sword of the Spirit

Taking Our Stand

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By Linda Rex

August 25, 2024, Proper 16 | After Pentecost—Lately, the Lord has brought me back to an immersion in everyday day-long prayer. The life of prayer can easily be lost in this active, busy, stressed-filled existence. It takes being intentional about remaining in conversation with the Lord in the midst of our everyday activities, just like it requires being intentional about staying in conversation with our spouse and loved ones in order to keep our relationships strong and healthy.

The good news is that prayer does not begin with us. Prayer actually begins within the Triune life and love, in the face-to-face communion between the Father and his Son in the Spirit. As we are prompted by the Spirit to pray, as we are attentive to the Spirit’s leading (remain alert), we participate in Jesus’ own life of prayer. The Spirit places concerns on our minds and hearts, and in response, we pray. This is how we can remain in prayer “in every season” or “at all times.”

In our New Testament passage for this Sunday, Ephesians 6:10–20, the apostle Paul summarizes what he has shared throughout his epistle regarding life in the Spirit, the triumphant victorious life which is ours in Christ because of what he has accomplished in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and which is ours in the gift of his Holy Spirit. Notice how the different parts of the “armor of God” reflect topics he has brought up elsewhere in his letter—truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ.

Paul has encouraged us to “be filled with the Spirit” and so now he is encouraging us to wield the “sword of the Spirit” which is the Word of God and prayer. In the light of the evil one at work in this world and the forces of evil impacting every level of society and corrupting every institution, government, and industry, Paul encourages us to remain on our guard, with our feet planted firmly on the gospel of Jesus, and the Word of God and prayer on our lips.

Look closely at each piece of the armor Paul tells us to take up and put on: we actually take up and put on Christ. Jesus is our righteousness, which we need as a breastplate of protection over our hearts. Our Lord is the truth of who we are as God’s beloved, forgiven, and redeemed children; his Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and our God is the God of truth, who loves us and forgives us and has made us his own. Christ is our salvation, our assurance that we are forgiven, accepted, and beloved, and included in God’s life and love now and forever. It is the faith of Christ which shields us from the fiery attacks of our adversary and accuser—for Jesus is the trustworthy One we can assuredly trust in every moment, no matter how difficult things may get in our lives. As you can see, God has provided himself in Christ as our armor in the great spiritual battle in which we find ourselves.

Because of Jesus, all he has done in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and in the gift of God’s Spirit, our feet are firmly planted on the ground, and we are able to weather every wind of combat that may come our way. The apostle Paul reminds us that it is not the people in our lives we are in combat against. Too often, when we experience difficulties in our relationships or circumstances, we turn against the people in our lives, when we should turn to Christ. This brings us back to prayer, and our need to remain in constant communication with the Lord.

As the apostle Paul remained for years chained to a Roman soldier, I’m certain he had plenty of time to ponder the significance of armor in relation to his walk with Christ. A Roman soldier’s shield was designed to be used as protection in battle. When used together properly with all the other solders’ shields, the army was kept safe from any of the arrows or flaming missiles thrown by the enemy. But each member of the army had to work together with the others for this strategy to work best. In the same way, as members of the body of Christ, we are called to pray—to work together in faith, for the movement forward of the good news of the gospel to be spread. The body of Christ today faces many obstacles and new opposition in ways it has not for many years. Paul calls us back to a life of prayer, and of actively putting on all that is ours in Christ, so that we may stand our ground in a world which pushes back against what is good, holy, loving, and right. May we remain alert, and pray always, in every season, in the Spirit.

