In general, when preaching on a text, I tend to honor the counsel Lewis Carroll’s King of Hearts gave the White Rabbit during the trial of the Knave of Hearts: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” In general. This morning is an exception, because we have this giant hook on the imagination in the middle of our final passage from Ephesians, and we need to tend to that reality first and work outward from there.
We’re told twice to put on the whole armor of God. If you’re wondering why a sword is included when it isn’t armor, the Greek word is panoplia, which means the full set of a soldier’s equipment, not just the armor. We could translate it more exactly, but “whole armor of God” is what King James’s translators gave us, it’s what people are used to, and it’s close enough—especially since it highlights the most important point, which is our need to put on all these things. Every piece is necessary, and it’s only effective as a coherent whole.
Paul isn’t originating anything here. He’s used armor imagery briefly in 1 Thessalonians 5:8, saying, “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” Both there and here, he’s drawing on imagery from Isaiah. In Isaiah 59, God puts on his armor to defeat his enemies; Isaiah 11 pictures the Messiah wearing righteousness and faithfulness as a belt; Isaiah 52:7 declares, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the one who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” The Wisdom of Solomon, one of the books of the Apocrypha, took Isaiah’s language and developed it at greater length: “The Lord will take his zeal as his whole armor, and will arm all creation to repel his enemies; he will put on righteousness as a breastplate, and wear impartial justice as a helmet; he will take holiness as an invincible shield, and sharpen stern wrath for a sword, and creation will join with him to fight against his frenzied foes.” Paul’s working with an established tradition here. The most important thing to notice is that in Isaiah 59 and Wisdom 5, the texts explicitly talking about armor, that armor is worn by God.
Before looking at the armor piece by piece, we need to look at the cultural reality of armor. Warriors wear minimal armor if any because they fight as individuals—they run at the enemy and hit anyone they can find to hit. Gladiators? Some types wore some armor, but none wore a full set. Gladiatorial combat was fighting as spectacle, and armor slows things down. Each type was given certain armor and weapons to force them to fight in a certain way. The full panoply was for soldiers, who fight together as a team. They’re protected not just by their own armor but by everyone being armored together, standing their ground together and covering one another with their shields. The full set of equipment wasn’t for solo fighting, it was communal.
Having established that, let’s look at the panoply Paul mentions in detail. The first item is the belt of truth. Roman armor had two different belt-like pieces: the leather apron which hung down to protect the thighs and the metal girdle which protected the groin and held the strap for the scabbard. Paul doesn’t use the technical term for either, which tells us two things. One, he wants his hearers to think of both. Two, using the word “belt” strengthens the allusion to Isaiah 11 and points to the belt’s basic purpose. Armor was worn over the clothing, of which the basic piece was the tunic. This was a shapeless garment which hung all the way to the ground, making it hard to move either freely or fast. To run, to work, to do anything active, you had to “gird up” your tunic—to pull it up and tuck the hem into the belt to keep it up and out of the way. That was job #1 for your belt, whatever else you might use it to do.
Before you can march, much less fight, you have to be able to move, so everything began with the belt. Truth, then, is the first thing necessary for the battle we’re fighting. That means a couple different things which we’ve seen in this letter. In 1:13 and 4:21, Paul’s focus is the truth we’ve been given, which is the truth of God revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Elsewhere in chapter 4 and into chapter 5, he talks about giving truth, by speaking truth rather than falsehood and by living in the truth we believe and proclaim. Everything we say should be centered on the gospel; everything we do should be all about the gospel and done with honesty, authenticity, and integrity. The warfare to which we’re called is not about controlling behavior, political advantage, or cultural restoration. It is always, only, and entirely about proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ consistently in our words and in our actions.
Second, the breastplate of righteousness. As you can see on the title slide, Roman soldiers of the time wore segmented armor—overlapping metal strips, rather like vinyl siding, that wrapped around the body and connected in the back—to cover the core of the body from the base of the neck down to the belt. Against arrows and stabbing weapons like short swords and spears, the torso was the area most in need of protection. It’s also the center of our movement. If you think in terms of football or basketball, defenders are taught to watch the torso. You can move your head and arms in different directions than the one in which you intend to go, but not the chest: where it goes, the rest of you goes. Watch the head or the arms, you might get faked out of your socks. Watch the torso, you’ll keep yourself in position to make a play.
