Fighting from the Field vs. the Fortress

Have you ever stood inside an old stone castle and looked up at its walls? They rise twenty, thirty, even fifty feet high, thick enough that no medieval weapon could penetrate them. From within, you can hear the wind, perhaps even the distant sounds of activity beyond the walls, but you are untouchable. The arrows that once would have meant your death now thud harmlessly against stone. You can almost feel sorry for the archer outside, straining his bow, sweating in the sun, accomplishing nothing.

For most of my Christian life, I lived as though I were that archer's target standing in an open field. I believed in Christ. I prayed. I read Scripture. And yet the fiery darts kept finding their mark. The passions of the flesh, the wandering of the mind, the persistent assaults of the enemy—these struck home with painful regularity. I tried harder. I disciplined myself. I confessed and re-confessed. And still the arrows came, and still they pierced.

It took me thirty years to discover that I had been fighting the wrong battle in the wrong place.

I had gone to church, yes. I had attended my particular ecclesial community with regularity. But when it came to the battles of the flesh, I tried to venture out into the open field and fight these things alone. I did not rest in the fortress, the Church, and thought I could conquer the archer's fiery flames by my will, by my own individual prayers, by my own personal study.

But here's the truth. We humans, standing alone, are no match for the devil. Constitutionally, we lack the resources on our own to stand against Him. But Christ has provided a refuge. That refuge is Christ. And He has given us a body, a body not perplexed by the passions of the flesh, that cannot so long as we stand within the structure He has given us, fall prey to the archer who fires his arrows into our flesh.

 

A Stunning Claim

Paul takes this on in his letter to the Ephesians. After describing the spiritual death we once endured—"following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2)—he announces what God has done in Christ:

"And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6).

Pay attention to the tenses Paul uses here! If you read it too quickly, you will miss it. Paul does not say we will be raised and seated. He uses the aorist tense in the Greek—synēgeiren and synekathisen—a completed action.

The resurrection and ascension are not merely future hopes for us. They are present realities. We have already been raised. We are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

This is not poetic exaggeration. Paul is stating a profound truth that changes everything: that those who are in Christ participate, even now, in the victories Christ accomplished.

His resurrection becomes our resurrection. His ascension becomes our ascension. His enthronement becomes our enthronement.

But how? How can such a thing be?

 

The Body and the Head

The answer comes just a few verses earlier, where Paul describes Christ as the one whom God "has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23).

Here is the key that unlocks everything. We participate in Christ's resurrection and ascension because we are members of His Body. The Church is not merely an organization that gathers people who happen to believe similar things. The Church is the Body of Christ—really, mystically, ontologically. Where the Head goes, the Body goes. The Church, as Christ created it, is not a decapitated body. It is not a body like these "earthen vessels" we walk around in every day, so vulnerable, so prone to weakness.

What the Head has accomplished, the Body shares in.

Saint Augustine grasped this beautifully when he wrote of the totus Christus, the "whole Christ," Head and members together. To be incorporated into the Church is to be incorporated into Christ Himself. To remain outside the fullness of the Church is to remain, in some real sense, outside the fullness of what Christ has won for us.

This is why Paul can say with such confidence that the old life of being driven about by "the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses" (Ephesians 2:3) is not merely a behavior to be modified.

It is a location to be left. It is a position from which we have been transferred.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:4-5).

 

Why the Arrows Still Found Me

For three decades I struggled against the same passions, the same temptations, the same darkness of mind. I would gain ground for a season, then lose it. I would resolve, then fail. I would confess (usually privately, in prayer alone), then repeat. And I came to believe this was simply the Christian life—that I was destined to remain simultaneously "saint and sinner," in an enduring struggle against which I could not find liberation in this life. 

A perpetual, exhausting, mostly losing battle against an enemy who always seemed to know exactly where I was vulnerable.

What I did not understand was that I was trying to fight the enemy from the open field when Christ had already provided me a fortress.

The fiery darts that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6 were finding their mark because I had not yet taken up my position within the fullness of the Body. Yes, I was baptized. I technically belonged to His body, but I was living my life outside of the body, for the most part. Even when I'd attend church, when I left the building, I was going at it mostly alone. I'd come to think that the church was just a kind of "gathering" of individuals, rather than a communion in His body. When the archer (the enemy) came out against me, I tried to go at him with a sword in my hand (yes, the Word of truth) but I was charging after him in an open field. I was swinging the Word like a sword in mid-air, charging at the enemy, who simply widened his stance, took aim, and struck me with his arrows wherever my flesh was vulnerable.

Again, and again, and again.

I was fighting in fragments, drawing on partial graces, equipped with partial armor.

This is not to say that those outside the fullness of the Church receive no grace. God's mercy is wide, and He works wherever hearts are open to Him. But there is a difference between trying to catch rain from a little cup and standing under the full torrent of a waterfall. There is a difference between wearing a few pieces of armor, leaving parts of myself vulnerable, and being fully suited up. There is a difference between fighting just outside the fortress and dwelling within its walls.

