Paul's military language

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I find more than a dozen military references in the Pauline corpus. In Philemon, Paul includes in his greetings “Archippus our fellow soldier.” In this week's second reading, Paul advises his readers to stand firm and strive side by side. The former Roman soldiers living in Philippi would have heard a reference to a Roman military formation.

Paul sees in himself “another war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Romans 7:23). According to Paul our persons are the battlefields over which the old and new eras contend.