Again, Paul has addressed two different aspects of righteousness. In the first part of the letter, he talks about the righteousness we have been given by God through the death and resurrection of Christ. Beginning with 2:10, his focus is on living out that righteousness, putting on the way of life that flows out of his new life in our hearts. Righteousness is about how we move and the direction in which we’re going, and it protects our hearts from being damaged by sin.
Third, we have an association between shoes and peace—the exact meaning of the phrase is disputed, but the general idea is clear, as is the allusion to Isaiah 52:7. Roman soldiers wore caligae, which get described both as half-boots and as sandals because they were both. Caligae had thick leather soles with hobnails driven into the bottom for traction. They were designed to give the legions a firm connection with the ground, because that makes everything else possible. Your feet are your anchor point. If you want to plant both your feet to stand firm, or to stick one in the ground and push off to move forward, you have to have contact with the ground which you can trust not to move. I learned this vividly my sophomore year at Hope when we had a major ice storm followed by inches of sleet. I had to be out that day, walking down to church—I was the liturgist for the coming Sunday—and just imagine trying to walk on multiple layers of ball bearings resting on polished metal, all of it oiled slick. It was impossible to walk normally; if you tried to plant your foot and push off, instead of your foot staying in place and your body moving forward, your foot would slide backwards through the sleet and you’d go nowhere.
Two things to note here. One, the peace of God—both the peace he has made between us and him and the peace he has placed in our hearts—is what grounds us. This means two things. God’s peace removes the anxiety of falling and the fear of the enemy, because it enables us to stand firm. In addition, in any war of conquest, the goal is to claim territory, and you do that with boots on the ground—with human beings standing on the ground and holding it for your side. For us, the boots on the ground are boots of peace. We’re called to claim territory with the peace of God. We wage war on spiritual powers to wage peace with other people—and the peace of God is in fact a weapon for us against the powers of darkness. Look at the caligae, think of a baseball player sliding feet-first with cleats high, and you can understand why Roman soldiers were able to use them as weapons in the heat of battle.
Fourth, the shield of faith, and you can see the shields envisioned here. They were made of laminated wood—plywood—and covered in leather. As New Testament scholar Craig Keener says in the Bible Background Commentary, “Before battles in which flaming arrows might be fired, the leather would be wetted to quench any fiery darts launched against them. After Roman legionaries closed ranks, the front row holding shields forward and those behind them holding shields above them, they were virtually invulnerable to any attack from flaming arrows.” That formation, by the way, was called the “turtle.” The shield was a mobile defense—you could move it in whichever direction the attack was coming from, and you could (and were supposed to) use it to protect your neighbor as well as yourself; in the case of fire arrows, it didn’t just stop the enemy’s attacks, it snuffed them out. Faith enables us to stand strong under attack because we trust that the arrows of our Enemy will not pierce us and their fire will not burn us, no matter where the attack comes from.
Fifth, the helmet of salvation. New Testament scholar Frank Thielman says, “The first-century Roman helmet included a padded metal bowl, a short brow guard, a larger and sometimes flared neck guard, and hinged cheek guards. It protected not only the head but also the neck and shoulders.” The obvious point is to protect the head because it controls everything else. Less obvious—I don’t know if Paul’s Gentile readers knew this, but I suspect it was on his mind—the Hebrew word for “neck” is nefesh, which in its metaphorical use meant “soul” or “self.” We need to let God’s salvation shape and cover our thinking; we can do so knowing his salvation protects us from any killing blow from the Enemy. He can harm our bodies and even kill us physically—but that’s the end of his reach. Who we are is safe in God’s hands.
Last, the sword which the Spirit of God has given us, which is the word of God. There are a couple things to unpack here. One, the sword in view is a short sword, the gladius, which was the legionnaire’s standard equipment. It was a double-edged blade, so it could be used for cutting strokes, but it was primarily used as a thrusting weapon at close quarters. Two, the word Paul uses here for “word” is not logos but rhema, which emphasizes the spoken word, not the written word. Given Paul’s typical usage and the context of the letter, the point here is not Bible reading but gospel proclamation. That’s not to say Bible reading and Bible study are irrelevant, but it does mean the thrust of this phrase (so to speak) is not what we tend to assume.
