The Brotherhood Of The Saints

Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.¹ There is a brotherhood spoken of throughout the Bible. What is this brotherhood? Why is it necessary? There is a war on, my brothers and sisters, and it is a very real and literal war. Christians and people in general often fail to grasp the realness of this war, and when life beats them up, they ask, “Why did God let this happen to me?” The question is, is it life that is beating them up, or is it something else?

John 10:10 NKJV "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have [it] more abundantly. 

Christ plainly tells us here that there are thieves who will steal, kill, and destroy, yet Christians act like it's God's fault when the thief appears to kill, steal, steal, and destroy. They feel that He didn’t protect them enough. There is a war on. The time for resting in peace and harmony is in the future, in God’s kingdom. In the meantime, we still have a war to fight! The war is with Satan and his fallen angels. On the Day of Atonement, we have a picture of a final battle where Christ returns and locks Satan away for a thousand years. Among the many other things this day pictures, it pictures the end of the war for a time and gives all of us hope in the future Christ brings with Him. A very somber day indeed. In the meantime, God doesn’t protect us from everything for the very reason that we are His children by the promise of His spirit of adoption. As His children, we are to become warriors of the highest degree. 

Exo 15:3 NKJV The LORD [is] a man of war; The LORD [is] His name.      

Our Father is a man of war! The LORD is His name! How can we call Him our Father if we aren’t willing to get out there and face the fiercest of battles? We talk about becoming like Him, and we miss this crucial aspect, the aspect that we will run into every day of our lives. The battle is real and life-threatening if we choose to ignore it. As our adversary, the best war for Satan to fight against us is one that we don’t even know exists. We may recognize in our minds that Satan is real and spiritual warfare is a thing but is it really real for us? Do we really understand the tangibility of it all? Our lives are on the line; this is a war we can actually die in! This isn't some myth written in the pages of a fairytale book, but a real war. Real monsters and real dragons. How do we face this? We live in a fake world, and the real world is out there in the spirit realm. This physical life is just a simulation of the real deal.  

We need not fear Satan or what his human minions can do to us, for our Father fights at our side and wins the impossible battles for us. We’ve still got to fight the rest. 

2Ti 4:7 NKJV I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  

Paul recognized the realness of this battle when he declared this in his letter to his apprentice Timothy. I have known a few men in my life who embodied this and could have declared this before they died. Paul fought as few men do and endured many trials for sticking to his faith. Trials is just a nice way of saying that he was repeatedly attacked by Satan and his human minions as they tried to break him. Satan doesn’t just want to kill us, he wants to devour our spiritual lives, and the best way for him to do that is by attacking us until we break.

1Pe 5:8 NKJV Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 

This is illustrated perfectly in the story of Job. Not only do we see how Job deals with multiple spiritual attacks, we get to see the spiritual element behind it. It is an invaluable book when looking at the aspect of spiritual warfare. Every major event to befall Job is from Satan, but the most effective ones were from Job’s friends. This is where we begin to get into the Christian brotherhood. Why is it necessary for us to have a brotherhood? We have a war to fight, and who you choose to fight it with can mean the difference between failure and success. The Christian walk is not a lone wolf act. We need, nay, we urgently require fellow warriors to walk the walk with. 

Ecc 4:9-12 NLT Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. 

10 If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. 

11 Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? 

12 A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.

Solomon, in his wisdom, recognized that someone on his own is an easy target and requires fellow warriors to stand firm. Our fellow warriors face the same things we face every day.

1Pe 5:9 NKJV Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.  

When we stand strong together, we are just that much stronger. As children of God, we must prevail.

One of the greatest stories of Christian brotherhood is found in 1st Samuel with the story of David and Jonathan. Even as David replaced Saul, Jonathan’s father, as king of Israel, Jonathan was still a faithful friend to David. They stuck together no matter what. David was a man after God’s own heart and was an example of what it takes to win. David embodied the warrior in everything he did, just as his Father did. He credited God with all of his success in battle, even to the point of saying this:

Psa 18:34 NKJV He teaches my hands to make war, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.  

As a man after God’s own heart, David offers an excellent example of how we should behave as Christian men. We need a brotherhood. Christ offered Himself for our sins as He fulfilled the words He spoke when He said, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.” The Bible is full of examples of brotherhood. It is an essential aspect for us to have in place, not just for men but for women as well.

