Before we launch into the details of this well-known passage, there are two or three things that need to be said by way of general introduction.
1. It's not a sudden break-away from the theme of unity which has bound together the whole epistle so far. God's master plan for His entire creation is "community", centred in Christ; and to achieve it, all things in heaven and in earth are to be reconciled to Him and to each other by way of the Cross.
Paul stated that in the first chapter, 1:10. God destined us to have our place in it before even He created the world. He called us into it, gave us new birth into it, reconciled enemies to each other in it (ch. 2), fashioned us together into a growing unity which is a witness and demonstration, even to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, of the power and beauty of His purpose; He would have us to be rooted and grounded in His reconciling love that binds us each to Christ and to each other (ch. 3).
Then in ch. 4, Paul hammered home the oneness that is given to us in Christ, and in ch. 5 spelled out the qualities of regenerated character we must have to achieve and preserve this marvellous fellowship of love. That whole statement of attitude and behaviour came to a climax in Paul's extended description of the "submissiveness" all Christians must show to each other - for that attitude is the key to unity.
Now this passage about our warfare, and the armour we need for it, follows that prolonged statement on the theme of unity and fellowship; that means that the whole point of this passage is that it's the unity of the Spirit we have to fight to maintain.
What the devil and his whole demonic organisation is out to destroy is the fellowship of love Christ is creating. It's against that attack we have to stand ... and stand together, as we shall see; for this passage is emphatically not addressed to the lonely Christian, as is so often assumed, but to the whole army of Christians: throughout, Paul addresses his readers in the plural, not in the singular. It's as a battalion, fighting together, side by side, he would have us see ourselves.
That first. What we're to fight to preserve is fellowship and love. We have to "keep the peace" under attack!
2. The shock of conflict after strife at home and work.
This summons to stand up and fight follows a long section in which we have been exhorted to "be subject to one another" - and that may well lead some to ask, "Are we all to be doormats then? Won't the attitude you commend make us weak?"
"No", says Paul, "it'll make us strong".
We have to see the sheer strength of this attitude of love and others-centredness which is the genius of the Christian spirit. It is by way of this "submissiveness" that we win our battle over the enemy! Our weapons are not worldly weapons; they're spiritual weapons, and they're of the kind described in such passages as II Corinthians 6.4-10. Listen now:
Read II Corinthians 6:4-10 (and 10.3-5 - which climaxes in 12.9-10).
We must appreciate the strength of these "gentle" weapons.
"Great endurance" is not weakness; neither is purity ('his strength was as the strength of ten because His heart was pure' - Tennyson), nor is knowledge, nor is forbearance, nor is kindness, nor is the Holy Spirit, nor is genuine love, nor is truthful speech, nor is or the power of God. It is because the level of forbearance we're normally content to achieve, for example, is not strong enough that strife bedevils our life. It is because our love is not strong enough to outride hostility that it fails, and hate prevails.
You overcome evil with good ... with good; and to do it, your good has to be of a totally committed kind. You have to believe in it absolutely. You have to believe absolutely in its power to overcome evil, so the more fiercely the enemy attacks you with evil the more passionately you oppose him with good!
3. The wrestling is not with flesh and blood, but with the principalities and powers etc.
That's why you do not overwhelm the powers of darkness by fighting them with their own weapons of:
deceit
rather than truth
unscrupulousness
rather than righteousness
violence
rather than the Gospel of peace
suspicion
rather than faith
disintegration (or "dismemberment"!)
rather than salvation
lies
rather than the "Spirit-Word"
Try to defeat the enemy with those weapons, and you have already gone over to his side before you even begin the fight!
The qualities in the right-hand column are the qualities "that make for peace", Lk.19.42; they are the qualities that make the reconciled community the winners!
Satan is out to pull down what Christ builds up: that's why what we have to defend is our unity.
The battle is to preserve unity - and to overcome disunity. That's the whole thrust of this passage. So now let's get into it.
The strength you need has to come to us from a source outside ourselves, from the Lord Himself. You need HIS strength, to rely on the power of these (unlikely!) weapons of truth and the Gospel of peace and so on.
In Christ, in union with Him it has to be. Any coward can face a bully if he has a champion big enough to face him with!
And the object is "to stand; that means "to defend what you've got, what we've been given" ... which as we've seen is our "oneness". It is an "active passivity"! ... for the enemy carries the fight to us, not we to him. At the end of the day, we're to be on our feet still, "bloodied but unbowed"!", and that means, with our love and unity intact, not breached. (Standing your ground" means "not being shifted away from the hope of the Gospel which you heard", Col 1.23.)
(Foulkes) - not that way is the purpose of God for community achieved.
Against principalities etc ... defines the enemy,
In the Heavenlies ... defines the arena.
Behind the disruptive behaviour of people lies a satanic thrust - and folks, we must beware lest by indulging mean-mindedness we yield ourselves to become dupes of the enemy.
In I Peter 5.9 and James 4.7 it is rendered "resist", i.e. against strong opposition.
