What is the Armor of God?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. Today we come to the end of our look at the book of Ephesians. We go one chapter a day through the Bible, and we have now come to the sixth chapter of Ephesians, and we're going to be focusing primarily on the verses that deal with the armor of God.

The Belt of Truth and the Breastplate of Righteousness

So if you have your Bible out, go ahead and open to Ephesians chapter 6 and turn with me to verse 11. Here we have the command, Fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication, to that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me, and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

This is coming to the end. These are among the final words of the Apostle Paul, and I remember very vividly the first time, and I think that it was in seminary, the first time I ever had anyone really explain to me how the armor of God symbolized, each piece of the armor of God symbolized some area in the Christian life, and how that symbolized that particular area.

Now, again, because this is a short video, I'm not going to have time to do a deep and in-depth study, but I want to share with you what was shared with me, because I found it helpful, and I thought maybe you might find it helpful as well as we end out this book.

In the armor of God, we see several pieces of the armor. We see that he mentions first the belt of truth, then the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, and of course the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.

Now, something to mention just right off is that this is an analogy, and it's not a perfect analogy, but anytime we see an analogy, we say, well, what are we learning from the analogy? And we need to also recognize that there are other places where the Apostle Paul references the armor of God where he uses a little different language.

So again, not only is this an analogy, but it's not an absolute analogy. So just to be clear about that before I go into this, don't press these analogies too far, but use them for the purpose that they are given, and remember that all of this is to remind us that there's a spiritual battle that's going on all around us all the time.

If we could see the things that were going on in the spiritual realm, we would be amazed, but we can't see those things. But the Apostle Paul gives us here a reminder of how to fight those battles. A lot of battles going on in the world right now, a lot of things going on that we see, a lot of things that we don't see.

How do we fight the battles? We fight the battles with the armor of God. And he begins with the belt of truth. Why truth represented as a belt? Well, the reason why truth is represented as a belt is because truth is the thing that holds everything else together.

If you don't have the truth, you don't have anything. If you're believing in a lie, if you're believing in something false, then everything is going to fall apart. What does the belt do? The belt holds everything together, and so truth holds everything together.

And therefore, there is the analogy. And then he talks about the breastplate of righteousness. Well, what does the breastplate do? The breastplate protects your heart. It's the part that protects your vital area, your most vital area.

Sort of like if you imagine the modern use of body armor by military or a bulletproof vest that's used by police officers. It's the same concept. It's a breastplate. It's designed to be a shield. And as I understand it, it's protecting the heart.

And you can look at this one of two ways. You could say, well, primarily, my righteousness is not my own, but I have a righteousness that comes from outside myself. The Bible says, I don't have a righteousness of my own by keeping the law, but I have a righteousness which comes through faith in Christ.

So my righteousness is actually his righteousness. And ultimately, I think that is the primary way to consider this breastplate. Because if we try to comfort our hearts with our own righteousness, one of two things is going to happen.

Either we're going to fall into despair or we're going to fall into pride. But if we understand that our hearts have been cleansed, our souls have been cleansed by the work of Christ and our righteousness is his righteousness, that will be a true guard for the heart.

Because will we fail? Yes. Do we fail every day? But the righteousness of Christ will not fail. And what do I want to guard my heart if not the righteousness of Christ? Now, some people say, well, what he's talking about here is practical righteousness.

Because if you want your heart to be essentially feeling good about itself, then you want to live a practically righteous life. And yes and no. I think yes, there is a sense in which if you're constantly seeking to disobey, if you're constantly living in disobedience, then your heart is going to be exposed.

But at the same time, I cannot rely on my own obedience. I certainly cannot rely on my own righteousness. And the righteousness that I have is the righteousness of Christ. And that's my breastplate. The next thing that he mentions, he mentions the belt, he mentions the breastplate, and he mentions of all things, shoes.

He says the shoes that are, and it's kind of a strange sentence, shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Again, the language here is very interesting, because basically he's saying the shoes that we wear are the shoes of the gospel.

How does that work? What does that even mean? I believe that what that's referencing is the fact that as Christians, we are supposed to be taking the gospel everywhere that we go. And the gospel of peace is what we, we're ambassadors of the gospel of peace.

So therefore, we're supposed to be wherever we walk, wherever we go, that's where the gospel is supposed to go. And I remember an analogy being made to the person who would be returning from battle. If a king ran, or rather, if a king won the battle, the person who was the messenger to come back and tell the kingdom, he would run with excitement to bring the message of victory.

But if he lost the battle, the messenger might not even make it back. And if he did, he would certainly not be running with victory. He might be running in fear, but he wouldn't be seeing the victory.

And the analogy that I remember hearing, I thought it was very interesting, was that when you saw dust being kicked up by the running of the messenger, it was an encouragement because that meant he was running with victory.