When I came home to the fullness of the Church, something I cannot fully explain began to happen. And it happened more quickly than I expected. Not all at once, not without continued struggle, but unmistakably. It happened by returning to His graces regularly, frequently, without hesitation. The arrows began to lose their power. The same temptations that had struck like bullseyes for thirty years now seemed to thud against something solid. I could hear them, the enemy was still out there, I could sometimes hear his attacks come against me, like a thunk against stone, but they were not piercing my heart anymore.

I had not become stronger. I had simply moved inside the walls.

 

Seated with Him

But Paul says even more. We are not merely sheltered. We are not merely defended. We are "seated with him in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6).

To sit with a king in his throne room was, in the ancient world, to share in his authority. The right hand of the king was reserved for those who exercised his power on his behalf. When Paul says we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, he is making a claim about authority, not just safety.

This is why he can later command us to "be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power" (Ephesians 6:10) and to take up "the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one" (Ephesians 6:16). The same enemy who once held us captive now stands beneath our feet, because he stands beneath the feet of Christ, and we are members of Christ's Body. "The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16:20).

Your feet! Why? Because if we are fully incorporated into His body, well, His feet are our feet. We are no longer standing by our personal merits, we are standing in the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

The flesh, the world, the devil—these have not disappeared. They still prowl. They still shoot their arrows. But their relationship to us has fundamentally changed. We are no longer prey. We are no longer targets standing exposed. We are seated with Christ, sharing in His authority, clothed in His armor, dwelling within His Body.

 

Sweet Liberty

There is a paradox here that Saint Paul understood, that the saints have echoed across the centuries, that we who often throw around words like "liberty" and "freedom" fail to comprehend.

We've mistaken "freedom" for individualism. We've misunderstood "liberty" to mean "I'll do what I want!"

The greatest freedom comes through the deepest binding. To be bound to Christ in His Church is to be set free from every other bondage that ever held us. "For freedom Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1).

The world tells us that freedom is the absence of constraint, the ability to do whatever we wish. But this is a counterfeit freedom that leads, as Paul observed in Ephesians 2, only to slavery to the passions.

True freedom is not the absence of constraint but the presence of right relationship.

It is being so fully bound to Christ that His life becomes our life, His will becomes our will, His victory becomes our victory.

His flesh is now our flesh. His mind is our mind. His heart, our heart.

This is not absorption or annihilation. We do not cease to be ourselves. Rather, we become who we were created to be, finally and fully.

The grain of wheat that falls into the ground does not lose itself. It becomes the harvest.

 

Living from Inside the Walls

How do we apply this in daily life? How do we move from believing this theologically to living it practically?

First, we must learn to recognize where we are standing. When temptation comes, when the arrows fly, the first question is not "How do I fight this?" but "Where am I positioned?"

Have I, by neglect or sin or distraction, wandered outside the fortress walls? Am I trying to fight in the open field again? Have I bought into this kind of "lone ranger" individualistic version of Christianity that tries to go at it alone? Have I made my faith all about a personal relationship with Jesus, while clinging to a kind of disembodied, ethereal Jesus, who does not Himself have a body?

Have I forgotten that the Church, for all her external flaws and institutional issues, and for all the weak souls within it who are constantly wandering outside the walls of Christ's body and falling prey to the enemy, is still the same Jesus, the same body, the same refuge that He established? Have we forgotten that Christ's body has risen from the dead> Have we forgotten that He sits at the right hand of God the father with an authority that the enemy cannot thwart? The Sacraments, prayer, Scripture, the communion of the saints—these are not optional accessories to the Christian life. They are Christ for us and in us! They are the walls themselves. They are how we remain within the fullness of the Body.

Second, we must learn to fight from a position of victory rather than toward a position of victory. The classical mistake of the spiritual life, the one I made for most of my life, is to believe that we are struggling to attain something we do not yet possess. But Paul tells us we are already raised, already seated, already victorious in Christ.

Our task is not to climb a mountain by sheer force of the will, to forge some kind of super-disciplined constitution for ourselves, but to live with Christ, upon the summit of faith, that is in the fortress that cannot be prevailed against by the forces of hell.

When the enemy whispers that we are losing, he's speaking like a pitiful archer, firing his darts against a stone wall. He might be a nuisance, and he is. But his arrows will not hit their mark unless we wander outside the walls, unless we make ourselves vulnerable to his attacks.

Reply to the devil that that the battle has already been won. When he tells us we are weak, we answer that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We are beyond his reach, provided we remain in Christ. Provided we do not wander into the open field.