Heavenly Father, Dear Abba, God and Father of us all,

May your name be hallowed and glorified, now and forever, for you are worthy. You are worthy of all glory, honor, and praise. You are a good God, kind, loving, compassionate, and faithful. Thank you for loving us. May your kingdom come, and your will be done, in us, in our loved ones, in our community, in our state, in our nation, in this world, here on earth, as it is in heaven. Thank you for giving us today all that we need for life and godliness—for giving us your Son, the Bread of Life. Thank you for remembering those who are homeless and need the necessities of life. Grant us the grace to remember them as well. Thank for being so forgiving of us. We need your grace so desperately. Grant that we may ever be as forgiving of others as we desire you to be forgiving of us. Thank for not leading us into temptation, but delivering us from evil and the evil one through Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Thank you for covering us with Jesus—our salvation—as a helmet. Thank you for guarding us with Jesus as our breastplate of righteousness, holding us in right relationship with you now and forever. Thank you for girding us with your truth, the truth that is Jesus and giving us your Spirit of truth. Thank you for shielding us with the faith of Christ, guarding us against the fiery darts of the evil one. And thank you for giving us Jesus to put on, enabling us to walk in his shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace.  Thank you for the sword of the Spirit—for keeping us diligent and faithful in the Word of God and prayer. We need you to fight these spiritual battles for us, for you are the divine Warrior, our Defender and Protector. Thank you, dear Abba, that Jesus is in you, and we are in him, and he is in us. In Christ we are held safe in your arms in the Spirit. For yours is the kingdom, the glory, the honor, now and forever. Amen.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, ‘having girded your loins with truth,’ and ‘having put on the breastplate of righteousness,’ and having shod ‘your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;’ in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take ‘the helmet of salvation,’ and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”      Ephesians 6:10–20 NASB

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A Simply Divine Outfit!

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by Linda Rex

Last week I did my best to come up with a blog to post, but due to my involvement with vacation bible school (VBS), and other family and work responsibilities, I found myself drawing on empty when it came time to write. But I would like to share what stood out in my mind from our work with the young people in the Old Hickory community.

The topic of our VBS last week was the armor of God. At first, when we were reviewing the curriculum at one of our planning meetings, I and others were struck by the emphasis it had on our human efforts to put away sin and defend ourselves against Satan’s attacks. Our challenge was to revise the curriculum in such a way as to put Jesus Christ as the foundation and center of it rather than our own human efforts.

It is my personal belief what is lost in most discussions and devotions about the armor of God is the reality that each part of the armor is in essence Jesus Christ himself. Even the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, points us to the living Word, Jesus Christ. To separate each part out individually as if it stands on its own is to miss the point of this whole passage.

Paul starts out this section of scripture by saying, “…be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” God’s might is our might, his strength our strength. In Jesus by the Spirit we have the capacity to resist evil and the evil one. It’s not something we have to figure out or do on our own.

We need to beware of any way of looking at scripture which casts us back upon ourselves, as if we are capable of resisting or overcoming evil on our own, or are responsible to do so. Trying to overcome or resist evil on our own by keeping the law or doing lots of good deeds is basically human religion. And such a religion does not save us—rather it can enslave us and bind us to unhealthy and unfruitful ways of living and being.

What Paul seems to be saying here in Ephesians 6 is we have an adversary who is always scheming against us, and there are forces of evil at work which impact our lives on a daily basis. But we have a simply divine outfit laid out on the bed for us—we just need to put it on and stand firm in Christ, while resisting the devil’s efforts to deceive or distract us.

Salvation isn’t something we have to make sure we run to the boutique and buy, but rather something Christ has already done in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. We have been delivered from sin and death by the Son of God, who was victorious over them. But there is an action we do—we pick up the helmet of salvation, and we put it on. We experience a change in our mind and heart—we repent and turn away from our self-centered ways of thinking and being, and we turn to Christ. We stop trusting in our human efforts to save ourselves and start trusting in Christ instead. We put on Christ.

The thing is, the helmet of salvation isn’t something you take off and put back on. Salvation just is, because Christ has done it and won’t go back on his action of taking our humanity on and redeeming it. So we just receive this gift and live in the truth of it from now on. Our decision to live in the reality of our salvation in Christ does not alter whether or not Jesus saved us. It merely enables us to enjoy all the benefits of what he has done for us and in our place, and what he is doing today by his Holy Spirit. It is life-transforming.

