Testament here.
So please watch the video below. You can watch the embed below, or view it on faithsaves.net here, or on Rumble by clicking here, or on YouTube by clicking here.
–TDR
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