Interestingly women tend to be better about having a sisterhood than men do with having a brotherhood. We tend towards the lone wolf example. This isn’t a good thing; we need other men. Without that, we will never have our masculinity challenged; without it being challenged, we will never grow. Growth is, of course, the essential factor in growing to become men after God’s own heart. There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end of it is the way of death. When we don’t walk according to the warrior's path, the path of God, we will be defeated.

This war has claimed many casualties, whether physically or worse, spiritually. Physical death means nothing as long as we never die spiritually. Many in the Church fell away and died spiritually. They isolated themselves from everyone else and had no growth, or they chose the wrong people to fight with, and those people drew them away. This is evidenced through all of the church splits where one part of the church is pulled away to Sunday keeping instead of Sabbath keeping. Those people knew what was right, but they chose the wrong marching partners. In the church today, there is a lack of realism regarding the spiritual war raging all around us, and this has led to an abundance of weak men.

Make-believe about spiritualism is more prevalent in books and movies than it was 50 years ago. When Satan has pushed spiritual war, and any war really, into the realm of the make-believe, he has succeeded in making us believe that spiritual warfare isn’t real either. Tales of superheroes and extra-human beings fighting and winning wars don’t inspire us to action; they inspire us to believe that someone else will fight for us. They inspire us to sit back and take it easy. This is obviously dangerous and just what our opponent in this war wishes us to believe. 

War is hard. It isn’t even a little bit easy and the only easy day was yesterday. Our main opponent is seeking to devour our spiritual life and, like a thief seeking to steal our opportunity at eternal life. What about that sounds easy? Why do we expect God to fight all of our battles and shelter us from everything? He gave us His Spirit not so that we can shelter in place and perform cheap parlor tricks but so that we can go out as His children and wage the war we are called to fight. I ask again, what about that sounds easy? Having God’s spirit within us doesn’t mean that all of our problems magically go away. Far from it. We do, however, gain tremendous strength because, in our weakness, our puny human frailty, God’s spirit makes us strong. If God shelters us from everything and fights all of our battles for us, what then inspires growth? War is hell, and we are given tools, as I covered in the article of the same name. These are spiritual tools given to a spiritual army. 

God’s holy days lay out the path we take from spiritual birth to our final destination through all of the warfare and trials we must face along the way. Christ made it all possible through His sacrifice on Passover, His covering of our sins so that we may have eternal life. On a day that directly parallels Christ’s victory over the law of death on Passover, we have the Day of Atonement. On this day, there were two goats, one killed and one imprisoned. One bore all of the blame and shame for the influence of sin in the world. The other was killed to atone for the sins of the people. One final banishment of sin. Satan, with all of his evil influence over the hearts of men, will be banished for a thousand years at the last battle before the Millenium. That’s how the war ends for a while. We get a thousand-year rest from Satan and his influence. Satan will be released for a time after that, and there will be one final battle before the eternal kingdom of God. Atonement is a day of war.

Psa 149:5-9 NKJV Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing aloud on their beds.

6 [Let] the high praises of God [be] in their mouth, And a two-edged sword in their hand,

7 To execute vengeance on the nations, And punishments on the peoples;

8 To bind their kings with chains, And their nobles with fetters of iron;

9 To execute on them the written judgment--This honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!

Rev 19:11, 14 NKJV Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him [was] called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. ... And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses.

A somber occasion with a joyous outcome. The conflagration of all our battles through this life. The final countdown. That is why we fight in this life; that is what we are working towards, what Paul saw when he said, “I have fought the good fight.” There is nothing easy about this. Fighting the good fight is a day-in and day-out ordeal. We all are under constant attack; if you don’t think so, pay extra attention to the thoughts running through your mind. Pay attention to the things that come into your life for seemingly no reason. Now, do you see? All of these things are physical manifestations of a spiritual war. All of the homosexuality, the transgenderism, and people sleeping together before marriage, all of these things are symptoms of the spiritual warfare around us. 

We face a great evil, the greatest evil ever known to mankind. On our own, we have no hope. We need fellow warriors to face this war successfully. We need fellow warriors who are strong in the faith, and yet even this is not enough. We need God and His spirit. He is the most important member of our brotherhood. If He is not part of it, the brotherhood will fail.

Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.

Psalms 127:1 NKJV

We have a wonderful future if we can but stick it out to the end of the fight. We must choose our brotherhood carefully, filling the ranks with those men we trust to have our six. We are all sinful creatures, but we can become more like Christ together. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. This means that we will be strong where our brother may be weak, and they will be strong where we are weak. Together we are stronger, but a man on his own, how easily he falls!               

¹1 Peter 2:17