This theme of putting on Christ can be found throughout this whole discussion about the armor of God. When we put on Jesus Christ, we are wrapping around ourselves the truth of who God is and who we are in him. Jesus is our belt of truth. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—we draw our being and life from him as the One through whom and by whom all things were created. As made in the image of God, through the Spirit we reflect Jesus Christ, the One who is both God and man—he is our perfected humanity. The truth about our existence is found in him. Whatever lies may be said to us or we may believe need to be held up against this plumbline, recognized for what they are, and discarded. The truth of our being, which is found in Jesus Christ, orients us toward our true north, our heavenly Father, in every area of our lives as we live and work in community with others.

The gospel of peace—how the Word of God took on our humanity to bring us peace with God and peace with one another—is the story of our lives. This good news, who is our Savior Jesus Christ, has transformed our lives, and we spend our existence sharing this good news with others. We don’t hold grudges or refuse to forgive people’s slights against us because we are living in the reality of and sharing with others the immense gift of grace given to us from God through our Lord Jesus Christ. All the human barriers we place between ourselves are removed in Christ, because he has made us one in himself, taking on our humanity and redeeming it. Because Christ is our life, we walk in him in the Spirit, in this path of grace and peace he has walked before us, in our place and on our behalf.

As we put on Christ as our footwear, we also put him on as our righteousness. Jesus is our right relationship with God and one another. God has reconciled to himself all things in Jesus Christ. In Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension we are brought up into the very life and being of God himself, at one with the Father, Son, and Spirit, and in Christ, made at one with every other human being. We put on Christ by living in the truth of our reconciliation and our right relationship, by being truly reconciled with God and one another, because of Jesus’ finished work.

Even when it comes to faith, we are reminded to turn to Christ for the faith we need when we are being assaulted by the lies of the evil one. The one weapon the devil uses against us over and over again is the lie which says God is not good and is not trustworthy, and he does not really love and care about us. When these lies begin to overwhelm us, we need to draw upon Christ’s perfect faith. Jesus trusted his Father implicitly, even when he hung dying on the cross and it seemed to his human mind his Father had forsaken him. Jesus’ perfect faith caused him to trust his Father even at the very end of his suffering—this faith is ours. All we need to do is ask—to pick up the shield—to put on Christ.

So we have put on Christ, and it seems it is not enough for us just to have our armor on. God also gives us an offensive weapon—the sword of the Spirit. The capacity of the word of God to penetrate down to the core of our being is made possible through the living Word, Jesus Christ, by his gift of the Spirit from the Father. It is Christ at work in us by his Spirit which transforms us and enables us to effectively live out and share the gospel of peace. It is the Spirit of truth at work within which enlightens us and enables us to see and walk in the truth who is Jesus. Any faith or righteousness which may well up within us is the work of the Spirit, who writes God’s ways on our minds and hearts, gives us the heart to obey, and enables us to live in accordance with the truth of who we are in Jesus Christ.

The centrality of Christ to this entire discussion on the armor of God can be clearly seen when we start and begin with Jesus as the One who is the Word of God come into our human flesh. This can be a comforting and encouraging study when we do it this way. It’s not up to us to do this battle with the enemy all by ourselves. Rather, it is a battle Jesus already fought and won, and he shares his decisive victory with us as we respond to the Spirit’s work, and put on and use the divine outfit he created for us in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Jesus Christ is our mighty warrior, and we get to participate by the Spirit in his perfect deliverance against sin, evil, and death. What a blessing!

Dear Abba, thank you for giving us, in Jesus and by your Spirit, total victory over evil, sin, and death. Thank you for giving us this perfect armor to wear, and the sword of the Spirit to wield. Grant us the grace to daily put on Christ and to respond fully to the Spirit’s work in our hearts and lives, and in the world around us. May we trust in you fully, resting in Christ, and drawing upon the Spirit each day. Amen.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Ephesians 6:10–17 NASB

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