Anyone who tries to push forward in the Christian life will inevitably feel something pushing back. This resistance might involve bad habits or negative influences, but there is always more than meets the eye. A spiritual campaign, involving countless individual battles, rages in the unseen realm. As the Apostle Paul teaches in Ephesians 6, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against . . . spiritual forces in heavenly places.”

Among the pieces of armor we have  is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” But how is God’s word like a sword?

Consider how this same imagery is used in the book of Isaiah, where the prophet describes a future Ruler who will “slay the wicked . . . with the breath of his lips” (Isaiah 11:4). It’s a vivid way of showing how this King will render judgment by declaring the division between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and revealing that the wicked fall on the wrong side of that division. The Spirit’s sword, in other words, slices through lies to reveal the truth.

Matthew’s Gospel shows us how Jesus wielded the Spirit’s sword against Satan. The tempter began by  fusing a true statement (“If you are the Son of God”) with a plausible but false inference (“then turn these stones into bread”) to try to get Jesus to choose convenience over obedience. In his next attack, he even used Scripture itself—albeit twisted to serve his diabolical purposes—to lend greater credibility to his enticements.

Using the Spirit’s sword, Jesus deftly sliced through the mass of falsehood. In every temptation, he responded with, “It is written.”

Every day we are faced with attacks that come in the form of bamboozling tangles of truth and lies. “If you will be forgiven, why not go ahead and sin?” “Since you’re going through this hardship, does God really care about you?” “Since you’ve had this bad habit for such a long time, will you ever gain victory?” Like Jesus, we must have “It is written” on the tip of our tongue, ready to wield the Spirit’s sword to cut through these lies, revealing the difference between true and false, right and wrong.