Third, we must guard our position with vigilance and gratitude. To dwell in the fullness of the Church is a gift, not a possession we have earned. The saints remained inside the walls because they cultivated daily habits of return: regular prayer, frequent reception of the Eucharist, examination of conscience, frequent confession, devotion to the Word. These are not legalistic burdens. These are not "human efforts," they are gifts, they are the rhythm of life within the Church, within the fortress that is His body. These are the ordinary means by which we remain where Christ has placed us.

If you look to the church and see past wounds, if you see a "corrupt institution," you are fixated not on the body of Christ, not the Church proper, but have mistaken the fortress for the field, you've looked at those who wandered outside the walls and made themselves vulnerable, and made the judgment that the walls were to blame.

If someone who you thought was in the Church wounded you in some way, it is not because they were in the Church that they hurt you, it's because they themselves wandered from it, and did not stand fully within the graces that the walls of the Church provide.

Wounded animals often lash out in violent ways. And sadly, many who have been wounded themselves by their lack of fidelity to Christ and the Church, often behave like such animals. This is not an excuse. It is a sad, and painful reality. Because the doors of the Church are not locked, it is not a prison. Many choose to wander out into the field, and wounded themselves on account of their lack of fidelity, wound others.

When you see flaws, corruption, in the Church, it is not the Church proper that is to blame. It is the foolishness of those who, like us, are prone to wander.

The fortress still stands, because the body of Christ cannot be defeated by the enemy.

What you see as corruption and brokenness within the Church is not on account of the Church herself, for she is one-in-flesh with the Bridegroom. It is on account of those who have wandered outside the walls, who have not properly availed themselves of the refuge that is theirs, who have done precisely what you think you're doing to protect yourself when you wander away.

Those who leave the Church because of those who have been unfaithful, those who have been too restless to rest in Him, are actually following closer to the path of the very people who they think they're running from. Unwittingly, thinking they are protecting themselves, they are actually assuming the same posture of those who are wounded and have wounded them, of those who are corrupt, sinful, and broken, precisely because they did not faithfully embrace their place within Christ, His body, the Church.

The answer to what you rightly see as brokenness among those who should belong to the Church is not to run away. It is to stand more firmly within the Church, within the graces God provides within. What you see and have blamed the Church for are the wounded who wandered outside, who made the same mistake that in your resentment you think you're making to protect yourself. Because the Church is not merely those who happen to wander into the doors of your parish, who might volunteer, who might even attend regularly.

The Church is Christ. And those who belong to Him, in total, who surrender their passions of flesh and mind to Him, will be healed. They will stand against the assaults of the enemy. And they will be vessels of healing, because having pressed their wounds into His, they will be healed, themselves.

Finally, realizing all of this, we must not only return to the fullness of the Church, but we must learn to extend a hand to those still standing in the open field. We were once there ourselves. We have often wandered beyond the walls and the enemy has struck us with his arrows—maybe not in the same place, or the same way he has struck others, but we've been wounded. We know the exhaustion of fighting alone, the pain of vulnerability when the enemy's arrows always seemed to find their mark. The Church is not a private fortress but a city set on a hill. Its walls are wide enough for all who would enter. Our witness is to point toward the gates and say, with all the joy of one who has come home, "Come inside. There is room for you here. Christ has prepared a place where the arrows cannot reach you, where you can sit with Him in the heavenly places, where His life will become your life."

That does not mean you will not encounter broken people inside the parish walls. It does not mean there will not be those who are wounded themselves, who in their insecurity, might try to wound you. But if you are fully sheltered in His embrace, they cannot harm you. Not really. Not if you are fully resting in Him.

This is not merely an invitation to "join," to put one's name on the roster. It is an invitation, in fact, for many who might technically "belong" already. It is and invitation to move body and soul, in full surrender of oneself into His body, into His heart, into His graces.

This is the sweet liberty Paul proclaims. Not freedom from struggle, but freedom from defeat. Not the absence of the arrows of temptation, but the presence of walls strong enough to thwart every assault. Not the personal achievement of holiness, but the gift of participation in the Holy One who has already joined us to Him. The source of holiness is not our personal discipline, but it is His holiness. The secret of sanctity is not a "tactic," or a multi-step formula, or even a particular regimen of spiritual disciplines and prayers. It is a Person, it is Christ, Himself.

All those disciplines and prayers, all that Bible reading and volunteering, are good not as a means toward an end, not as mere "tools" we use to build ourselves up, but become good in themselves when they are practiced with Him at the heart, in His love. A thousand disciplines and prayers done in vanity, as if we think by the mere performance of such piety we might become holy, achieve nothing of merit, and may even become occasions for sin. To pray like that is to be like the sword-wielding soldier who ventures out against the enemy, the archer, who will fire his arrows at us before we take a single step against him.

A single prayer, though, offered in great love, in connection with He who is Love Himself, is to lose oneself in His victory; it is to live as a member of His body, and to dwell in the safety and security of the One who has already risen us from the dead, who has seated us with Him in the heavenly places.

We have been raised with Him. We are seated with Him. The fortress is real, and its gates are open.