And so it was, and this is where we get the idea of the scriptures, where it says, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news. Because you can see in the distance, you can see the dirt kicking up from where, from they're running, you can see them coming, you can see that.

The Shield of Faith and the Helmet of Salvation

And that's a, that's a good message they're bringing and you see their feet. And so the idea of feet being tied into bringing the message is something that we see in other places in scripture. And therefore, when the gospel is referenced as shoes, I think it's referencing the fact that we, one of the pieces of armor that we have is the proclamation of the Now the next one is the shield of faith.

And the shield of faith, which it says, is able to extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And this is interesting because if we think about shields in maybe the English shields, we think of this sort of round device that was held by the swordsman and he would have a sword in one hand and he would have a round shield on the other side.

And one was used for striking, one was used for blocking. But with the Roman shield was long and wide and it was, it protected the whole person. And so the idea here is that the shield of faith is, that's what we hide behind when the devil, when the evil one is attacking, we have to remember that faith is our shield.

But always remember this, and this is so important, faith is not without an object. Faith must have an object. You can't just have faith, you must have faith in something. So what's your faith in? If your faith is in yourself, that's a little shield.

That's not going to work. Is your faith in how good you are as a Christian? Again, small shield. But if your faith is in Christ, if he ultimately then is your shield, kind of like the breastplate, he is the shield.

Your faith is in him. So we pick up the shield of faith. When Satan comes after us, when the adversary approaches, when those attacks come, then we get behind Christ. He is our shield. Last week, Brother Mike Collier preached a wonderful sermon about David and Goliath, and he talked about how David represented Christ because he went out in front of the people of God, and he protected the people of God from the enemy, and he smote the enemy in the same way that Christ comes and he defeats our enemy, which is death.

And of course, David becomes a picture of Christ, and he's a shield. And the Bible says God is our shield. And so when it says the shield of faith, some people talk about faith for faith's sake. Faith by itself is nothing.

Faith demands an object, and the object is Jesus Christ. Now it goes on to say the helmet of salvation. And again, using the analogies, not pushing them too hard, but understanding what the Apostle Paul is saying, why would he mention a helmet in regard to salvation?

Well, as again, I remember hearing this, and I thought it was very wise. We have to guard our hearts, but we also have to guard our minds. And one of the things that enters our minds most frequently is the idea of doubt, especially doubt regarding salvation.

And so the helmet of salvation is keeping in our mind the work that has been done on our behalf, keeping in our mind the work that Christ did, understanding the finality of his work for us. Jesus Christ has come.

He has lived for us. He has died for us. He rose again on the third day, and it was for us that he did that. And because of what he has done, our salvation is secure, not because of what I do, not because of what I will do, not because of what I have done, but my salvation is secure in Christ.

Therefore, therefore, when I consider doubt creeping in, when I feel those senses of those feelings of doubt, what am I to focus my mind on? I focus my mind on salvation, the helmet of salvation. I focus my mind on what Christ has done for me.

Over the years, I have dealt with various times where I've been very melancholy, very sad. I've experienced times of great difficulty. Even since becoming a Christian, there have been times where I was very down.

And Spurgeon talks about depression and dark night of the soul, and I've felt some of that, and I think I understand at least a little bit of what he was talking about. And I will tell you this, the thing that has helped me most is meditating on what Christ has done, meditating on the truth of the gospel, meditating on the reality of God's existence, meditating on those things, the helmet of salvation.

Where do we set our mind? On what do we set our mind? It's an important question. And then finally, the only weapon that is given in the armor is the sword, the sword of the spirit, which he doesn't make us wonder what it is, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, the word of God, the only offensive weapon.

Everything else is defensive. The breastplate defends, the helmet defends, the shield defends, but the sword is for offense. We live this life, and it is a spiritual battle. And in the spiritual battle, there is only one true godly weapon, and that weapon is the word of God.

When Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, when the devil approached him, and the Bible records three times that the devil approached him, every time the devil approached him with a temptation, Jesus's response was, it is written.

The word of God is our weapon for spiritual battles. So my question to you would be, and an important question, would be, how are you at wielding that sword? Are you keeping your knowledge of the word sharpened?

Are you studying to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly understanding the word of truth? Are you concerned that when the times come, and they will come, that you will rightly handle the sword of the spirit?

That's a very important question, because again, all of the armor is important, but the sword is the only offensive weapon for the believer. So that is my very basic understanding of what Paul means when he refers to the armor of God, and again, I know that there are many more things that could be said, but for the sake of the length of the video, I hope that this has been helpful.

I hope this has been an encouragement, and I hope that this has been a useful look at a very important text of scripture. Again, thank you for watching Coffee with a Calvinist. If you enjoy these videos, please take a moment to like, comment, share, and subscribe, and if you're on Facebook, please share it with a friend.

Again, thank you for watching. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.