How Do I Put on the Armor of God? | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are gonna be talking about the armor of God. In particular, we're gonna try to answer the question, how do I put on the armor of God? We assume, if you're anything like us, that when you've heard this talked about in the past, the emphasis and the focus has been on you and your discipline and your diligence to put on the armor properly.

We're gonna talk about that today. And we're gonna seek to answer this question as well. When we're told to put on the breastplate of righteousness, whose righteousness is that? If you're interested in hearing our answers to those questions, stay tuned.

We hope you enjoy the show. If you're new to Theocast,.

We know that many people who start listening to us struggle with their assurance. What does it even mean to walk by faith? Or how do you rest in Christ? So we put together a free ebook called Rest. And it's where you can learn about the sufficiency of Christ and the differences between the law and the gospel.

And that's an important distinction. If you'd like to learn more, just go to our website, theocast .org.

The Armor of God as Christ’s Protection for the Church

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and pastoral perspective. Here at Theocast, we are seeking to clarify the gospel.

In other words, to take the clutter off of it.

That's right.

And reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ. And your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church there in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

So yes, dear listener, this does mean that John and I typically do not record in the same location.

We do not.

Interfacing virtually, I guess is the right way to say it. And yeah, we talk, we see each other on a screen. We trust the Lord in all those things. We rejoice and enjoy the time that we always, we rejoice, that's stupid.

That's very like Christianese. We enjoy the time that we get to spend together.

For all the children who are listening to the podcast,.

Do not say stupid.

Yeah, sorry.

You thought it was safe.

I get in trouble for it all the time.

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to Theocast in front of your children.

We have to put an E on this podcast.

Excuse me, let me, sorry. Let me, let me, let me recant and say foolish. How foolish was that? That's a biblical word. For me to say, John and I enjoy the times that we get to record face-to-face which happens, you know, on occasion.

And we're going to see each other, God willing, here in a few weeks for the Grace Reformed Network event. I figured I'd just go and throw that out there. They're in Metro Nashville, Tennessee, October 3rd and 4th is open to everyone.

So if you would like to come to a nice intimate gathering of like-minded people and hear some teaching on things that we talk about here regularly on Theocast, hear John and I preach sermons. We'll sing, we'll enjoy each other.

We'd love to see you. All that by way of kind of welcoming people, John. We have a good conversation in store today.

We do.

And we've been planning out our content for the next few weeks. More on that maybe in a minute. But this is an impromptu, as is often the case. I mean, John and I are, we're living, breathing human beings.

We read things, we prep sermons, we're engaging people in our own local churches. And every now and then something happens. It comes across our screen, comes into our view, and we read it and we can't help but talk about it.

That's kind of what we're doing today.

And yeah, John, I want you to let people in on that. That phrase we do, clarifying the gospel and reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom, these two absolutely apply in today's episode, which is how to put on the armor of God, which is part of kingdom work, right?

We'll get into that.

We're using all kinds of slogans today. Kingdom work, rejoicing.

That's right.

And how do I put on the armor of God? I wonder if you've ever asked that question or if you've ever been in a context where that question is asked.

That's right.

I think it's something that most of us have engaged with, experienced, we've listened to stuff, we've read things. I mean, there are volumes written on this about putting on the armor of God and how to do it well.

So we want to seek to answer that question, kind of, how do I put on the armor of God? That how do I and what do I need to do question is something we're gonna pull apart a little bit. And talk about what the armor of God even is maybe and how this matters quite a bit for our peace before the Lord and our protection against the evil one.

John, go ahead.

Ephesians 6 and the Real Nature of Spiritual Warfare

Yeah, I mean, I think 30 second context is important here. You're never gonna want to put on something that's protective if you don't believe there's a serious danger, right? You go into a hospital and everyone in there is sick with a deadly disease, you're gonna be asking for a mask real fast, right?

