In 1813 U. S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry whipped the British in the Battle of Lake Erie. Perry telegraphed news of the victory to General William Henry Harrison in the famous words, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” In 1970 cartoonist Walk Kelly lent his talents to the first Earth Day by publishing a poster that showed his character Pogo the Possum wandering through a polluted Okefenokee Swamp and observing, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Paul’s language resonates with the military imagery, but his theology is more Pogo than Perry.
He uses three military terms to describe the plight of the sinner: Sin “wages war,” taking the battle to the turf of our very bodies (v.23). Sin takes the soul “prisoner,” the technical term for a POW (v.23). The soul cries out to be “set free,” a verb that denotes a surrounded soldier sending an SOS from the battlefield (v.24).
But this is a Fifth Column combat against an internal enemy with a familiar face. I undermine my own goals, I disobey my own rules, I do what I don’t want and don’t do what I love. I have met the enemy, and he is me.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose imprisonment in Stalinist Russia led to his Christian conversion, acknowledge an inability to exonerate himself by demonizing the Communists: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
And yet it is for just such a destruction that the apostle cries out.
“Batter my heart, three person’d God,” begged the poet John Donne, “for you/As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend./That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend/Your force, to break, blowe, burn and make me new.” We cannot ask the Almighty to negotiate with terrorists; only total war will do.
Theologians and exegetes debate the identity of the “I” in this passage. Is it Paul himself? Then is it pre-conversion Paul or post-conversion Paul? Or is it a personification of the nation of Israel, or perhaps some generic Everyman? For myself I have no trouble: I have met the “I,” and I am he. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who loves me enough to rescue me at any cost – even His own death, and even mine.
Bring It On,
Doug
Collect
God and Father of Christ Our Lord, we confess that we have willingly surrendered to sin. Deny us what we want that you may give us what we need: freedom not only from the consequences of sin but from the curse of sin, deliverance not only from the destruction of sin but from the desire to sin, that we might find the satisfaction of our true longing to be holy as You are holy. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Benediction
May the Law of God attract you,
That you might see the glory of God’s goodness.
May the Law of God condemn you,
That you might see the sinfulness of your soul.
May the Son of God set you free
That you might know the salvation that comes only through the Cross of Christ
Our Lord
In whose Name we pray,
Together with the Father,
And the Holy Spirit,
One God now and forever,
Amen.
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