Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses - 1 Tim 6:12
In another one of Paul's letters (and interestingly located at the same chapter and verse mark as our verse above) he writes to the Ephesians, "we battle not against flesh and blood, but against... the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places" - Eph 6:12
The New Testament is clear that people are not our enemies. Jesus tells us to bless those who curse us, and pray for those who persecute us.
Humans are just the vessels through which the spiritual battle between light and darkness takes place. Even those who willingly choose to side with darkness are only doing so because they are ignorant of the true nature of God.
Many people have made God their enemy, but He does not make them His enemy. God only has one enemy and that is sin.
It is sin that destroys and corrupts those whom God loves. God hates sin in exact proportion to how much He loves us. He hates sin precisely because of His love for us.
The battle between God and sin culminated on the Cross of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. Sin was forever defeated when the sinless Son of God willingly gave up His life.
Now for us, followers of Christ 2,000 years later, our battle is no longer against sin because sin has been eternally conquered.
And yet we are commanded as Christians to "fight."
So what is our fight?
Our fight is the good fight of faith.
Our fight is simply to remain unmoved, unfazed, and unaffected by the shifting shadows of the world around us.
Our fight is to stand firm in the faith of God's goodness even when the evidence of our senses says otherwise.
Our fight is to keep Jesus Christ on the throne of our hearts despite the relentless attempts of countless other things to take that place.
Just as a soldier climbs the ranks of the military to the extent that he has demonstrated worthiness of promotion, soldiers in God's army will ascend the ranks in His Kingdom to the extent their faith allows them to.
The way we are promoted by God is by holding the faith in the truth of the Gospel no matter how difficult it gets. And the more difficult it gets, the more our faith has the opportunity to strengthen - given that we remain steadfast.
Thus our trials and temptations are actually the very mechanisms by which God strengthens and grows us. This does not necessarily mean that these trials were ordained by God, but it certainly does mean that God is sovereign over them, and has a perfect plan for how they can ultimately be used to benefit us.
When we take our eyes off of this transient world and fix our gaze upon eternity, only then will we be able to rejoice in our trials, because we will know that they are preparing for us a divine treasure that no thief can break in and steal, and that no moth or rust can ever destroy.
Take up the shield of faith,
with which you can extinguish
all the flaming arrows of the evil one
Eph 6:16
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