Because you want to protect yourself. So Paul starts it that way. He's like, hey, look, coming down to the end of the letter.

You mean Ephesians 6, 10 and 12.

Ephesians 6, yeah, armor of God. Paul starts it with a problem. He's like, look, there's a direct threat against you. And he's like, look, your threat is not physical. You're not gonna be able to handle this by pulling out a sword and fighting against Rome.

Right into Ephesians, Ephesus, the church, almost the capital of Rome at the moment. He's like, you're not gonna be able to wrestle against the evils. And there's even all kinds of false idols and worship going on in the city.

It's very, it's a port city. He's like, you can't fix the issues through a force of flesh. He goes, you're wrestling against something that you can't even see, which is principalities, powers and errors.

He names this really overwhelming sense of the spiritual warfare that's happening.

In the kingdom of darkness.

Yeah, and it is overwhelming. And you should go, how am I to fight something I can't see, let alone half don't even understand. Paul's like, exactly. And where he doesn't spend a lot of time trying to explain to you the kingdom of darkness, he wants to explain to you something that's more important, which is Christ, right?

Your protection against it.

That's right. So we have some ideas, and we'll get into this later, of what the kingdom of darkness, but we do know its tactics is lies. It wants to destroy and it wants to absolutely wipe out the church.

So Paul's writing at the end of his letter.

To protect the church.

By the way, I will make this first observation, Justin. You, individually, don't put on the army of God. He's writing to a congregation. We, we do this together. Just gonna stand there and just say that.

This is not an army of one.

I feel like I've heard that before.

Somewhere.

It's not an I, it's a we thing.

It's a we.

So I'll just start with this. He says, stand in the strength of the Lord, right? Stand in the strength of the Lord and in his might. Before he gives you instructions of what to do next, the position is, you're not gonna fight this war.

Yeah.

Dead giveaway, dead giveaway, you're not gonna do this. This is gonna be the Lord doing it.

That's right. And listen to where the armament is coming from. It's not put on armor or put on your armor. Who's armor? You're putting on God's armor.

God's armor, yes. That's what, last time I read it, that's what it said.

Justin, can we just go negative for a second and how we've heard this in the past?

Yeah, I mean, please. And are you gonna quote a prominent evangelical at this point or later?

Nope, that's later. I'll get to that in a minute. But I may, who may, maybe I will.

We're not gonna name names, but just we're gonna quote somebody.

But many of us have grown up, and I know we're having fun here, and Justin and I are pretty excited because we can't wait to get to the good part, and that's what we're giddy about. But I don't know if grown men should ever say the word giddy.

Apologize, there it is. Another explicit thing we shouldn't say.

I don't even know, John, what we're doing at this point.

I'm just excited to be talking about this. Justin, in the past, when I've heard people talk about the armor of God, they mention it in a very, what I would say, pietistic manner, where the emphasis becomes on the efforts of the individual, right?

It's the focus on, putting on the armor of God is almost a daily act of some sort of discipline.

Yes, the focus, if I can just jump in and pile on here, the focus is on the believer.

Yes.

The focus is on the Christian and our diligence to, or like you use the word discipline, our diligence and our discipline to put the armor on properly.

That's right.

That is almost always the emphasis. I'm not saying that other things are not said about the gospel and about Jesus. Those things are said, but the emphasis and the takeaway is always on me and how well I am or am not doing in putting the armor on.

Right.

And I think the obvious way that's done is Bible reading and prayer. Cause I've heard people tell me, I have felt the attacks of Satan today and I felt like he got me because I didn't get up early enough to read my Bible and pray.

And I would say, well, I guess 1500 years of Christians just didn't know how to fight this war because individual Bibles didn't exist. Now, listen, I am not downplaying the joy and wonders of reading scripture.

And of having a Bible.

Exactly.

Personally.

But there's no way that's what Paul meant because those people couldn't apply that.