One, our offensive weapon is not quoting Bible verses to support whatever position we’re taking in an argument, it’s speaking the good news of Jesus Christ. This is because, two, it’s aimed at our true enemy, which is not human beings but spiritual powers opposed to God which wreak havoc on human beings. As such, three, its purpose is to win our true victory, which is not winning arguments against other people for “biblical principles”—on which more in a moment—but piercing our spiritual enemies so they lose their grip on their captives. Four, this is the sword given by the Spirit of God, which points us to the true power we have been given for the fight, which is not “biblical principles” we’ve extracted from the text. There are certainly principles in the text of Scripture, and we need to pay attention to them as we interpret God’s word. That said, there’s a distinct tendency to extract “biblical principles” and hold them up as the authority and the cause for which we fight. If you look at the five solas of the Protestant Reformation hanging there on the wall, you’ll see it says Sola Scriptura, not Sola Principia Scripturalia. The thing about “biblical principles” is they’re ultimately our interpretation of the biblical text. Rather than holding up our chosen interpretation of Scripture as the authority to which everyone else must conform, we need to submit ourselves to the authority of Scripture, in order to submit ourselves to the one who inspired Scripture, the Spirit of God.
Having said all this, why do we have all these things to put on? Because this is how we’re strengthened in the Lord and the strength of his might. This doesn’t only mean a different source of strength, though it does mean that. As we see from Isaiah, the armor of God is in fact God’s own armor which he has now shared with us; every piece is entirely God’s gift and God’s work. More, it’s a different conception of strength. This is not strength for worldly victories—arguments, elections, laws, any demonstration of worldly power, success, or influence. This is the strength of the Messiah, who won by losing, gaining all by surrendering all. There’s no place for pride or triumphalism. We’ve received God’s salvation, we’ve received the gospel, and so he gives us these other things to put on to receive his power. We need to be serious about doing so in the time that remains to us—that’s what the word the ESV translates “finally” properly means—because the days are evil and the time is short.
People are never our enemies, they are victims of our Enemy. This is true of even the most evil person you ever meet, because the Enemy is the ultimate gaslighter. We must be wary of people who align themselves against God, for they can be tools or even servants of the Darkness. Some will try to deceive us, and some (many of them the same people) will work to tempt us away from Jesus. They still aren’t the real enemy, and triumphing over people is never the goal. It’s often an excellent way to lose by winning.
In daily life, then, what does all this mean? First, it means praying at all times in the Spirit, for ourselves and for all God’s people. Prayer is how we receive and put on these gifts, and it’s how we stand firm. We never hit a point where we can stop praying, because we never hit a point where the powers of darkness shrug and give up. Praying in the Spirit isn’t about us even when we pray for ourselves; it’s not about telling God what we want him to do, though it’s certainly right to ask for what we want. It’s about listening to the Spirit of God as we pray, letting him prompt and guide and inspire and correct us. It’s also about relying on the Spirit when we pray, even to the point of praying when we have no idea what to pray, or how to pray; we can trust, as Romans 8:26-27 tells us, that the Spirit will do what we cannot.
Second, we’re called to keep alert with perseverance. It’s easy to get complacent, to stop paying attention and stop disciplining ourselves to focus. This is especially true when things are going well. When they aren’t, it’s equally easy to get cynical. We can stop believing prayer matters; we can stop believing what we care about matters. I’ve said before, I hit the point where it seemed to me the only reason God wanted me to pray for things was so he could tell me “no,” so I understand the cynicism. That said, I know what it’s like to feel drawn and compelled by the Spirit to pray anyway, in the midst of and through the cynicism, and I can testify that when we do, God is faithful . . . eventually. But waiting is really, really hard. We need to stand together to help each other have the courage to keep waiting.
Paul knew this. He knew courage is hard, and courage is painful, and so he deeply desired his hearers to be praying for him. Not even Paul could stand firm alone, and he has to stand firm. He has something vital to do—boldly proclaim the mystery of the gospel—and he has a profoundly important opportunity to do so coming up: the hearing he requested when he appealed to Caesar, which could result in him standing before Nero himself. He asks them to pray that God would give him the right words to say so his hearers will clearly understand the good news of Jesus Christ; and he asks for prayer for the courage to proclaim the gospel as freely and fearlessly as he should.
Photo ©2007 Hans Splinter. License: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic. Image has been cropped to fit.