"The evil day" may refer to the "last great day" when the mystery of iniquity will come to its final expression (e.g. II Thess 2.3), but more likely refers to the many lesser "days of evil" the chosen community must face.
Note that it is the community Paul has in mind - plural: we're to 'stand' together, not alone.
The "girdle" was the "foundation garment" (!) to which all the pieces of armour were strapped.
Does "truth" here mean the objective truth of the Gospel, or the "truth of the inward parts" (inner integrity)?
Probably both - but I think primarily the first: the truth which is ground under my feet, and bigger than my sin, so that I may depend absolutely on grace, though I have no claim to it ... the truth that Christ did die for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that God did raise Him up for our justification, according to the Scriptures. (I sometimes think it is the crowning miracle of the Gospel, that God bids us rely absolutely on a mercy we've no right to.) See Isaiah 11.5.
to guard the heart ("Christ is made unto us righteousness" I Cor 1.30).
You have to "put it on", as you "put on Christ": the righteousness is His, and is both imputed and imparted. Foulkes: "To neglect what we know to be a righteous action is to leave a gaping hole in our armour."
The Roman soldier's footwear was a pair of sandals, but of the tough variety, hob-nailed! That suggests that "preparation" should be understood as "prepared foundation" (NEB - "to give you firm footing" - you stand down on it, you don't slip and slide) rather than as a "readiness to" share the Gospel.
But most likely it's another case of "both-and", not "either- or": the enemies we have to contend with are after all best destroyed by being "reconciled" through the Gospel so as to become friends.
Not the dust-bin-lid variety, but the riot-squad variety we're familiar with today - the kind that stood as high as a man, and formed a wall when the soldiers who held them stood side by side ('en passin' means "over all", not "most important of all") .
Note again the idea of Christians "standing together" to meet attack. It's not a lonely soldier fighting by himself Paul has in view here, but a line of soldiers who together make a wall of defence. The shield is one you can hold over a companion in the fight as well as over yourself!
These wooden shields were covered in leather soaked in water to quench the lighted arrows that had been dipped in pitch. The shield was "anti-incendiary"; we need "anti-inflammatory" attitudes to one another, to take the sting out of accusations, criticisms, jealousies, enmities etc. - and faith is what supplies them.
are primarily his accusations (Rev 12.10) which, if we heed them, will weaken us ("Conscience doth make cowards of us all"). "Let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God", Romans 5.1.
Fact, Faith and Experience walk one behind the other on a wall. Faith walks steadily on while he keeps his eyes on Fact. As soon as he looks behind to see how Experience is coming, he falls off and takes Experience with him!
Protection for the head, where purpose is formed.
Paul uses swthrton rather than swthria. The difference is a fine one, but
swthria = salvation thought of as a thing enjoyed, where...
swthrton = salvation thought of as coming in the person of the deliverer ... "through Him Who loved us".
The Sword of the Spirit Who is the Word of God
Note that "who" is neuter so as to agree with "Spirit" not "sword" - it is the Spirit Who is the Word. So the sword is the "Spirit-Word". It is not the mere written word that defeats Satan, but the living Word, given life by the Spirit. The word for "word" Paul uses is ryma, not logos - the uttered word.
Note: This is the Christian's only offensive weapon. It is all you have to attack with! It's the Word that "downs" the enemy.
Bunyan, with a flash of genuine inspiration, surely, called it "the weapon of 'all-prayer'"!
Praise, thanks, confession, affirmation, the plea for help, the shout of victory, the cry of the Name in which we conquer, are all included in it.
Note that "all" occurs four times in this one verse. Prayer is for every occasion.
Note that we are to pray "in the Spirit" as we are to be strong "in the Lord" (v.10). The notion that this means to pray "in a tongue" is outlandish; nothing in the context remotely suggests it. Rather it means that the Spirit is the air you breathe and utter with (in Greek pneuma has to serve for "spirit", "wind", and "breath", as ruach does in Hebrew: a man's breath = his spirit because the most obvious thing that distinguishes a dead body from a living one is that a living one has "breath" where a dead one doesn't, so his "livingness", his "sentience" is in his breath. The Spirit is both "the believer's breath" and "his native air").
Prayer is the attitude in which the armour is both donned and used.
v.19 The "mystery" of the Gospel here at the end is the same as at the beginning ch 1. It is the power of God unto a salvation which finds fulfilment in community. The battle is to achieve and preserve unity in the face of the enemy's purpose to disrupt. How we do it in the fellowship is important.
You see, Paul is has been translating the doctrine of chs.1-3 into practice. It calls for real down-to-earth attitudes to each other which are saturated in the Spirit of Christ. That's what Paul has spelled out in chs. 4 & 5 up till now: but here he warns us that behind the failures of such attitude which breach fellowship is a demonic element, and against that we must be "armoured", in our togetherness, with truth, righteousness, the message of peace, faith, salvation and the Word, all in prayer.
(Theory into practice: manned space flight theory worked out in astronaut training.)
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