Well, and just brief comment here, cause whenever you read in scripture about meditating on the law of the Lord or meditating on the word of God, or in this case, taking up the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, we'll talk more specifically about that in a minute.

We should never, like you said, yeah, people didn't have their own copies of the scriptures, but what were Christians doing? I mean, what have God's people been doing since forever? The word of God reverberates amongst his people because we talk about it.

We reflect upon it. We hear it, we sit under it, preached. We pray it, we preach it.

Exactly.

We come and eat it. I mean, in the supper, you know, eat and drink it and yeah, receive it in baptism. I mean, so the word of God is always reverberating around in the hearts and minds of God's people.

That is absolutely biblical and right. So do not ever hear us downplaying the significance of the word of God in the life of the individual Christian, but the word of God in the life of the individual believer, we would understand biblically comes through the conduit of the corporate church.

That's right.

And how we live together.

So they have to be able to apply it in that manner. So, and I, you know, I grew up going to VBS as a child and you would win the set. I mean, I won a set of the armor of God, but what were they emphasizing?

Now go home and read your Bible and pray every day. So you aren't taken out by Satan.

If you win the Bible drill, you get the armor.

That's right.

And then, you know, the fear becomes, unfortunately, I'm only as safe as well as I perform. That's what this is saying.

That's the takeaway.

That's right. You're only as safe as well as you perform them.

My security is tied to how well I'm doing.

Yeah, and I will bring at this point, I'm preaching through this. Justin preached through it a couple of years ago and this being Ephesians. Sorry, Ephesians. I didn't preach in the whole book. I'm just doing the armor of God at the moment on a spiritual warfare series that I'm doing.

And so I recently covered the breastplate of righteousness this week. And I like to do is I like to go online and just interact with history and what other pastors have said. And I'm just curious how they've thought through it.

And there's a very prominent evangelical on YouTube that I was watching. And I was just curious to see how he handled it. You know, what was his style?

And to be clear, he Calvinistic guy.

Yeah, in the presentation of it, he mentioned that there are different kinds of righteousness because it says the breastplate of righteousness. There's imputed righteousness, which he then explained what that is.

If you're new to that word, it literally means that all of the active works of Jesus, of him obeying the law were then gifted on our behalf. Like when it says you wear a robe of righteousness, imagine all the good works that Jesus did were written on a robe, but then his name is crossed out and your name is putting on it and you put that robe on and it belongs to you.

Like, that's your righteousness. That's what imputed righteousness means, right? So he explains that.

Go ahead.

So I don't want to derail your train. You keep going.

And then there's imparted righteousness, which then talks about the works we do, right? So in this presentation, the conclusion was

And I trust in the imparted righteousness piece. He's going to caveat that by saying it's, you know, God's spirit takes a residence within us and we're sanctified. And so our lives begin to change.

That's right. Yeah, so anytime we do any works of the spirit, that's imparted righteousness.

Like legitimate fruit, good works that we were prepared beforehand to walk in.

Which then the proceeding of it was, when it says put on the breastplate of righteousness, you are putting on your own holiness. It's your own holiness that is protecting you. That's what he says. And to quote, he says that if you're going to be effective in fighting against Satan, if you're not living a holy life, he will take you out.

And that's the part of this armament. And that's the part of a lot of what Theocast wants to expose is that it is absolutely imperative to advance the kingdom of light into the kingdom of darkness that we obey.

That we do, but that's not what protects us in the war. So when Paul says, if you don't want to be taken out of this war and you don't want to be taken out by Satan and his fiery darts, you have to have weaponry that is supernatural that will depend upon something other than your own strength.

This is why just from an exegetical standpoint, Justin, just starting back in context, stand in the strength of the Lord and the power of his might. It can't be our righteousness.

It sounds just like Exodus, like Moses in Exodus pops into my brain. Like all you need to do is basically stand still and be quiet because the Lord, your God will fight for you. I mean, it's that idea that the Lord will do it.

That's right.

That's clear from the jump. Yeah, agree.

Christ, the Armor of God, and the Meaning of Righteousness

We've been kind of playing with this, Justin. So in essence, we'll make the statement and then prove it to you. But what is the armor of God then? If you're going to put it on, what is it?

When I preach this text, my sermon title was Christ, the armor of God.

That's right.

Jesus, in short. I mean, we're not trying to be reductionistic and be those kids, like you talk about VBS, waving our hands around, like the answer to every question is Jesus. That's not what we're trying to do right now.

But legitimately, to start out, Paul makes it very plain that this is something that God will do and it is the armor of God. Like we've said, it's not our armor. It is God's armor that we would then put on by faith, which we'll get to in a moment.

And who and what is our protection against all of the assaults and the schemes of the evil one? It is Christ for us. It could never be us. It could never be anything that we contribute or do or muster up, right?

So that is obvious to you and to me at the outset. We can talk through the text a little bit more pointedly maybe in a second.

Well, I just want to add to that, just to prove to your point, if you think about the words that Paul is using, put on God's armor. In my opinion, I think this armor has bloodstains on it from a war that has already happened because Jesus claimed victory.

He rose from the grave.

That's right. So he's saying, here is sufficient armor I know works because the son wore it in victory. Therefore, it will protect you as well. I mean, I'm going to just go off this for a little bit because I'm hot on it.

I've been preaching on it. But when he's talking about the breastplate of righteousness, the breastplate from a military standpoint protects the vital organs, right? And when he puts the title righteousness on there, Justin, what is God protecting in the believer?

Their acceptance, right? Their acceptance, their security, because how is it you

Their life before him.

That's right.

Yeah.

Let me put it this way. To not be guilty, let's say I murdered someone and I'm standing before the judge and the judge says, I'm removing the sentence of guilt upon you. You are no longer guilty of murder.

That doesn't mean I have righteousness. That just means I'm no longer guilty. I need acts of goodness to be righteous. And so when you put on the breastplate of righteousness, you're putting on God's acceptance from the judge saying, I fully accept you to be perfect.

And therefore I am safe in that.

If I can really quick, I was gonna say this earlier. I'm gonna interject it now and we'll just keep trucking. So Heidelberg Catechism question 60 is excellent on all of this material, on imputed righteousness and what it is, but also on what you just said about how we need more than acquittal.

We need more than just being, even to say that it is as though I've never sinned or been a sinner. We need more than that, actually.

That's half the gospel.

So Heidelberg six, exactly. Heidelberg 60, the question is, how are you righteous before God? The answer is only by faith in Jesus Christ. And the acknowledgement is, though I have broken every single one of God's commands and I've never kept a single one of them, yet God by his sheer grace and mercy counts me with the holiness, righteousness and satisfaction of Christ.

So it is as though I have never sinned or been a sinner. And it is as though I have been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. So that last part is that active obedience of Christ and that perfect righteousness imputed, it's counted, his record for my record.

So when my record will be pulled up, it will, like you said, it's as though I've put on the robes of Christ and his name is scratched out and mine is put on there. It is as though I have lived a perfectly obedient life in fulfillment of the law as he did because he represented me in that way.

So thinking in these terms about what the imputation of righteousness is and what justification even is and how we are righteous before the Lord, I think that helps us a ton when we come to a passage like Ephesians 6 and understanding what in the world is being discussed here and how it is that we would have peace and security before God now forever, in spite of the fact that Satan fires darts at us all the time and accuses us left and right.

I mean, righteousness is a great way for him to take us out. I mean, there's two forms of this, Justin. There is the person who understands they're not righteous and they're being pointed to their own efforts.

When Satan goes, you're not very faithful, you're right, and they give up.

They quit.

Or there's the other side of it where they feel like they're crushing it and Satan just fuels that. And it sounds like this. Wow, look at how well you're doing and look at these people who don't take the gospel serious and don't take God serious.

You should question their salvation. You should go teach them the law. It produces in us an imbalance of the law.

You should talk about law and duty all the time till these people get it in gear. And none of these things produce good things. And for the anxious soul, like you said, it's despair. It's like, man, Satan's right.

Yeah.

Well, it creates the person who has the self-righteousness that, because we think Satan's attacks are gonna always be negative. Oh no, they'll be to the affirmative. They will feed your pride so much.

You'll get so high. When you topple over, it's a horrible fall. And we've both seen this in our ministries where people in their self-righteousness build themselves so up that they walk away from the faith because the fall is so hard.

So this is why the absolute pounding of the desk that it's Jesus' righteousness on our behalf protects us from our own pride. And it protects us from fear that we haven't done enough because Jesus did enough.

What's the antidote to despair and to self-righteousness? It's this, it's Jesus for us. And let's just survey some of the words that are in the text. I'm gonna kind of just fly through this and rip for a second and then you interact with anything you want.

So I can remember, again, it's been a few years ago now, preaching this text. There's a section where I wanted rhetorically to just pull out, because how often have you heard this too, where teaching on this, and it's not illegitimate to do because you even, I think, are doing a little bit of this because you're zooming in on particular pieces.

But there often, sadly, has been much more made about, well, here's the armor that a Roman soldier would have worn and let's talk 12 points about the helmet and 12 points about the breastplate and 12 points about the sandals and exactly how they were made and why they were effective for battle.

And that's what we discuss rather than actually talking about what in the world would these things be for the believer. So, all right, fasten on the belt of truth. Whose truth? The truth about what? Next, put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Again, like we've been alluding to, whose righteousness is that? Yours, John?

Mine?

It's like, we're gonna wage war against the devil and all the principalities of darkness with our righteousness? I do not think so.

Or your truth? People say, live your truth.

Next, put on the gospel of peace. Now, whose gospel is that? And who did it? We talk about that all the time too. Believers don't do the gospel. One person did the gospel. His name is Jesus and he accomplished it.

Right, next, take up the shield of faith.

Ah, faith.

What's faith? Faith is, by definition, it's an empty hand and it is looking away from oneself to another.

That is what faith is.

It's not faith in yourself, it's in the object of something outside of yourself.

It has nothing to do with you or anything that you have ever done or might do. It has everything to do with Jesus and in the object of your faith. Take up the helmet of salvation. Again, whose salvation?

Who accomplished it? The scripture says salvation belongs to?

The Lord.

The Lord. Salvation is of?

The Lord.

The Lord, right? All right, now, take up the sword of the spirit. All right, now, which is the word of who?

God.

God.

And who is that word about?

Jesus.

It's about Christ. So, Paul's like, look, we don't battle against flesh and blood, right? We battle against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

And it's like, look, we are in, y 'all, we in over our heads. We better put on Christ, right? Christ for us is the armor of God. And Paul writes like this in other places, man.

Hey guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources?

We have started something called the Theocast Community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like-minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there.

And you can share it and ask questions. You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. If you've been listening to Theocast for a while, you'll understand that the emphasis is on the power of God.

I mean, what does he say in 2 Corinthians 10? For we do not fight with what? The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but of divine power. Well, weapons, that means every piece of that armor is divinely inspired with power.

And so it can't be related to us and our efforts. This is why we put it on because our own efforts, our own capacities, we could not save ourselves. We cannot sanctify ourselves, and we cannot protect ourselves as we wait for glory.

So what I love about this, Justin, I wanna go back and I emphasize this in my sermon. I'm gonna use a different passage. This is 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13, but it emphasizes the same idea as Ephesians 6.

He says this, be watchful. Well, Justin, when are you aware when there's danger? Be watchful. So he's telling the believer, be watchful. Second phrase, stand, 1 Corinthians 16, 13, stand firm in the faith, right?

Faith in what? Well, he was a preacher of Jesus. So we know that's what he means. Stand in the firm faith of trusting in Jesus. Then he says this, act like men, be strong. Now that phrase Americans cringe at, it's just a colloquialism that means be courageous.

That's all it means. Act like men, be strong. It's exactly right. So notice the flow. You're in danger, be watchful. Now, because of the fear, where do you look? To Christ. From Christ, you find confidence and strength.

If you go back to Ephesians 6, I think he uses this word like seven times, stand, stand. When you're in battle and you're afraid, you go into a foxhole and you hide. He's like, yeah, that's where you probably want to be.

He's basically saying, stand, hold the line.

That's right. You can fight back, you can charge forward because you have a strength that is not your own. So when we talk about putting on the armor of God, Justin, he's saying, if you're looking to the confidence that I provide you, the protection I provide you, you have every reason to stand when Satan comes and goes, but you're not holy, I know I'm not.

But you have no strength, I know I'm weak.

It's just like the dialogue in the Bruce Reed by Richard Sibbes between the weary believer and Satan. It sounded almost identical to what you just said.

That's right.

It's like, yeah, you're exactly right. I only have a flicker of faith and love, but Christ is gonna cherish it and he's gonna fan it until he turns judgment into victory. I mean, that's the answer. You already mentioned some other writings of Paul.

Romans chapter 13, verses 12 to 14, read that sometime, where Paul is saying the night is far gone, the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. And then a verse later, he says, he explains the metaphor.

He says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Come on.

So put on the armor of light, and then a sentence later, put on Jesus Christ. So when Paul exhorts us to put on the armor of God, in effect, he is saying, put on Christ by faith, like everything that he has accomplished for you and on your behalf.

I said this to you before we recorded, I'm gonna say it, we were interchanging.

Sure.

You mentioned the thing that you had read and just your prep and your research on Ephesians six and stuff. And we were talking about it. And that's when we were planning to, let's record this today. I said, you know, what's funny about this whole thing, funny, not really ha ha, but funny, ironic in a way, right?

Is if I went on Twitter or X or whatever in the world,.

We're supposed to call it these days.

If I went on that social media platform today, and I wrote something like this, our righteousness was not the grounds of our acceptance before the Lord to begin with, nor will it ever keep us in his favor.

If that's all I put, it's true biblically, as far as I'm concerned, I know you agree. The reaction that that would get from many people that are familiar at all with Theocast is it would just be dismissed.

These guys are antinomians, they don't care about obedience. They're just trying to make room for laziness and licentiousness and whatever. That would be the response. Like they're assuming things about us or about me in putting up a post like that.

Yeah, again, what I wanna say is the reason that I or John would go on Twitter and post something like that today is because there are people out there with huge platforms that are saying the exact opposite, that are saying quite literally, on the one hand, it's true that our righteousness could never have been the ground of our acceptance before the Lord to begin with, and they're gonna preach Jesus, but then out of the other side of their mouths, verbatim explicitly are going to say, like you read earlier, that the armor, like the righteousness, the breastplate of righteousness that we put on is our holiness, it's our obedience.

So thus, I wanna start like subtweeting everything I put online with a parenthesis. Like our righteousness, our obedience was never the ground of our acceptance before God to begin with, and it will never keep us in His favor, parenthesis.

I'm tweeting this because there are people out there who actually say such things. We are not just coming up with this stuff out of thin air, making up straw men to just burn down. Like we're not. I know our listeners understand this, but if you're newer to the pod, we're not just saying this stuff to, I don't know, to like gain a following, or to comfort the lazy licentious believers out there.

We're saying this because people.

Are being put back in chains, and they're having their assurance taken from them, they're having their comfort robbed from them, and they're becoming ineffective and unfruitful, to use the language of 2 Peter 1, because they're being pointed in on themselves all the time rather than being pointed to Christ for them.